MUCH MORE CRUMBLING

Rove's coalition took a BIG hit today. If the GOP moves further to the Right, they lose more moderates and independents. If they don't, they lose the Fundies. LOSE-LOSE.

This op-ed in the WaPo comes from a big-time wingnut.

Bush's Base Betrayal
By Richard A. Viguerie
Sunday, May 21, 2006; B01

Sixty-five months into Bush's presidency, conservatives feel betrayed. After the "Bridge to Nowhere" transportation bill, the Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination and the Dubai Ports World deal, the immigration crisis was the tipping point for us.

The main cause of conservatives' anger with Bush is this: He talked like a conservative to win our votes but never governed like a conservative.

For all of conservatives' patience, we've been rewarded with the botched Hurricane Katrina response, headed by an unqualified director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which proved that the government isn't ready for the next disaster. We've been rewarded with an amnesty plan for illegal immigrants. We've been rewarded with a war in Iraq that drags on because of the failure to provide adequate resources at the beginning, and with exactly the sort of "nation-building" that Candidate Bush said he opposed.


But conservatives don't blame the current mess just on Bush. They recognize the problem today is also at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

For years, congressional Republicans have sold themselves to conservatives as the continuation of the Reagan revolution. We were told that they would take on the Washington special interests -- that they would, in essence, tear down K Street and sow the earth with salt to make sure nothing ever grew there again.

But over time, most of them turned into the sort of unprincipled power brokers they had ousted in 1994. They lost interest in furthering conservative ideas, and they turned their attention to getting their share of the pork.

The current record of Washington Republicans is so bad that, without a drastic change in direction, millions of conservatives will again stay home this November.

At the very least, conservatives must stop funding the Republican National Committee and other party groups. (Let Big Business take care of that!)