{"id":11374,"date":"2007-07-08T11:45:39","date_gmt":"2007-07-08T15:45:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/11374.html"},"modified":"2007-07-08T11:45:39","modified_gmt":"2007-07-08T15:45:39","slug":"an-acute-case-of-bush-fatigue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/an-acute-case-of-bush-fatigue\/","title":{"rendered":"An acute case of ‘Bush fatigue’"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the president commuted Scooter Libby’s prison sentence, the conventional wisdom told us<\/a> that the White House was anxious to score a few points with the far-right GOP base, which has slowly distanced itself from Bush over the last several months.<\/p>\n

Byron York suggests today<\/a> the commutation, if it was a political ploy, didn’t work.<\/p>\n

Bush came up with a cramped, limited statement, commuting Libby’s jail term while keeping (at least for now) his conviction, a $250,000 fine that he has already paid and two years of probation. One didn’t have to read too far between the lines to guess that the president believes Libby to be guilty of perjury; just for good measure, Bush threw in some good words for Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald. The problem, the president said, wasn’t that Fitzgerald had gone on a three-year fishing expedition that netted only Libby, or that the Iraq war’s foes were using the CIA leak case to rehash their grievances against the original decision to invade; rather, the problem was simply that U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton’s sentence was “excessive.”<\/p>\n

For many conservatives, it was exactly the wrong way to approach the problem. […]<\/p>\n

In other words, if Bush had pardoned Libby because the CIA leak probe never should have happened, fine. But don’t play judge, Mr. President — that’s not your branch.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is consistent with what we’ve been hearing most of the week. Bob Novak reported a couple of days ago that other than Libby, “hardly anybody else is all that happy<\/a>” with Bush’s decision.<\/p>\n

Similarly, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page was in rare form this week, calling the commutation “a profile in non-courage<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Frankly, I think the talk about Bush’s concern for the base is probably overwrought. The president wasn’t trying to impress deserting Republican activists; he was abusing his power<\/a> to “shortcircuit the investigation of a crime to which he himself was quite likely a party, and to which, his vice president, who controls him, certainly was.”<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, York’s piece does speak to a broader truth: even the president’s far-right flank is suffering from acute “Bush fatigue.”
\n
\nYork shares these perspectives:<\/p>\n

All of this has left Republicans saying, at least among themselves, something blunt and devastating: It’s over.<\/p>\n

“Bush fatigue has set in,” declares one plugged-in GOP activist.<\/p>\n

“We’re ready for a new president,” says a former state Republican Party official in the South.<\/p>\n

“There was affection,” opines a conservative strategist based well beyond the Beltway, “but now they’re in divorce court.” […]<\/p>\n

“These days, the only time he gets support is when Democrats attack him,” says one Washington-based GOP strategist. But that will take him only so far. George W. Bush’s time to get big things done has passed. Even his most ardent fans, the ones who wish him the best, are looking forward to Jan. 20, 2009.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If his approval rating ever reaches 35% again, I’ll be very surprised.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the president commuted Scooter Libby’s prison sentence, the conventional wisdom told us that the White House was anxious to score a few points with the far-right GOP base, which has slowly distanced itself from Bush over the last several months. Byron York suggests today the commutation, if it was a political ploy, didn’t work. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11374\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}