posted May 11, 2006 10:01 AM              

By Jim VandeHei and Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, May 11, 2006; Page A01

Disaffection over spending and immigration have caused conservatives to take flight from President Bush and the Republican Congress at a rapid pace in recent weeks, sending Bush's approval ratings to record lows and presenting a new threat to the GOP's 12-year reign on Capitol Hill, according to White House officials, lawmakers and new polling data.

Bush and Congress have suffered a decline in support from almost every part of the conservative coalition over the past year, a trend that has accelerated with alarming implications for Bush's governing strategy.

The Gallup polling organization recorded a 13-percentage-point drop in Republican support for Bush in the past couple of weeks. These usually reliable voters are telling pollsters and lawmakers they are fed up with what they see as out-of-control spending by Washington and, more generally, an abandonment of core conservative principles.

There are also significant pockets of conservatives turning on Bush and Congress over their failure to tighten immigration laws, restrict same-sex marriage, and put an end to the Iraq war and the rash of political scandals, according to lawmakers and pollsters.

Bush won two presidential elections by pursuing a political and governing model that was predicated on winning and sustaining the loyal backing of social, economic and foreign policy conservatives. The strategy was based on the belief that conservatives, who are often more politically active than the general public, could be inspired to vote in larger numbers and would serve as a reliable foundation for his presidency. The theory, as explained by Bush strategists, is that the president would enjoy a floor below which his support would never fall.

It is now apparent that this floor has weakened dramatically -- and collapsed in places.

"A lot of us have been like Paul Revere and sounding the alarm for three or four years," said Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Fla.). "Conservatives forgave Bush and Congress for our past mistakes because the war on terrorism was so important . . . but now there is a great deal of unhappiness. What you are going to increasingly see is a divided Republican Party."

Michael Franc, a top official at the Heritage Foundation, said his organization hosted 600 of its top conservative donors last week and heard more widespread complaining about Republicans than at any other point in the past 12 years. "It begins with spending, extends through immigration and results in a sense that we have Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee for the two parties," Franc said.

Ralph Sivillo, a 64-year-old retiree living in Monroe, N.Y., said he started turning against Bush in January. He said Democrats are beginning to look better to him. "I'm really dead against Bush at this point. What's he doing? He's doing nothing. Everybody's just bailing on him because they feel the same way."

"He's not well liked," said Douglas Giles, 47, a self-described conservative from Buffalo. "A lot of people don't think he's very good."

Michael Dimock of the Pew Research Center, a leading polling group, said one of the most striking findings of recent surveys is the growing number of conservatives who "don't see Bush as one of them" as they did earlier. Pew found that Bush has suffered a 24-point drop in his approval rating among voters who backed him in 2004: from 92 percent in January 2005 to 68 percent in March.

Frank Newport of the Gallup Organization cautioned against reading too much into Bush's recent loss of support among conservatives. He said the numbers tend to ebb and flow and must be confirmed over several months before it is possible to conclude that the president has suffered irreversible erosion.

Moreover, the public's view of the economy and Washington may have been soured by gasoline prices having topped $3 a gallon over the past month.

But GOP lawmakers and strategists, who have reviewed a series of polls released in recent weeks, said the results confirm what they are hearing from voters: Conservatives are demoralized and defecting in worrisome numbers. The most recent Associated Press poll found that Bush had a 52 percent approval rating among conservatives; only 33 percent had a favorable opinion of the Republican-run Congress.

"The problem in my mind, and the only way to explain the very significant erosion is just a disgust with what appears to be a complete abandonment of limited government," said former Republican congressman Pat Toomey, who runs the conservative Club for Growth. Toomey said commitment to smaller government has been the unifying idea for most elements of the GOP coalition since Ronald Reagan's presidency. "Republicans have finally had enough," he said, a sentiment echoed by several other conservative activists and lawmakers.

