[quote name='trq']I've been wrestling with this myself lately. I don't think shooting for the political fringes is a good idea, but if this is supposed to appeal to moderates, they're doing a real shit job of it.
I also wonder about Bush's approval ratings: who watches the news today and decides he's kind of a crap president? If you're a liberal, you didn't like him to begin with, and there are still enough conservatives who support him, and who've supported him from day one. So who the hell is that swing percentage in the middle, who's surprised this far in that he's pretty much the exact same guy he was seven years ago? "I was really behind this war up to year three. But year four? Too much."[/quote]
Bush PUSHED for the immigration reform/amnesty bill. It was his baby. National defense cons will hate him and the party for that for as long as their attention spans or pragmatism (Depends on whether they hate the GOP or detest what a Democrat administration led by Hillary or Obama will bring to the table more.) will allow. Hell, many conservatives feel he fought the conservative base for that bill harder than he has fought against the "Culture of Corruption" narrative, the Plame affair, the district attorneys affair... you name it.
EDIT: Furthermore, I don't see anything wrong with playing to the fringes merely on principle. Just because there are two ends of a spectrum doesn't mean that the correct answer is right between the two. While Olbermann likes to pretend that the Dems took Congress on a wave of anti-Iraq sentiment (Which may be partly true, all things considered...) and proceed in maximum dudgeon from there, he does nail something in his typically spittle-soaked, O'Reilly-ish ramblings: The Democratic Congressmen cannot possibly hope to reconicile their anti-war positions without actually defunding the war. In so doing, they are committing themselves to being ideologically opposed to the war in Iraq without actually stopping it, proving that "We support the troops by bringing them out of harm's way" is nothing more than bumper sticker fodder.
Now, what they're actually doing is avoiding taking the flak for decisively ending the war, and it would be enough flak to make the entire next election cycle even more of a nailbiter than most of the recent ones. They can have their cake and eat it too, in this case, so long as the war effort can continue to be painted as a failure. Risible, yes, but the correct move for those more interested in power than ideology, and what Congresscritter isn't?