GOP facing 'perfect storm' (running scared)

GOP facing 'perfect storm'

September 11, 2003

BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

Sen. Jim Bunning of Kentucky, the only senator in the Baseball Hall of
Fame, is as tough and aggressive a politician as he was a pitcher. He
showed it last week during a closed-door session of Republican senators
with Pentagon officials.

''What the hell is going on with this supplemental [appropriations
bill]?'' Bunning demanded. The normally articulate Deputy Defense
Secretary Paul Wolfowitz had no reply.

Bunning was joined by Senators Jeff Sessions of Alabama, James Inhofe of
Oklahoma and Jon Kyl of Arizona in complaining about lack of information
on how much Iraq is going to cost.

The senatorial attitude was not improved Sunday night when President
Bush requested an additional $87 billion -- well above what had been
hinted. What's politically significant is that these four Republicans
are hard-core conservatives and Bush loyalists who believe they have
been misled by the Pentagon.

Amid such complaints, Republicans on Capitol Hill were stunned last
Saturday when the Zogby Poll reported that Bush's national
approve-disapprove ratio has slipped into negative territory for the
first time (with only 45 percent saying he is doing a good job).

That couples with continued job losses and the rising cost of Iraq, in
blood and treasure.

On top of that, GOP senators are depressed that Democrats are winning
the judicial confirmation war.

A worried freshman Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina puts all this
together and calls it ''the perfect storm'' (adding that Republicans
should handle each issue ''quickly and decisively, and hope that
Democrats overplay their hand'').

In nearly half a century of Congress-watching, I frequently have
observed senators of a president's own party head for the lifeboats when
any storm -- perfect or not -- approaches.

Today's Senate Republicans have not reached that point, but fear and
anxiety among them is palpable.

Most of the danger is directed at the Defense Department's management of
the Iraqi reconstruction. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman
Richard Lugar is described by friends as feeling that the Pentagon
misled him. The committee's second-ranking Republican, Sen. Chuck Hagel,
feels even more strongly about it. So does Sen. John McCain, who had
buried the hatchet with Bush to vigorously support the Iraq intervention.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has become the scapegoat for all that
has gone wrong in Iraq and is paying the price for disdaining from
establishing good relations with senators for more than 2-1/2 years.

Those senators get an earful about Rumsfeld from the uniformed military,
whose criticism in private echoes what retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni
has declared publicly. The unconfirmed rumor mill from the Pentagon to
the Senate has Rumsfeld leaving early next year.

The jobless recovery has bothered the Republican senators much more
since getting home and talking to their constituents last month. That
was shown at their first luncheon last week, when Chief Deputy Whip
Robert Bennett gave one of his regular reports on the economy. He was
optimistic about revival of the stock market.

That did not please Sen. George Voinovich, who has been elected
statewide in Ohio four times and is up for re-election there next year.

Characteristically blunt, Voin-ovich told Bennett: ''I don't give a damn
about the stock market. But I do care about jobs.''

Voinovich's reluctance to support the president's tax cuts may make
suspect his negativism, but the same concern about jobs is shared by the
big majority of GOP senators who were enthusiastic about the Bush tax
program.

Nobody is suggesting that Bush is duplicating his father's nonchalance
after the Gulf War in sliding to defeat against Bill Clinton. Nor do
they have specific policy advice beyond playing straight with Congress
on how much the war against terrorism will cost.

Bush political adviser Karl Rove always has predicted a close
presidential election for 2004, just as he did for 2000. Republican
senators now realize Rove was not kidding, and they no longer laugh at
Howard Dean challenging Bush for the presidency. Pollster John Zogby
calls this a 50-50 country and Bush a 50-50 presidency.

Given those odds, arrogance and deception are too great a burden at
either the White House or Pentagon.