Since Bush took office, government spending has increased by more than 25 percent, the largest increase under any president since Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson. At the same time, Bush and the Republican Congress dramatically increased the government's role in, and overall spending on, education and Medicare by enacting the No Child Left Behind Act and new prescription drug entitlement for seniors. David A. Keene, head of the American Conservative Union, said there is a sense of flaccid leadership at the White House and in Congress that begets "things like frustration, which leads to disgust and apathy" among conservatives.

The immigration debate appears to be damaging Bush and GOP lawmakers, too. Conservative voters are saying they want swift congressional action to secure the border and enforce immigrations laws, but Bush and Congress are split over the best way to deal with illegal immigrants already in the country.

A new Zogby Interactive poll found that fewer than 25 percent of respondents who described themselves as conservative or very conservative approved of Bush's handling of the immigration debate. "Unfortunately, when it comes to controlling our borders, we are about a decade behind where we need to be," said Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.).

Karl Rove, Bush's top political adviser, and GOP leaders are well aware of the problem and are planning a summer offensive to win back conservatives with a mix of policy fights and warnings of how a Democratic Congress would govern. The plan includes votes on tax cuts, a constitutional amendment outlawing same-sex marriage, new abortion restrictions, and measures to restrain government spending.

Assistant polling director Claudia Deane and political researcher Zachary A. Goldfarb contributed to this report.

posted May 11, 2006 12:27 PM            

That doesn't mean we're going to ever vote for treasonous cut and run, tax and spend, open borders democrats, democrats whose basic tenet is that all power resides in the hands of government.

Quoting self described republicans who are going to vote democrat doesn't cut it. My voter registration card says R for Republican, so any reporter worth their salt would say prove it...show me your voter registration card. Stuttering and stammering all around.

posted May 11, 2006 06:25 PM              

It wasn't all Republicans who elected Bush anyway. If in fact he was legally elected and that is suspect in both elections. Many people are independent voters who vote for who they think will do the best job and be the best leader for America.

posted May 11, 2006 06:57 PM            

I couldn't agree more!!!

I have to add, this media propaganda isn't new. Hell, according to the media Bush was going to lose the last go round, the congress would go to the Democrats and Repbulicans were turning against our own party.

posted May 11, 2006 07:31 PM            

No republicans will be elected without the support of Republicans. Further, no republicans..small case should be elected in the first place.

posted May 12, 2006 03:12 AM              

Many people that were swayed by Bush's rhetoric on religious values are waking up to all the hypocrises in his administration and even the Religious Right no longer have the power they did over the Evangelitical churches. The leaders of those churches differ from the Religious Right on environmental issues. Especially global warming.

I think that what it is going to boil down to in the Nov. elections for the seats in the House and Congress is what Bush has done for the people of this country as far as health insurance, jobs, gasoline prices, social issues such as taking care of the needy, the elderly and children, the environment, education, and all the things that matter to the majority of working class citizens of this country. Since Bush's record regarding all those issues is poor and dismal I think he lost most of the people who supported him in the last election. The Democratic conservatives and the Independent voters.

The irony of Bush's ever plummeting polls is that it was an act of God, hurricane Katrina and the ineptitude of the Bush administration in the aftermath of that disaster that really sealed his fate. Along with all the issues I mentioned above, Bush failed to take care of the people of this country in the aftermath of a disaster. That is something that the voters will not forgive him for. The Republicans lost many of their supporters in the south in the aftermath of Katrina when they watched their neighbors sitting on roof tops for days and people dying in the streets for lack of water and medical care.

Ironic that a natural disaster which would be classified as an act of the same God that Jwhop claims the Deomocrats don't believe in sealed Bush's fate and may well win back the House and Senate for the Democrats in Nov.

posted May 12, 2006 09:51 AM            

Something to keep in mind. Congress has much lower approval ratings than the President. Don't look for a love affair between the American voting public and defeatocrats, retreatocrats, terrorcrats and the other versions of the I hate America crowd in the Congress.

Defeatocrats, Retreatocrats and Terrocrats have been campaigning for 5 years. Republicans haven't even begun yet.

That does not invalidate what Pid and I said about republicans...lower case.