President Bush's effectiveness as a domestic president is ending not with a bang but a whimper. Five months before the midterm elections, congressional Republicans fear that association with him may alienate their constituencies and result in loss of the House of Representatives. They hold the House by only 15 seats, and suddenly even previously safe districts are at risk. Just a month ago Bush delivered a televised address on immigration, urging Congress to provide for eventual citizenship for the more than 12 million illegal immigrants in the country (the pro-business position). He convinced the Senate, but the House refused to budge from its punitive position to criminalise any assistance to them.

The White House had hoped that the killing of the terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi would reverse Bush's slide in popularity. Indeed there was a slight bump upward of several points. But this is a classic epiphenomenon that has already started to wither. From the vantage point of Capitol Hill, Bush's evanescent Zarqawi "recovery" has failed to cast any glow on to Republican prospects. Enforcing party discipline for a purely political Congressional vote last week endorsing Bush's policy, such as it is, in Iraq has barely quelled panic. As Bush briefly nudged up from the low to mid-30s, Republican candidates fell further behind. For Republicans, Bush has become cement shoes.

Two recent near-death experiences have desperately frightened Republicans. In a June 6 byelection to fill the seat of the corrupt and imprisoned congressman Randy Cunningham in suburban San Diego, one of the safest Republican districts in the country, the Republican narrowly held on only through demagogic appeals against immigrants. In Utah, in an even safer Republican district, the state party denied endorsement to Chris Cannon because he had made the mistake of supporting Bush's plan. On Tuesday Cannon edged out a primary challenge from an anti-immigrant activist who insisted he was battling "Satan".

Southern Republicans picked this moment to stall the extension of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, enacted after a century of African-American disfranchisement in the south. Their ringleader, Congressman Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia, is also the sponsor of bills that would require the display of the Ten Commandments in the House and Senate as well an amendment to the constitution to justify these sort of displays.

In the Senate, on Tuesday, Republicans staged a day-long debate on a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning. The Republican Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, proclaimed nothing less than a "crisis": "Enemies of American freedom abroad are well aware of the ideals emblemised by the American flag." The measure failed by one vote to attain the necessary two-thirds majority.

So far this year there have been four incidents of flag burning - the evildoers have not been al-Qaida suspects but the usual rowdy smalltown teenagers.

While the Senate was consumed debating the flag-burning amendment, the Republican Senate candidate in Minnesota was removing every mention and likeness of Bush from his campaign literature and advertising. As the Republican cultural warriors march into the midterm elections, they are unfurling nativism and jingoism as their banners, and some are even raising the shadow of Jim Crow. The unpopular conservative president is the emblem they seek to hide. But only by suffering slights from Republicans can Bush hope to escape a Congress led by Democrats that would cast sunlight on his remarkably secretive and unaccountable administration.

Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Clinton, is the author of "The Clinton Wars." Email to: sidney_blumenthal@yahoo.com

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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