Bush's Back-and-Forth Reflects Rift in Party

Bush's Back-and-Forth Reflects Rift in Party

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3797-2005Mar26.html?nav%3Dhcmodule&sub=AR

By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 27, 2005; Page A06

WACO, Tex., March 26 -- He flew halfway across the country in a vain effort to save her life, but in the week since, President Bush has retreated back to his ranch and remained largely out of sight as the nation wrestled with the great moral issues surrounding the fate of Terri Schiavo.

The president has said nothing publicly about the bitterly contested case since Wednesday, when reporters asked about it and he said he had exhausted his powers to intervene. On Saturday, as he used his weekly radio address to express condolences to the victims of a school shooting in Minnesota and extol a "culture that affirms life," he did not mention the most prominent culture-of-life issue in the public eye.

The juxtaposition of racing through the night in Air Force One to sign legislation intended to force doctors to reinsert Schiavo's feeding tube and choosing not to use his bully pulpit to advocate for her life afterward demonstrates how uncomfortable the matter has become for the White House. For years, Bush has succeeded politically in stitching together the disparate elements of the conservative movement, marrying the libertarian and family-values wings of his party. Now he faces a major Republican rupture.

Polls show the vast majority of Americans, including conservatives and evangelical Christians, disapprove of the decision by Bush and Congress to get involved in the Schiavo matter. And more worrying for the White House, those polls have also shown a significant drop in Bush's overall approval ratings.

but I have been wondering if this is evidence of not really winning the election. They say that his win of the election was because of strong support from the religious right. In an attempt to assuage the religious right, he makes this move that backfires. Perhaps they did not support him as much as he thought - perhaps they did not even vote for him as much as he thought!

The above is way out there, but I wonder about it.

More likely is the fact that they feel threatened by the removal of SS and have stopped trusting their leader - this being the first time they were disloyal to him.

Bill Schneider had to figure some plausibility, so he told his viewers it was the "values" vote that put Bush over the top. Complete horseshit, of course.

The first clue that he was not really elected was the fact that he was below 51% on innauguaration. Usually the country sort of calms down and the numbers are higher at that point, people sort of start giving the incumbent the benefit of the doubt but not this time. The only time they seemed to have popped, and it was brief, was after the vote in Iraq.

It was their cover story. Subsequent polling more than bears that out.

I'm confused... does the writer mean flip-flop?

:crazy: