Robert Novak has gone after someone else this time, and it might not be who you would expect. This week, he takes none other than George Bush to the mat. Here are some great parts from it.
“Gonzales never has developed a base of support for himself up here,” a House Republican leader told me. But this is less a Gonzales problem than a Bush problem. With nearly two years remaining in his presidency, George W. Bush is alone. In half a century, I have not seen a president so isolated from his own party in Congress — not Jimmy Carter, not even Richard Nixon as he faced impeachment.
Republicans in Congress do not trust their president to protect them. That alone is sufficient reason to withhold statements of support for Gonzales, because such a gesture could be quickly followed by his resignation under pressure. Rep. Adam Putnam (Fla.), the highly regarded young chairman of the House Republican Conference, praised Donald Rumsfeld in November only to see him sacked shortly thereafter.
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The I-word (incompetence) is also used by Republicans in describing the Bush administration generally. Several of them I talked to cited a trifecta of incompetence: the Walter Reed hospital scandal, the FBI’s misuse of the USA Patriot Act and the U.S. attorneys firing fiasco. “We always have claimed that we were the party of better management,” one House leader told me. “How can we claim that anymore?”
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Regarding Libby and Gonzales, unofficial word from the White House is not reassuring. One credible source says the president will never — not even on the way out of office in January 2009 — pardon Libby. Another equally good source says the president will never ask Gonzales to resign. That exactly reverses the prevailing Republican opinion in Congress. Bush is alone.
So Bush is alone? Perhaps more Republicans need to start echoing that sentiment then. There certainly seems to be enough of them out there supporting Bush to the end. True that could really start changing soon as we get closer to the 2008 elections. But it wasn’t Bush alone that brought down the GOP in 2006, it was a combination of Bush and the failed leadership of the GOP in Congress that both lead to their majority demise.
Novak also overlooked other examples of incompetence exhibited by this administration. Here are two big ones – Katrina and Iraq. Iraq is not any closer to being more secure and New Orleans is still in ruins almost 2 years later. Incompetence has followed this President none stop, which is why the other I word needs to come into play with Bush – Impeach. Impeachment is not some sort of punishment for Bush, but rather a needed step for our country to heal and start fixing all that has gone so wrong since he took office.