In the On Politics newsletter, how Mr. Bush spent his political career chasing his party, and why Republicans are glad to delay the shutdown fight.<\/b>
\nHi. Welcome to On Politics, your guide to the day in national politics. I\u2019m Lisa Lerer, your host.
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At lunch last week, a political strategist told me that she believes politicians spend their careers rerunning their first campaigns. No matter the issues, no matter the opponent, they can never quite shake that first playbook.
Her theory popped into my head this weekend when I heard the news of George Bush\u2019s death. The former president launched his career in elected office with a 1964 bid for Senate in his adopted home state of Texas.
During that race, Mr. Bush, a patrician New Englander nicknamed \u201cPoppy,\u201d refashioned himself into a kind of Barry Goldwater-lite, coming out against the Civil Rights Act, opposing the Nuclear Test Ban treaty and denouncing the United Nations, where he\u2019d serve as ambassador seven years later.
Mr. Bush came to regret that pivot. After he lost the race, he told his minister: \u201cI took some of the far-right positions to get elected. I hope I never do it again.\u201d
Two years later, Mr. Bush ran for Congress as more of a centrist Republican. He won, flipping a Houston-area congressional seat that had been held by Democrats for more than 80 years.
But he would never outrun the tensions of that first Senate race. That struggle \u2014 between his moderate, country club roots and a Republican Party shifting right \u2014 would come to define Mr. Bush\u2019s political life.
In the broadest terms, Mr. Bush\u2019s political story mirrors that of the G. O. P. over his lifetime: a long-running civil war between moderates and conservatives that resulted in the all-but-extinction of the Rockefeller Republican and the rise of Donald J. Trump.
Again and again, throughout his political career, Mr. Bush would cut right to stay on track with his party.
He recanted his abortion-rights politics and opinion of supply-side economics as \u201dvoodoo\u201d to be picked as Ronald Reagan\u2019s running mate in 1980. Eight years later, he painted his Democratic opponent, Michael Dukakis, as a mentally unstable, unpatriotic left-wing radical, an attack that culminated in the Willie Horton ad, an infamous spot even Mr. Trump\u2019s dirty trickster Roger Stone called \u201cracist.\u201d
Even his famous 1988 convention speech pledge \u2014 \u201cread my lips: no new taxes\u201d \u2014 was designed to boost enthusiasm for his presidential candidacy among the party\u2019s conservative wing.
But when Mr. Bush broke that promise two years later, conservatives never forgave him. The fallout contributed to his re-election loss in 1992. And now, more than a quarter century later, there\u2019s little question that the forces that once pulled Mr. Bush to the right have won the battle for the Republican Party.
A number of political scientists have dug deep into years of roll call votes and concluded that Republicans are far more conservative than even a decade ago. Many moderate congressional Republicans, particularly those who opposed Mr. Trump, either lost their re-election bids or retired to avoid rough primary battles.
That\u2019s a shift Mr. Bush felt personally. After his son Jeb Bush lost the Republican nomination in 2015, the former president did not attend the national party convention.
He told the author Mark K. Updegrove that he voted for Hillary Clinton.
\u201cI don\u2019t know much about him, but I know he\u2019s a blowhard. And I\u2019m not too excited about him being a leader,\u201d Mr. Bush said of Mr. Trump in May 2016, according to Mr. Updegrove.
Mr. Trump will attend Mr. Bush\u2019s funeral in Washington this week, but will not give a eulogy.
If Mr. Trump\u2019s victory in 2016 was when moderate Republicans lost their final battle, then the midterms may be remembered as their apocalyptic era, leaving them cowering in a bunker as once-loyal suburban voters cast ballots for Democrats.
That Texas district Mr. Bush turned red all those decades ago? It elected Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, a 43-year-old lawyer \u2014 and its first Democrat in over 50 years.
Want more about the former president? Here\u2019s our epic obit of Mr. Bush, years in the making, and details on his funeral plans. Read more about the letter he left to successor, President Bill Clinton, which created a new presidential tradition. Peter Baker movingly recounts Mr. Bush\u2019s final moments. And Maureen Dowd describes her long relationship with the former president as a \u201cscrewball story.\u201d
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A fight over the southern border could soon shut down parts of the federal government. Julie Hirschfeld Davis, who covers Congress for The Times, sent us this note from Washington today:
We can all reset our doomsday clocks for the Friday before Christmas.
Staring down the threat of a partial government shutdown on Friday if they couldn\u2019t strike an elusive deal to pass a year-end spending bill, congressional leaders were nearing agreement on Monday to give themselves a two-week extension.
The new drop-dead? Dec. 21.
The official reason for the delay is so lawmakers may pause to pay respects to George Bush, the 41st president, who died on Friday, and whose coffin was to arrive at the Capitol Monday afternoon to lie in state in the Rotunda. Mr. Bush\u2019s funeral at the National Cathedral on Wednesday is expected to draw congressional leaders and rank-and-file members.
But the truth is that Republican congressional leaders, facing a dilemma over the year-end package and without a clear plan to avert a shutdown, were grateful for an excuse to punt the question to another day.
President Trump has demanded $5 billion for his border wall, an ask that Democrats have refused to entertain, saying they will agree to no more than $1.6 billion for border security funding \u2014 and no money for the concrete wall that Mr. Trump has long championed. A meeting he had been scheduled to host on Tuesday to kick off negotiations with Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leaders, was postponed in light of the events honoring Mr. Bush.
The reprieve could end up being a setback for the president, whose leverage is likely to wane with the approach of Christmas Day. Demoralized and defeated Republican incumbents are not exactly champing at the bit to cast controversial votes on Mr. Trump\u2019s border wall \u2014 or anything else, for that matter \u2014 as their last official acts. (House leaders had to abruptly cancel votes Friday on a bill to extend tax cuts \u2014 tax cuts! \u2014 when they realized they would be short of the support they needed.)
So spike your eggnog a little stronger for a shutdown endgame that could stretch almost all the way to Christmas.
Read our latest: Shutdown Fight Over Wall Is Likely to Be Delayed Until Just Before Christmas
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We can\u2019t forget one last piece of George Bush\u2019s legacy: Dana Carvey\u2019s impersonation of him on \u201cSNL.\u201d Here\u2019s a classic clip where the president himself joined in on the fun. \u201cNah gah dah.\u201d
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