Prometheus 6

Over time, as more and more Americans have become convinced that going to war in Iraq was the wrong decision, President Bush's approval ratings have plummeted -- and Bush appears to be taking the Republican Party down with him.

According to a March 20 Pew Research Center study, Republican Party identification is at its lowest point in the center's 16 years of polling: Only 27% of registered voters will now fess up to being Republicans, a 6-percentage-point drop since 2004. And the decline is particularly notable in key swing states....

The same trend has been true among military personnel, for decades a solidly Republican constituency. In 2004, 60% of active-duty military personnel who responded to a survey sent to Military Times subscribers identified themselves as Republicans. By 2007, that had dropped below 50%. (Military personnel tend to take screw-ups in Iraq pretty personally.)

The GOP, a casualty of war
Don't let the Obama-Clinton battle fool you: It's the Republicans who are hurting the most this election year.
Rosa Brooks
April 10, 2008

Haven't been paying close attention lately? Then you might be forgiven for assuming that the phrase "the war" refers to the battle being waged between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, rather than the events taking place in Iraq. Even with Gen. David Petraeus testifying on Iraq before Congress this week, most media commentary focused less on analyzing what's happening in Iraq and more on how Obama and Clinton used the hearings to jockey for preeminence.

During the first three months of 2008, the Pew Research Center found that "coverage of the campaign outstripped coverage of the war by a margin of more than 10 to 1," and that most of that coverage focused on the Obama-Clinton battle. That's because the war -- the real one in Iraq -- is kind of a downer, whereas the purported civil war within the Democratic Party is fun and exciting.

Much like the Iraq war, the Democratic primary race has involved the levying and spending of unprecedented amounts of money, as well as huge strategic blunders by a leadership team that boasted years of experience. At the same time, the Democratic race is unlike the Iraq war in ways that make it far more enjoyable to cover: The blood is only metaphorical, and there's plenty of juicy insider gossip (Mark Penn, anyone?).

Finally, much as the Democratic presidential nomination process sometimes feels like a quagmire, there is a withdrawal timetable. By the end of August, someone's forces will have abandoned the field entirely, and we'll have a clear winner.

Would that Iraq were so simple!