Josh Marshall has an interesting "Park Bench" discussion going over at TPM on the question, how did the Republicans allow two consequetive waves [2006, 2008] to swamp them?
I’m not so interested in Josh’s question, actually – but it’s interesting reading. My question remains, "how did America elect Bush in 2004, knowing what we already knew?" But back to Josh, one of his readers [DS] puts the August 29th, 2005 landing of Katrina on New Orleans at the center of the Bush [and the Republican] fall:
You missed one thing about the 2006 elections, something I think was more important than corruption (although not unconnected):Katrina.
Katrina confirmed everyone’s worst fears about the Bush administration and incompetence – many were worried already because the Iraq well wasn’t going so well, but they gave him the benefit of the doubt until Katrina. At that point everything people (even many who voted for Bush and GOP) suspected was not only true, but worse than imagined.
Suddenly the curtain fell away and everyone could see what a catastrophe we’d been led into and that the GOP cheerled these incompetents all along the way.
Katrina was the moment – look at the polls – the floor fell out from Bush and the GOP at that exact moment.
I’m looking at the polls, and I don’t think I would have said, "the floor fell out," but I take the point nonetheless. Throughout 2004 and much of 2005, Bush’s rating hovered around 50%. I recall wondering how he did that. And after Katrina, his approval rating headed downward and never turned back – in spite of "the Surge [January 2007]" or anything else he said or did. Since my own crisis of confidence occurred at the end of 2002/beginning of 2003, I had no intuition about the rest of the country. His bungling of Katrina was just one more in and endless series of bunglings to me.
Looking back, things did tumble after that for Bush. It was the straw that broke Bush’s back [as well as New Orleans’]…
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