President Bush's political base continues to erode. He's angered fiscal conservatives with his "play today; pay tomorrow" approach to the increasingly massive budget deficit. He's angered social conservatives with his half-hearted -- albeit dangerous -- support of attacks on gays. Now it seems even the aura of the late Ronald Reagan will be denied Bush, thanks to his muddled thinking on stem cell research. Patti Davis makes clear there is no love lost in the current issue of "Newsweek," as quoted in today's New York Daily News.
"Reagan's daughter from his storybook marriage to Nancy Reagan, said yesterday that her mother "has emerged as a central figure in the effort to get the federal government out of the way."The NY Daily News interprets this and the rest of her column as a direct slam on Bush and characterizes it as the first volley in a "political war" between the White House and the Reagan family. Apparently, there's one more person Davis thinks should get out of the way come November. Thanks to this stalemate, the chances of Nancy Reagan speaking at the Republican convention and passing on some of that Reagan mystique to Bush are increasingly slim.
"If that phrase about the government sounds familiar, it should," Davis wrote in Newsweek. "I grew up hearing my father say often that the government should get out of the way."
