The Breakaway Republicans

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Beyond feelings of personal insult, a look at the electoral map offers another compelling reason some members might seize an opportunity to put distance between themselves and Bush. Nine of the 10 most endangered House incumbents this fall are Republicans, noted nonpartisan political analyst Stuart Rothenberg in a recent column for the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call. Bush remains a big draw for the hard-core Republican faithful, but it was hard not to notice the absence of Ohio Senator Mike DeWine when the President arrived at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport last week to raise $1.1 million for DeWine at a private event in the tony Cincinnati suburb of Indian Hill. (DeWine's probable Senate opponent observed that "DeWine doesn't want to be seen with President Bush in public.") One of the first to denounce the ports deal was Pennsylvania's Rick Santorum, a Senator whose re-election battle--already the toughest in the country--will be even harder to win without improved support in Philadelphia, one of the affected ports. Close behind Santorum was Senate majority leader Bill Frist, who is struggling to establish his identity for a possible 2008 presidential run.

The Republican Congress has been tiptoeing toward this moment for months, becoming less reluctant to challenge Bush as his approval rating stays mired in the low 40s. G.O.P. lawmakers are getting more vocal in challenging Bush's spending priorities, and his modest budget cuts on programs from farm aid to housing to student loans are running into election-year resistance, even as the legislators complain about the costs of his Medicare prescription-drug program. On Friday the coalition of House conservatives known as the Republican Study Committee sent a letter to the White House demanding more justification for Bush's spending requests, specifically the $92.2 billion in emergency money that he wants for the war on terrorism and Gulf Coast rebuilding, "so that we can intelligently exercise our constitutional right to appropriate funds."

And things could get a lot worse, even on the national-security issues that have been Bush's greatest political strength. Already DeWine, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is planning legislation to give Congress more say over the National Security Agency's domestic-spying program, despite Bush's assertions that any hearings or legislation would help terrorists. And the President was forced to accept congressionally mandated restrictions on the tactics that interrogators may use with terrorist suspects. Republicans, their faith shaken in his ability to protect them politically, may even feel emboldened enough to press for a sharper drawdown of troops from Iraq before the November elections. On the domestic front, conservatives are likely to stiffen their resistance to the guest-worker provisions in Bush's immigration plan and, with their constituents feeling the effects of a record trade deficit, could have less patience for Bush's nonconfrontational stance toward China.