US president Donald Trump's former chief strategist Steve Bannon has depicted ex-president George W Bush as bumbling and inept, faulting him for presiding over a "destructive" presidency during his time in the White House.
The former White House adviser delivered a retort to a speech Bush gave in New York during the week in which the 43rd president denounced bigotry in Trump-era American politics and warned that the rise of “nativism”, isolationism and conspiracy theories have clouded the nation’s true identity.
Mr Bannon, speaking to a capacity crowd at a California Republican party convention on Friday night, said Mr Bush had embarrassed himself, didn't know what he was talking about, and had no idea whether "he is coming or going, just like it was when he was president".
“There has not been a more destructive presidency than George Bush’s,” Mr Bannon added, as boos could be heard in the crowd at the mention of Bush’s name.
The remarks came during a speech thick with attacks on the Washington status quo, echoing his call for an “open revolt” against establishment Republicans. He called the “permanent political class” one of the great dangers faced by the country.
A small group of protesters gathered outside the hotel where Mr Bannon spoke, chanting and waving signs - one displaying a Nazi swastika.
The protesters were kept behind steel barricades on a plaza across an entrance road at the hotel, largely out of view of people entering for the event. No arrests were reported.
Lords of technology
Mr Bannon also took aim at the Silicon Valley and its “lords of technology”, predicting that tech leaders and progressives in the state would try to secede from the union in 10 to 15 years. He called the threat to break up the nation a “living problem”.
He also tried to cheer long-suffering California Republicans, in a state that Mr Trump lost by over four million votes and where Republicans have become largely irrelevant in state politics. In Orange county, where the convention was held, several Republican House members are trying to hold on to their seats in districts carried by Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential contest.
If you have the wisdom, the strength, the tenacity, to hold that coalition together, we will govern for 50 to 75 years
“You’ve got everything you need to win,” he told them. The speech ended to a standing ovation.
Mr Bannon is promoting a field of primary challengers to take on incumbent Republicans in Congress. But in California the GOP has been fading for years.
The state has become a kind of Republican mausoleum: GOP supporters can relive the glory days by visiting the stately presidential libraries of Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, but today Democrats control every state-wide office and rule both chambers of the Legislature by commanding margins.
Not all Republicans were glad to see Mr Bannon. In a series of tweets last week the former state assembly Republican leader Chad Mayes said he was shocked by the decision to have the conservative firebrand headline the event.
“It’s a huge step backward and demonstrates that the party remains tone deaf,” Mr Mayes tweeted.
California Republicans have bickered for years over what direction to turn – towards the political centre or to the right.
‘Govern for 50 years’
Mr Bannon also argued that the coalition that sent Mr Trump to the White House, including conservatives, libertarians, populists, economic nationalists, evangelicals, could hold power for decades if they stay unified.
“If you have the wisdom, the strength, the tenacity, to hold that coalition together, we will govern for 50 to 75 years,” he said.
Most of the state’s governors in the 20th century were Republicans and state voters helped elevate a string of GOP presidential candidates to the White House. But the party’s fortunes started to erode in the late 1990s after a series of measures targeting immigrants, which alienated growing segments of the state’s population.
In 2007, then-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger warned party members that the GOP was "dying at the box office" and needed to move to the political centre and embrace issues like climate change to appeal to a broader range of voters. In 2011 a state Republican party committee blocked an attempt by moderates to push the state GOP platform toward the centre on immigration, abortion, guns and gay rights.
The decline continued. Republicans are now a minor party in many California congressional districts, outnumbered by Democrats and independents. Statewide, Democrats count 3.7 million more voters than the GOP.
Political scientist Jack Pitney, who teaches at Claremont McKenna College, said he doubted the speech would colour the 2018 congressional contests, which remain far off for most voters.
More broadly, he said Mr Bannon’s politics would hurt the GOP, including among affluent, well-educated voters who play an important part in county elections.
“Inviting him was a moral and political blunder,” Mr Pitney said.
Agencies/ Guardian