Former Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal reflects on how the Bush campaign overcame the surge in support for the Democrat party.
"This country is going so far to the right you are not even going to recognise it," remarked John Mitchell, Richard Nixon's attorney general, in 1970.
Mitchell's prophesy became the mission of Nixon's college Republican president, Karl Rove, who implemented the strategy of authoritarian populism behind George Bush's victory. In the aftermath, the Democrats will form their ritual circular firing squad of recriminations - but the loss was not due to the candidate's personality, the flaws of this or that adviser or the party's platform.
The Democrats surprised themselves at their ability to raise tens of millions, inspire hundreds of thousands of activists and present themselves as unified around a centrist position. Expectations were not dashed. Turnout was vastly increased among African-Americans and Hispanics. Those concerned about the economy voted overwhelmingly for him; so did those citing the war in Iraq as an issue. But the Democrats' surge was more than matched.
Using the White House as a machine of centripetal force, Rove spread fear and fused its elements. Fear of the besieging terrorist, appearing in Bush TV ads as the shifty eyes of a swarthy man or a pack of wolves, was joined with fear of the besieging queer. Bush's support for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage was underscored by referendums against it in 11 states - all of which won.
The evangelical churches became instruments of political organisation. Ideology was enforced as theology, turning non-conformity into sin and the faithful were shepherded to the polls as though to the rapture.
White Protestants, especially in the south, especially married men, gave their souls and votes for flag and cross. The campaign was one long revival. Abortion and stem-cell research became a lever for prying loose white Catholics. To help in Florida, a referendum was put on the ballot to deny young women the right to abortion without parental approval and it galvanised evangelicals and conservative Catholics alike.
While Kerry ran on mainstream traditions of international co-operation and domestic investments and transparency and rationality as essential to democratic government, Bush campaigned directly against these very ideas.
At his rallies, Bush was introduced as standing for "the right God". During the closing weeks, Bush and Cheney ridiculed internationalism, falsifying Kerry's statement about a "global test". They disdained Kerry's internationalism as effeminate, unpatriotic, a character flaw and elitist. "You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig," Cheney derided in every speech.
Brought along with Bush is a gallery of grotesques in the Senate: more than one new senator advocates capital punishment for abortion; another urges that all gay teachers be fired; yet another is suffering from obvious symptoms of Alzheimer's.
The defeat of the old moderate Republican party is far more decisive than the loss by the Democrats. There are no checks and balances. The terminal illness of Chief Justice William Rehnquist signals new appointments to the Supreme Court that will alter law for more than a generation. Conservative promises to dismantle constitutional law since the New Deal will be acted upon. Roe v Wade will be overturned and abortion outlawed.
Now without constraints, Bush can pursue the dreams he has campaigned for - the use of US military might to bring God's gift of freedom to the world with no more global tests and at home the enactment of the imperatives of "the right God".
The international system of collective security forged in the second World War and tempered in the Cold War is a thing of the past. The Democratic party, despite its best efforts, has failed to rein in the radicalism sweeping the country. The world is in an emergency, but also irrelevant. The New World, with all its power and might, stepping forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old? Goodbye to all that.
Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Clinton, is Washington bureau chief of salon.com