Bush Gets Little Love at GOP Forum
MANCHESTER, N.H.—Few of the once ubiquitous "W" bumper stickers could be spotted in the parking lots at St. Anselm College, even though it was a partisan crowd that had gathered here for last night's Republican debate.
And inside, President Bush was also getting precious little love. Though he was rarely mentioned by name, his fellow party members trashed his prosecution of the Iraq war. They criticized his immigration bill. And they fulminated about out-of-control spending.
But it was their answers to CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer's loaded question of how the candidates, if elected president, would use George W. Bush once he's out of office that very likely stung the most.
"I certainly would not send him to the United Nations," former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson said, eliciting laughter, before suggesting that as ex-president, Bush could be effective on the youth lecture circuit.
Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback said he'd make Bush a sort of disaster ambassador, sending him abroad when hurricanes and the like strike. And the incendiary Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo, a harsh Bush critic, recalled being taken to the woodshed by presidential adviser Karl Rove, who told him to never again darken the doorstep of the White House. If elected, Tancredo said, he'd give the former president the same directive.
It was a stunning display—a sitting president being mocked and insulted during a live debate by members of his own party who want to take his place. It was the second-tier candidates who suggested some post-White House roles for the president, but the theme of the current administration's failures ran through the two-hour debate.
Though most closely aligned with Bush on both the war and immigration, Arizona Sen. John McCain managed to have a strong night, rising from his chair at one point to speak directly and emotionally to Erin Flanagan, whose brother was killed in Iraq. Flanagan had asked how candidates, as president, would bring parties together, in Washington and in the Middle East, and the troops safely home.
McCain urged her to have faith in the new war plan, warning that "if we fail, [Iraq] will become a center of terrorism, and we will ask more young Americans to sacrifice, as your brother did."
He and Giuliani sparred over the immigration bill cosponsored by McCain.
"A typical Washington mess," the former New York mayor said, a refrain repeated by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. But a dust-up between McCain and Romney, who have been jabbing each other all week over immigration, failed to materialize. Romney defused it early when he declined to take the bait after Blitzer asked about McCain's charge that he's a panderer: "He's my friend," the former governor said. "He's campaigned for me two times."
Blitzer had a struggle controlling the speechifying, with the top-tier candidates—Romney, Giuliani, and McCain—proving most difficult to rein in. And when it was over, debate watchers had learned that neither McCain or Brownback had read the National Intelligence Estimate before voting to invade Iraq, that God is very important to the candidates, and that, when all else fails, invoke Reagan. Or Lincoln. But, Lord knows, not "W."