Guest Editorial
It's Inevitable!
by Chris Andersen

Thursday, Jan. 25, 2001 (APJP) -- If there is one word that best describes the current political strategy of the Republicans, from George W. Bush on down, it is "inevitability". 

Since well before the election, continuing on in the period after the election and before the selection (when Scalia's Felonious Five raped the Constitution), and finally into the transition/inaugural period, the GOP has consistently adopted an attitude that says, "What we want has already happened. The rest of you just haven't caught up to reality yet."

In the closing weeks of the campaign many people were surprised that Bush paid visits to such hopeless electoral battlegrounds as California and talked about them as if he would win them. This was apparently a strategy devised by Karl Rove to manipulate press coverage in the closing weeks in order to fool the undecided voters that President Bush was already a done deal, so they might as well join the party. Some criticized this strategy, saying it left Bush vulnerable in Florida and other battleground states, but it is always hard to say what would have happened if they had not adopted this strategy. After all, if the Bush campaign had acted like Gore had any chance of winning maybe that might have persuaded enough people to vote for him and thus move Florida out of the tossup category.

This strategy, which only partially worked before the election, was adopted wholesale after Nov. 7th. For those 30+ days of uncertainty, the consistent message from the GOP was that Bush had already won and any attempt to say otherwise was just whining or, even worse, an attempt to "steal" the election from the "rightful" winner.

Again, the idea was to convince the casual viewer that there was no reason to continue this whole recount nonsense since the winner was already decided. It worked.

Popular opinion polls showed people adopting the soothing message of Jim Baker and others that Bush was already the President-elect and that Gore should just fold up his tent and go home (and just forget that Gore got more than 500,000 more votes then Bush). The political media never called them on this propaganda campaign and essentially adopted the same attitude. "Why won't Gore just give it up?" They would say. "This story is getting boring."

But, even after the selection, the GOP did not tone down this campaign. If anything, they ratcheted it up another step. They understood that Bush was in a fundamentally weak position. The conventional wisdom from the pundit class was that the close race would FORCE Dubya to be bipartisan. Bush even played into this theme by talking about working with Democrats. It was all a sham.

For, rather then playing it careful, the Republicans redoubled, once again, the "inevitability" strategy. They deliberately ran the transition AS IF Bush had won by a landslide. The political thinking here was shrewd. You have to give them credit for that. They knew that the first few weeks after the selection would be decisive in how Bush would lead for the next four years. If he bought into the bipartisan hoo-haw then he would remain a fundamentally weak President with no authority to lead. However, if he acted like he had all the political chips in his corner, then there was a good chance he might seize the authority that was never granted him by a legitimate election.

So Bush nominated Ashcroft, easily one of the most right-wing cabinet designates in U.S. history. He adopted a take-no-prisoners strategy on his proposed tax cut ("why should I tone it down? I'm the President aren't I?"). He has dictated what he is going to do rather then engage in negotiations with his opponents to see what he could get away with.

"I'm the President and if you don't like that you can stuff it" is the essence of Bush's message.

Once again the prognosticators have underestimated Dubya and the people behind him. They assumed that he would be weak because of the election controversy. But Dubya would have none of that. He would be in the face of the Democrats from day one and DARE them to put him back in his place.

So far, the Democratic response has been to roll over and pee on themselves.

Except for a few small voices, mostly coming from the Congressional Black Caucus, the Democrats have been more than willing to confer a mandate on Dubya that he never had any right to in the first place.

They may think they are playing a clever long term game with the Republicans ("We haven't conceded anything! We got equal power with the Republicans in the Senate -- didn't we?") But the Republicans are not interested in letting things work out to the Democrats advantage. They know they are in a fundamentally weak position, so they have to get what they can get NOW.

What the Democrats don't understand is that power means nothing if you don't exercise it. Bush, for all the jokes about his lack of brainpower, understands this fundamental principle and he is going to milk it for all its worth.

This is an old pattern with Dubya, even though his political career has been short. He hits the ground running, gets as much as he can get for as long as he can get it, and then spends the remaining years of a term in office glossing over his early extremism. By the time the election roles around again, many people, including the press, have simply forgotten about the early extremism and see instead the affable good-ole boy who wouldn't harm a flea on a dog.

His opponents keep underestimating the dude. Ann Richards bought it. Al Gore bought it.

Hell, even I bought it.

I never fully understood until the last few weeks that Bush may very well be the most right-wing President we have ever had. The conventional wisdom is that Ashcroft was nominated as a sop to the religious right who helped Bush "win" the White House. But I believe that Ashcroft was nominated because he is a kindred spirit to Dubya. Remember that Bush said that Scalia and Thomas were his models for what judges should be like. That, combined with the Ashcroft nomination, should tell you what is really in Bush's heart.

And how did Bush get into this position? By acting like his "election", his "selection", his "mandate" was inevitable. By letting his critics think he is a lightweight who doesn't understand anything and has only succeeded because his daddy's friends bailed him out.

Until his opponents wake up and realize that this guy is NOT a joke he will continue to get pretty much everything he wants.

It's inevitable.