Terry McMahon's Awesome Blog

I can't tell if the feeling I have is schadenfreude or sour grapes, but it's great fun regardless. Here are choice paragraphs from a Washington Post article titled, "Business Groups Tire of GOP Focus On Social Issues."

"I'm inclined to support the Republican Party, but the question becomes, how much other stuff do I have to put up with to maintain that identification?" asked Andrew A. Samwick, a Dartmouth College economics professor who until recently was chief economist of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers.

"I don't know a single business group involved in the judicial nominees," said R. Bruce Josten, an executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "Nada, none, zip."
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Economic conservatives grew restless during the first Bush term, when federal budget surpluses turned to yawning deficits, federal spending soared and the Republican-controlled Congress passed a Medicare drug benefit that marked the largest new federal entitlement since Lyndon B. Johnson was president.
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"The potential for high-minded policy reforms to fix entitlements and spur growth and prosperity has degenerated into a hopeless morass," Republican economist Lawrence Kudlow wrote yesterday on the National Review's Web site.
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But the shift in emphasis may be taking a toll on Republican political support. In an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll last week, 57 percent of the people polled said Bush had different priorities for the country from their own. Only 35 percent said he shared their priorities. The poll found the president's approval rating at 47 percent, but Congress's rating stood at just 33 percent. Among Republicans, approval of Congress's performance has dropped 11 percentage points since April.

"A big part of the base is pretty disappointed," Kudlow said. "Is this irreparably damaging anything? Probably not yet. But this has been a dreary political springtime."