As always with the GOP, it comes down to domestic political power, to all appearances their only reason for being. Washington Post today, Page A1:
House Republican moderates, in a remarkably blunt White House meeting, warned President Bush this week that his pursuit of the war in Iraq is risking the future of the Republican Party and that he cannot count on GOP support for many more months.
Note the many possible concerns of a thinking, feeling human being that were not expressed: Their worries for the Iraqi people. Their concerns about whether the Iraq war is worth its ongoing cost in American lives (including their constituents'); in Iraqi civilian lives; in dollars. Their concerns about the continuing explosion in the deficit ($200B per year) that the war has created, and the global rise in Islamic radicalism that it is fueling. Any question of whether having our troops in Iraq right now does more harm than good.
No. Their only expressed concern is this: If the situation in Iraq does not improve, the Republicans will be thumped again in November 2008. In all likelihood, a majority of those present in the room with the President will be voted out of office.
Which raises my existential question for the GOP: What is the purpose of domestic political power if it does not allow you to raise these questions of ultimate ends – the lives of innocents; the good of the nation; the best and wisest uses of American power – in person, with the President of the United States, on one of the so-rare occasions when you have the opportunity?
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Here's the GOP thinking: political power is the currency of the realm. And they are right. It is.
Let's say 300 Million Voters demand verbally that we leave Iraq. Yet all 300 Million also say it won't change their vote one bit.
What does such a demand actually mean? How can anyone claim to 'want' something -- to want to save lives, do the morally right thing, to be honorable -- if they would not change the one thing every American is guaranteed, free of charge, should they not get it?
So Bush knows, a threat to pull support on an issue is not the same thing as pulling support on an issue.
In politics, Bush knows, there is no right and wrong: there are -- as Karl told him -- winners and losers. Bush's only fear is to lose the power he has to provide tax cuts.
This "11 Republican House Members" thing was a Karl Rove inspired joke -- the Reps who went to that meeting have never been in Bush's pocket like Haastert or (on the Senate side) Frist were, and they hold no importance in the Congress, in the Party, or in the national debate (quick test: name TWO of them, and name ONE thing any of them has ever done legislatively). Bush gave them a meeting to give the country the impression that his party was taking him to the woodshed (Gosh! I guess he's listening now!), and they went because it inflated their sense of self-importance (he's meeting us! our caucus is no longer irrelevant!)
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