Thoughts On Rumsfeld And The President’s Press Conference

As you know by now, Rumsfeld is out.
I listened to the President’s press conference where he made the announcement, and I’m convinced that it was the right move. And not necessarily from a strictly political standpoint, either. While it may help the President politically, from a policy standpoint I do think it was about time to get some “new eyes” (as the President put it) on the mission in Iraq.
But aside from the Rumsfeld announcement, which I was glad to hear, I didn’t much like anything else I heard out of the President’s mouth. He sounded entirely too…conciliatory for my taste. Now don’t get me wrong, I understand that our leaders in Washington do have to put partisanship aside and work together, but I get the feeling that the President’s last two years in office are going to be “go along to get along” time for him.
I don’t think the President wants to leave office with an approval rating in the 30′s. I also think he wants to gain back some political capital for the war on terror, so based on his comments today (which you can read here) it seems to me that he’s willing to just about let the Democrats have their way on domestic policy. In exchange for that, I think he’s hoping to get both the Democrats and the media off his back when it comes to the war.
Will it work? I don’t think it will. As a conservative, I’m certainly not willing to exchange two years of minimum wage hikes and increased entitlement spending for some good will from the press on the war in Iraq. And I’m not sure that the Democrats or the media would give the President any good will on the war even if he does let them have their way on some domestic issues.
Basically, I think the President is moving in the wrong direction. I think Rep. Pence hit the nail on the head when he said that Republicans have “lost their way.” Democrats may have won this election, but they won it by default when the Republicans reneged on the core conservative values that got them elected in the first place.
Now is the time for Republicans to return to their conservative roots. They’re going to have to work with the Democrats for at least the next two years, but that doesn’t mean they have to give the Dems a blank check either.
Update: Some are saying that the President should have announced Rumsfeld’s step-down before the elections, like maybe a couple of months go, in order to give the Democrats one less thing to harp on and thus help Congressional Republicans in their races. That makes sense, and it might have helped to some extent politically, but I just don’t think it would have been enough.
I think the Republicans did themselves in over the last couple of years by being arrogant, corrupt, and totally divergent on many issues from the conservative values that got them elected. Firing Rummy a few months earlier just wouldn’t have changed much, I don’t think.