WASHINGTON: Republicans say the controversy over firing US attorneys is muddling their message and damaging President George W. Bush. Instead of trumpeting their criticisms that Democrats are meddling in Iraq strategy and raising taxes, Republican lawmakers find themselves fielding questions about embattled Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales. They put a hefty share of the blame on the White House for mishandling its response to the firings.
“It’s a distraction – there’s no question about that. It steps on our message for sure,” said Sen. John Thune, a Republican.
“If they had gotten out and started leaning forward on it right away it might have been helpful, because it would have stopped some of the momentum,” Thune said of Bush’s team.
Just as Republican senators thought they were gaining some traction hammering Democrats on the war, they got a blow from the White House: emails revealing political adviser Karl Rove’s involvement in planning the spate of prosecutor firings.
Moments like that have angered congressional Republicans, including some of Bush’s strongest backers. Many of them accuse Democrats of politicising an inquiry into the matter, but they say it is Bush’s responsibility to clear the cloud that has been created.
“It is no longer about the original act, it is now about this ever-evolving story,” Rep. Adam Putnam, the No. 3 Republican in the House of Representatives, said on MSNBC television. “It is now costing the president support.”
The frustration is a sign of Republicans’ waning willingness to support a president whose popularity is low and whose influence is ebbing.
“Congressional Republicans have untethered themselves from the White House dramatically. To the extent their long-term interests overlap, they’ll march forward together; to the extent they differ, there’s not as much reluctance to go their own way,” said Michael Franc, an analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
The controversy has deprived Republicans of a critical chance to draw distinctions between themselves and Democrats on fiscal issues just before they head home for a two-week break, overshadowing their message that the Democrats' budget is loaded with tax increases, Franc said.
It comes as many House Republicans, particularly conservatives who were staunch backers of expanding the administration's terrorist-hunting powers under the USA Patriot Act, are openly questioning their decision to support Bush on the measure.
An FBI watchdog’s recent report detailing the agency’s “widespread and serious misuse” of one of those authorities – gathering telephone, email and financial records without a court order through national security letters – led to Republican threats to revoke them.
Bush’s so-far resolute defence of Gonzales is further damaging the president and reflecting poorly on the party, some Republicans say.
The president has defiantly rejected Democrats’ calls for Rove and other top White House aides to testify publicly in the probe, signalling that he is not afraid of a showdown with Congress over the separation of powers. That stalemate looms as he also seems to be heading for deadlock with Congress on an Iraq spending bill that will set timelines for troop withdrawals, which he has promised to veto.
Bush has a chance to cut deals on immigration law overhaul and even government pension reform – but he has to get out from under the cloud of the prosecutor controversy first, said Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican.
This “could be a good year for the president, but this is distracting. This is something that’s got to be tied up – there are too many loose ends,” Graham said.—AP