These are tough times for the Republicans. The President is tanking. The right winger theocrats are mad at the Republicans as John notes below. The Washington Post, meanwhile, is focusing on how the GOPers are fighting among themselves:
From immigration policy to energy to emergency spending, House Republican leaders are publicly breaking rank with their counterparts in the Senate, fearing that Senate efforts at compromise are jeopardizing the party's standing with conservative voters.They're collapsing. The Republicans on the Hill marched in lockstep behind Bush. They gave him everything he wanted. Now, that their great leader is imploding in the polls, they are lost. They don't know how to lead and they're turning on each other.
The breach in congressional leadership has been especially stark in the past two weeks. As the Senate returns to the immigration issue this week, House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said House Republicans will not agree to any plan granting illegal immigrants a path to citizenship that does not require them first to return to their home countries. House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) dismissed Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's proposed $100 rebate for gasoline as "insulting" and "stupid." And House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) declared a Senate-passed, $109 billion bill to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, hurricane relief and a bevy of home-state pet projects "dead on arrival."
