Whoopie!! Novakula's report will make you LOLOL! LOLOL! [View All]

[grasswire]

Egad. Novak's column is FULL of DOOM and GLOOM for the GOP and Bush!

Please note his reporting of predictions that Rummy will be leaving the government in early 2004.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/robertnovak/rn20030911.shtml

September 11

WASHINGTON -- 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 Sens. 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 across the country 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.