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Politics : Moderate Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tsigprofit who wrote (16707)	5/6/2005 2:41:13 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20773

Back at the ranch......... "...Going backwards? The evidence of Mr Bush's stalled agenda is everywhere. On Social Security, the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll shows support for his handling of reform at just 31%—lower than support for Mr Clinton's health-care reforms in 1994. He is in danger of losing his nominee as ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton. Petrol prices are soaring. The economy and the stockmarket are both spluttering. Mr Bush's job-approval rating is hovering at about 47%; only 37% of the population think that the country is heading in the right direction; and support for the Iraq war is at, or close to, its lowest point so far. Nor is the Republican-dominated Congress proving to be quite the boon that it was supposed to be. Bill Frist, the majority leader in the Senate, who clearly nurses presidential ambitions, is devoting an unusual amount of energy to cultivating the party's conservative base, rather than winning moderate voters to Mr Bush's plans. In the House, Mr Bush has the bigger problem of Mr DeLay. The ethics charges swirling round the majority leader are distracting the party's most powerful legislative organiser, and forcing his colleagues into embarrassing stunts to protect him. What has gone wrong? Many of Mr Bush's problems can be explained by something that afflicts all second-term presidents—the fracturing of the party after a victorious re-election. But four things have exaggerated this tendency. First, Dick Cheney has excluded himself from the succession. Normally, the party establishment makes at least a show of lining up behind the vice-president as presumed nominee. This time, Mr Frist and all the other pretenders to the throne in 2008 are freer to define themselves. The second is the ambition of Mr Bush's agenda. Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute points out that Mr Bush achieved a huge amount in his first 100 days in 2001, despite barely winning the election. So it was tempting to assume that legislative fireworks might follow the clear victory of 2004. The third factor is that Mr Bush has shifted the balance of power in his party towards two factions—the religious right and big-government conservatives—and other Republicans don't like it. Mr Bush's decision to intervene in the Schiavo case annoyed both defenders of states' rights and the business lobby, which regarded the battle over the dying brain-damaged woman in Florida as a distraction.... economist.com