Bush tries to win back GOP lawmakers

On Iraq, immigration, and Attorney General Gonzales, some staunch supporters have begun to defect.

By Gail Russell Chaddock | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the June 14, 2007 edition

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Washington - – For President Bush to pull off a legacy in the final 19 months of his presidency, he needs to shore up support within GOP ranks on Capitol Hill, especially among those who will face voters in 2008.

From immigration and the Iraq war to embryonic stem-cell research and hirings and firings at the Justice Department, Republican lawmakers are increasingly breaking with the president on key votes – and the defections are coming from many who were once his staunchest supporters.

Thirty-eight Senate Republicans voted against moving ahead on immigration reform last week, sidelining Mr. Bush's top domestic priority. Then, on Monday, seven Republicans – five of them up for reelection in 2008 – joined all Senate Democrats in a vote of no confidence in Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

But the most searing intraparty rows could come in early September, when Congress plans a close look at progress in the war in Iraq.

"If President Bush had been a more popular president running a more effective war in Iraq, Republicans would still be in the majority, and that's how many of them still look at it," says Jennifer Duffy, senior analyst with the Cook Political Report.

Until Republicans lost control of the House and Senate in the midterm election in November, Bush sustained a level of support from his own party that his father and President Ronald Reagan seldom approached. Senate Republicans have backed Bush on key votes about 85 percent of the time during his presidency, according to a January survey by Congressional Quarterly.

But the Iraq war and, most recently, the president's support for comprehensive immigration reform have eroded Bush's standing with his Republican base and emboldened Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill to go their own way.

"The problem for the president is that the coalition of ... Republicans who are alienated and opposing him shifts from issue to issue, so it requires different responses and palliatives," says Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J.

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