It's Do-or-Die time for the GOP

By Sean Magers

Indictments, Investigations, and Cronyism! Oh my! These are dark days indeed for the Bush administration. With the President's approval rating dipping to 35% in some polls and Dick Cheney's at almost half of that at 19%, it's hard to see how the White House can provide effective leadership for the remaining three years of this term.

Bush has seen his own conservative base turn against him with the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, and has to expect the possibility of a filibuster with his newest nomination. There have been indictments of majority leader Tom DeLay and the Vice President's chief of staff Scooter Libby, bringing about the prompt resignations of both. Even a major contributor to Bush/Cheney '04 campaign has been indicted on three counts of money laundering. This, of course, is all in addition to investigations underway on Senate majority leader Bill Frist. With Karl Rove astoundingly still employed and press secretary Scott McClellan sweeping botched jobs under the rug at break-neck speed, this all adds up to a lion's share of corruption and incompetence deeply entrenched in the bowels of this administration.

Is that all? Certainly not. Our fearless leader demonstrated just how dangerous appointing your friends to major positions can be in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. There's also the matter of the war in Iraq. We recently passed a grim milestone of 2,000 American deaths in addition to Iraqi civilian casualties that have been quoted anywhere from 27,000 to 30,000 deaths since March 2003. At least we're over there for a legitimate reason, right? At least the American public wasn't misled into supporting Operation: Iraqi Freedom, right? At least we went in with a legitimate exit strategy and haven't turned the entire country into a power vacuum . . . right?

What can Bush do to avoid becoming a lame duck and face a Democratic coup in the mid-term elections of 2006? The President needs to clean house as Reagan did in his second term when his approval ratings began to plummet. Bush needs to spend less time making speeches about the Bird Flu and focus on making good on his 2000 promise to be a "uniter, not a divider." With a massive cloud of suspicion surrounding those he is closest to, the President needs to fire Karl Rove and think about talking to Uncle Dick about stepping down.

Nowadays, the GOP spends more time strategizing new plans on how to make the Democrats look bad than they do holding themselves accountable and actually governing. Tom DeLay's defense on his alleged election finance violations consisted of attacking the character of Ronnie Earl, the prosecuting attorney. The DeLay camp claims that Earl is only after the former majority leader only because the attorney is a Democrat and his target is a high profile Republican. Of course, they fail to admit that Earl has prosecuted nearly twice as many Democrats (including Earl, himself) than Republicans in his three decades in office. After Scooter Libby was indicted under charges of perjury, right-wingers complained that lying was more of a "technicality" than a legitimate crime. Quick, 100 points to whoever can guess on what charge the GOP finally busted Bill Clinton.

It would be great if Harry Reid and Dick Durbin weren't reduced to calling closed Senate sessions to get some real answers behind the justification for the war in Iraq. It'd be a lot more productive if we all could spend less time pointing fingers (like I've done in the past 500 words or so) and more time shaking hands. One of the parties needs to make the first step, and since the GOP the party in power, they need to reach across the aisle first. They need to hold themselves accountable and quit shifting the responsibility to what they call partisan tactics by the left. It's do-or-die time for the Republicans. This is the only way the party has any hope in 2006 and 2008.