As Red states go, you can’t get much redder than Alabama. The state hasn’t been competitive at the presidential level in a generation, Bush won it in 2000 by 15 points, and won it again last year by almost 26 points. The president, it’s safe to say, is a pretty popular guy in the Yellowhammer State.<\/p>\n
As such, you might think a presidential visit would spark the kind of excitement that would lead the state’s Republican congressmen to trip over each other just to be near Bush. But as Dan Froomkin noted<\/a>, Bush’s trip to discuss Social Security in Alabama today apparently isn’t enough<\/a> for GOP lawmakers to adjust their schedules.<\/p>\n When President Bush came to Birmingham four years ago to campaign for U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions and talk up a popular conservation program, almost every Republican then in Alabama’s nine-member congressional delegation made time to show up.<\/p>\n When Bush swings through Montgomery today to discuss his controversial plan to revamp Social Security, only one, U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers of Anniston, has confirmed plans to attend.<\/p>\n Representatives for most of the other six Republicans in the delegation cited a crush of business during an exceptionally busy week in Washington. But Carl Grafton, a political scientist at Auburn University Montgomery, where Bush will speak, said lawmakers also have no reason to cozy up to the president on a potentially toxic issue such as Social Security reform.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n You know things are going poorly for Bush’s Social Security scheme when Republicans in Alabama<\/i> give the president the brush off.<\/p>\n Indeed, it goes to show how embarrassing things are for this “campaign” when the president has to go to Alabama to sell his snake oil in the first place. Already, Rep. Mike Rogers (R) is a member of the “Conscience Caucus<\/a>,” Sen. Richard Shelby (R) is described by the local press as a “holdout<\/a>” on Bush’s Social Security plan, and even Sen. Bob Aderholt (R) has expressed some skepticism<\/a>.<\/p>\n These are the kind of lawmakers whom the White House probably expects to support anything Bush wants by virtue of Bush wanting it. And now, some of them don’t even want to be on the stage with the president when he’s talking about his signature domestic policy goal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As Red states go, you can’t get much redder than Alabama. The state hasn’t been competitive at the presidential level in a generation, Bush won it in 2000 by 15 points, and won it again last year by almost 26 points. The president, it’s safe to say, is a pretty popular guy in the Yellowhammer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3713","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=3713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3713\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}