The GOP Is Campaigning for George W. Bush’s Third Term
It’s too early to conclude much about the Republican presidential field—whether it will prove to be the strongest since 1980, as some say, or is beginning to resemble the carnival show of 2012, with its pileup of fringe figures and novelty acts (Ben Carson? Carly Fiorina?). But at the upper levels of the conservative movement, where, in William F. Buckley Jr.’s formulation, “Rhetoric is the principal thing. It precedes all action,” one change is striking: The hopelessly fractured party of the Obama years, beset by internal discord and ideological division—“the establishment” vs. the “insurgents,” the ins vs. the outs, beltway “appropriators” vs. budget hawks, deal-making Senate compromisers vs. inflexible House purists—sounds once again like the well-oiled, unified-message machine of old.
The message itself is coming through clearly—at the “summit” of presidential hopefuls last month in Nashua, N.H., where Ted Cruz roused the audience with his vow to “destroy” ISIS, and last week in Greenville, S.C., where Marco Rubio demanded that “the strongest military power in the world” resume its cocky posture and put its enemies on notice (“We will find you and we will kill you,”) and Scott Walker lamented the lack, in Obama, of “a leader who is willing to take the fight to them before they take the fight to us.”
If it all sounded familiar, so does the revived fervor for “moral clarity” and “the American idea,” not to mention promises of a (tax-free) military buildup and an attitude of indifference bordering on contempt for every ally but Israel.
“War is the health of the state,” the socialist Randolph Bourne observed a century ago. It has also been the health of the modern Republican Party.
It is the language—need it be said?—of George W. Bush, who is suddenly relevant again. Not that he ever really went way. Well, he did, but his policies didn’t, to the consternation of liberals and satisfaction of conservatives. Two years ago, Charles Krauthammer happily reminded us just how much of Bush’s war on terror is still in place: “indefinite detention, rendition, warrantless wiretaps, special forces and drone warfare, and, most notoriously, Guantanamo, which Obama so ostentatiously denounced—until he found it indispensable.” More bluntly: “Bush’s achievement was not just infrastructure. It was war.”
And George Bush seems to be easing into his new role as GOP war chieftain. He was the star attraction at the Las Vegas gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition, offering a foreign policy tour d’horizon in answers to questions teed up by Ari Fleischer, his former press secretary. Breaking his vow of silence on Obama, Bush said lifting sanctions in Iran would be a mistake, just like the hollow threats in Syria had been (“you gotta mean it”). The remarks were off the record (of course)—but were leaked (of course) to the New York Times by a “dozen” people in the audience.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/features/2015-05-18/the-gop-is-campaigning-for-george-w-bush-s-third-term
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