Will Republicans Ultimately Derail Bush's Neocon Iraq Agenda? 
Recently in this column points of common interest were revealed concerning Richard Nixon in the seventies and George W. Bush currently. Nixon concluded a Vietnam peace with virtually the same terms Lyndon Johnson was offered during the 1968 election campaign. We now know from Anthony Summers and other sources that Nixon and foreign policy adviser sabotaged through dealing with the South Vietnamese government.
No sooner was the Vietnam albatross removed than the Watergate scandal occupied a vise-like grip from which Nixon could never extricate himself. The politician known as "Tricky Dick" had, in his anxiety to make his last election for the presidency in 1972 his biggest triumph, secured a landslide victory but became ultimately undone through his own excesses in seeking to secure that result.
It is notable that when Nixon resigned his popularity rating stood in the abysmally low 30's. George W. Bush is mired today at that same woeful figure. It is a critical point considering that, just as the hardcore right wing Republicans were the only supporters left in 1974 when Nixon resigned, the same holds true today for Bush.
Republican office holders, office seekers, and strategists for good reason are currently observing the Senate figures with trepidation. In 2008 no less than 21 Republican seats are up for grabs to 12 for the Democrats.
With that many Republican Senate seats being decided by voters an inauspicious climate can result in Democrats obtaining a strong enough majority to be able to move the levers of government in a significant new national direction.
Combine the aforementioned possibility with the fact that all Members of Congress will have their names go before the voters in what could be a political season of rocky waters for Republicans and the worst of all worlds could confront the GOP in January 2009 - a Democratic President with substantial working majorities in both the Senate and House.
Two Republican Senators from America's plains are reading the above potential message with acute concern. Chuck Hagel and Sam Brownback from the neighboring states of Nebraska and Kansas respectively loom as rivals for the Republican presidential nomination.
Hagel and Brownback envision George W. Bush and his Iraq War as double albatrosses to drown their chances as well as those of their party in the legislative arena as well.
Determined to get their prospective chances at bat, Hagel and Brownback do not wish to sink in the kind of quicksand they see looming through the intractability and accompanying national unpopularity of George W. Bush.
Hagel minced no words in calling Bush's request for 21,500 more troops for Iraq coupled with his existent policy as the "biggest blunder since the Vietnam War" in a colloquy with Condoleezza Rice. Brownback, despite notable conservative credentials, has also let it be known that Bush can no longer count on his support regarding his Iraq War policy.
Two Republican Senators who expressed their own concerns to Rice during the same tense session were George Voinovich or Ohio and Norm Coleman of Minnesota. Both Senators were, prior to serving in Washington, mayors of important midwestern cities. Voinovich was Cleveland's Mayor while Coleman served as Mayor of St. Paul.
Voinovich bluntly referred to Bush's Iraq War vision as a "dream" while Coleman expressed policy misgivings of his own. Voinovich is aware of a sea tide change in the recent election as the Republican candidates for Governor and Senator in Ohio met with landslide defeats
Coleman, elected in 2002 by a wafer-thin margin over former Vice President Walter Mondale, is a former Democrat well aware of the state's progressive tradition and identification with Democratic Party populism as evidenced by major political figures such as Orville Freeman, Hubert Humphrey, Paul Wellstone and Mondale.
As also noted in the recent article in this column, Republicans during the nervous summer of 1974 were apprehensive of facing the 1976 electorate with Richard Nixon remaining at the presidential helm.
Special congressional elections of that earlier period resulted in Republicans losing a seat in Cincinnati that had been in the party's hands since the Civil War. Republicans also lost the presumably safe seat formerly occupied by then Vice President Gerald Ford in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Better than three decades ago it was the Republican Party's elder statesman, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, who read the tea leaves and decided that immediate action was needed. Goldwater summoned Senator Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania and Congressman John Rhodes of Goldwater's home state of Arizona, the party's current leaders of those bodies, to accompany him to the White House.
The message delivered to Nixon was blunt and to the point. He could not survive an impeachment trial. In compelling that action he would be doing no more than extending the agony for himself and the country, as well as the Republican Party.
In the current political climate Republicans hoping to prevent evisceration from voters in 2008 might just privately relish the Democratic Party investigating past Bush Administration corruption.
Should this happen and the public begins clamoring for the removal of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, will a Republican contingent then proceed to the White House to speak with Bush and Cheney in the manner of the visit to Nixon from the triumvirate of Goldwater, Scott and Rhodes during that historic summer of 1974?
KEYWORDS: George W. Bush, Iraq War, Richard Nixon, Vietnam War, Watergate Scandal, Barry Goldwater, Chuck Hagel, Sam Brownback, Norm Coleman, George Voinovich
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