Conservatives - George F. Will, Robert Novak coming out AGAINST the war president who refuses to change:
WASHINGTON For most of his presidency, George W. Bush has counted on a chorus of conservative newspaper columnists, radio hosts and television commentators to give powerful punctuation to his initiatives, proposals and defenses.
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But in recent days, there has been an uptick in criticism of Bush from those quarters, underscoring strains between him and the Republican base that has so faithfully defended him in the past.
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As an example, Peggy Noonan, the former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, had this to say on Sunday in OpinionJournal.com, the Wall Street Journal's online editorial pages, about Bush's "Meet the Press" interview on NBC Sunday: "The president seemed tired, unsure and often bumbling. His answers were repetitive, and when he tried to clarify them he tended to make them worse."
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George Will, the conservative columnist, wrote in his syndicated column on Sunday, "It is surreal for a Republican president to submit a budget to a Republican-controlled Congress and have Republican legislators vow to remove the 'waste' that he has included and that they have hitherto funded."
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While most conservatives remain squarely behind Bush, the united front has not been quite as united.
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Columnists like Robert Novak, conservative television hosts like Joe Scarborough of MSNBC and others on local radio and the Internet have raised questions about Bush.
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"It's a critical departure," said J. David Hoeveler, a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, who said last week that he believed that his local conservative radio host, Charlie Sykes, had begun sounding less exuberant about Bush. "Generally it's been wholeheartedly Republican," Hoeveler said of the tenor of the conservative media. "It would suggest that those who would call themselves Republicans are quite possibly breaking ranks."
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Bush campaign officials say the frustration stems from an eagerness among his supporters to aggressively take on the Democrats, which they say he will begin to do relatively soon. And some of the columnists and commentators who have voiced criticism of the president insisted on Monday that they were not breaking ranks - and that the president remained their standard-bearer.
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Still, several conservative columnists and commentators said their pronouncements of disappointment resulted from growing frustration with what they saw as unbridled federal spending, Bush's mixed signals on gay marriage and his caution in meeting the fierce critiques from the newly emboldened opposition.
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Those from his party who gave him poor grades for his performance on "Meet the Press," for instance, said they were concerned that he was not in fighting form at a time when the man who many say will be his Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, was.
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Many of the critiques go far beyond politics.
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For instance, Scarborough, a former Republican congressman from Florida, was as energetic a booster of Bush as anyone until recently. He said he had begun speaking out against Bush's fiscal policy about two months ago, as he grew alarmed by the growing deficit and what he said were needlessly expensive proposals, like a manned expedition to Mars and an increase in financing for the National Endowment of the Arts.
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"When I first started doing it, I had Republicans calling me up and saying 'Hey, why are you knocking a guy who's from your party?'" he said. "Two months later, everybody seems to be saying it: There's been no fiscal restraint and that's hurting the party and it's hurting the conservative cause."
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In one column last week, Novak criticized Bush for giving "the most ineffective State of the Union address in recent years." And, he wrote, the failure to find unconventional weapons in Iraq and the admission that the president's plan to expand Medicare would cost more than initially estimated were "a double blow to his credibility."
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Novak pointed out in an interview that despite the criticism, most Republicans are not likely to vote for the Democratic nominee. But, he said: "The problem is not whether they vote for Kerry. The problem is whether they stay at home."
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Terry Holt, the president's campaign spokesman, said he expected it all to quiet down as soon as Bush went up directly against Kerry, should the senator capture the nomination.
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"When the campaign enters a new period where Kerry will stand in direct comparison to the president, there will be a more intense focus on Kerry's record," he said, "And I think what we're seeing from these folks is a sense that they are ready for that period to begin."
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