base to Bush: it’s over
[Byron York is Washington editor of National Review.]
Washington Post - July 8, 2007 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/06/AR2007070602003.html
DEPT. OF LAME DUCKS Base to Bush: It’s Over By Byron York
Let’s say you’re a Republican president, a bit more than midway
through your second term. You’re scrambling to salvage what you can
of a deeply unpopular war, you’re facing a line of subpoenas from
Democrats in Congress and your poll ratings are in the basement. What
do you do?
You estrange the very Republicans whose backing you need the most.
That’s precisely what President Bush has managed to accomplish during
the two big political developments of recent weeks: the commutation
of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s prison sentence and the defeat of
comprehensive immigration reform. But the president’s problems with
the GOP base go beyond those awkward headlines. Republicans aren’t
mad at Bush for the same reasons that Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-
N.Y.) and the devotees of MoveOn.org are; there’s no new anti-Bush
consensus among left and right. No, conservatives are unhappy because
the president allied himself with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.)
over an immigration deal that leaned too far toward amnesty for
illegal immigrants. They’re unhappy because Bush has shown little
interest in fiscal responsibility and limited government. And they’re
unhappy, above all, because he hasn’t won the war in Iraq.
All of this has left Republicans saying, at least among themselves,
something blunt and devastating: It’s over.
[…]