WP: Bush's Midterm Challenge

[kskiska]

Rebuilding Public Support May Bolster GOP Candidates

Sunday, January 29, 2006; Page A01

President Bush's State of the Union address on Tuesday night marks the opening of a midterm election year eagerly anticipated by Democrats and fraught with worries for Republicans, whose hopes in November may depend in large part on how successfully Bush can turn around his troubled presidency.

After his reelection victory in 2004, Bush often pointed out that he would never again be on a ballot as a candidate. But the coming year in many ways represents another national campaign for the president, aimed at preserving the gains his party has made in the past five years, as well as rehabilitating a reputation that has come under brutal assault from the opposition in recent months.

There is no doubt that Bush intends to run this campaign as forcefully as if he were on the ballot himself. He ended 2005, the worst year of his presidency, with an aggressive defense of his Iraq policies, and he has begun the new year with an uncompromising justification of his policy of warrantless domestic surveillance.

(snip)

The political stakes this year are especially high. What happens will affect not only the final years of Bush's presidency, but also will shape what is likely to be an even bigger election for his successor in 2008. Republicans have been on the ascendancy throughout the Bush presidency, but they begin the year not only resigned to some losses in Congress but also fearful that, under a worst-case scenario, an eruption of voter dissatisfaction could cost them control of the House or Senate or both.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/28/AR2006012801086.html

[yourout]

1. Bush's midterm challeng is to not get impeached and thrown in jail.

Hope he fails.

[no_hypocrisy]

2. 2006: There's been some serious devaluation of the "capital"

that * claimed that he earned with the last election that he stole in 2004. A photo with him putting his arm around a republican candidate or even shaking his hand may be a kiss of death as far as electability.