Perhaps. It wasn't the best analogy, maybe. What I mean is that Bush's strategy is based on a zero-sum analysis of the  American body politic. Divide the electorate to your advantage by stigmatizing and marginalizing large segments when it suits you. Do whatever you have to do to get just enough votes, then govern in such a way that completely ignores the constituencies who didn't vote for you and even many those who did vote in fact vote for you insofar as you can get away with it.
Then pursue a rigidly ideological agenda. When the next election comes around, don't talk about what you have done or what you are going to do but just use attack and polarization to force just enough voters to your side.

In this sense, I see the New Right version of the Republican Party as kind of like a Communist or Fascist Party - hence my Italian analogy, because both groups have been very strong and have essentially fought a kind of "cold civil war" since at least WWII - not ideologically, but in that it thinks its agenda is more important than governing the country in an effective way. Its premised on a vision of the country that excludes many if not a majority of its inhabitants.

Or not. Polls in Britain I saw showed most of the population way to the left of New Labour on issues involving public services and taxation.

Yes, and this was true when Thatcher was in power too. But these polls don't vote. People do. And the voter on election day tends to take a much more cynical view of affairs. Again, this is perhaps not true in Germany. But I do see some analogies.

The problems with your British-German comparison are several; a central one is that Britain has a first-past-the-post system like you in the USA (and most of Canada) - and the left vote was split for most of the time Thatcher was in. If the election system had been like in Germany, she wouldn't have been PM: a Labour/Liberal coalition in 1979 and a Labour/Alliance one in the eighties would have had majority.

Good points. I would add that the splits between Labour and the Liberals was/is more significant than it may seem on the surface. A coalition was never on the cards. Even more so with the Alliance in the context of 1983.

In France, what I see is a shift to the left, not right - unless the left undercuts itself

Yes, and this is a prospect I see a very likely. What with the aftermath of the Euro referendum and the splits within the Socialist Party. I see a good chunk of the Socialist Party lining up behind some "popular front" anti-liberal left with the various Communist and Trotskyite groups. I don't know if the social liberals (PS tendance droite) have large enough numbers to get into a second round under such circumstances. It could well be Le Pen and Sarkozy in the run off.

What I mean is that the modern Republican Party (essentially what used to be known as the "New Right" or sometimes now called "movement conservatism," in institutional form), particularly the Republican Party run by Karl Rove, defines dissent or disagreement from its policy choices as "un-American." Sometimes this claim is subtle, sometimes it is explicit. But nevertheless, today's Republican Party in many cases defines views disagreeing within its agenda as being outside an acceptable definition of the American nation.

This, IMO, is a sinister development and reminds me of the kind of thinking of Communist Parties around the world, democratic and not - ie if you aren't a friend of the revolution, you are its enemy. Accordingly, you will play no role in a country governed by a Communist government, and in a non-democratic Communist take over, you either "get with the program," or go to jail. The same is true of many far right parties as well. And because Italy has a strong Fascist and Communist traditions which have effectively played out a kind of "cold civil war" even when the Christian Democratic Party was dominant, I make the analogy.

Ben P