Dear George W. Bush,
You make a good point about what Mr. Bush did previous to the 2000 nominating season.
Mr. Giuliani is trying to do some of that stuff, from what I can see. Someone here said he's doing well in the polls while not even running, but that's not really true. Every time I look, I see Mr. Giuliani campaigning for this or that Republican, which is, in effect, the act of running for president. He's trying to accumulate those political chits. I just don't see that he'll be as successful as Mr. Bush was in the run-up to the 2000 election season.
"The GOP will try its best to pre-select the nominee that their downstream candidates will have to run with, just as they did in 2000. I don't think they're going to pick Guiliani."
That, I'm not too sure about. I think that a large part of the party elite would be pretty happy with Mr. Giuliani. I think that a large part of the party elite is also okay with our borders being overrun by illegal immigrants. I think that a lot of these folks are a little out of touch with the grassroots. If they succeed in ramming Mr. Giuliani down the party's collective throat, I think that it will go poorly in 2008.
I think, though, that you really hit the nail on the head when you say that September 11 and the war on terror have receded as issues. This is largely due to Mr. Bush's success in defending the United States against new attacks by taking the battleground of the war from the territory of the United States to the territories of Afghanistan, Iraq, the Phillipines, and a host of other places all over the world. Ironically, the Republicans' best issue is muted by the Republican president's greatest success.
To make matters worse, Mr. Bush shot himself in the foot with the whole DPW / ports deal, giving the Democrats the opportunity to unjustly paint Mr. Bush as not as good on security and the war on terror as people previously perceived him. As well, his handling of the illegal immigration issue, before the speech last week, wasn't especially adept, either. This, too, added to doubts about the Republicans on matters related to national security and the war on terror. I think that Mr. Bush and the Republicans can, and probably will, turn a lot of that around, and before this November, at that.
But it's clear that the war on terror is currently waning as an issue, and may continue to do so right into the 2008 election.
sitetest