Republicans Finally Catch on that Bush Doesn’t Care about Congress
Despite the continued relative tightness in the polls of the Presidential race, by nearly all accounts and findings the 2008 elections are certain to at least allow Democrats to maintain the majorities in governorships, as well as in the U.S House of Representatives and the wafer thin margin they hold in the Senate now.
So Republicans are desperate to limit their losses and latch onto an issue that showcases that they are more interested in getting something accomplished then their Democratic counterparts, especially House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who has resisted the requests by Republicans, the President, and even some Democrats to bring proposals to drill for oil (or as supporters like to call it “energy exploration” or domestic production”) to the floor for a vote. So last week, as the chamber was being closed for congressional recess, House Republicans have stayed, making speeches to one another advocating drilling and decrying their Democratic rivals.
In a bid for a legislative victory that would undercut the Democrats and permit Republicans to enter the general election year with at least one highly visible victory, the Republicans in the House have also requested that President Bush call Congress back from their five week sabbatical to pass lifting a ban on off shore drilling the President has refused, and now even some in his own party are leveling attacks at him, resembling the type that normally come from Democrats.
Washington, D.C. (AHN) – House Policy Committee Chairman Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) has accused President George W. Bush of giving more attention to his trip to the Beijing Olympics than supporting the Republican floor protest, according to The Hill.
In a memo, McCotter called the President “Beijing George” Bush and “wildly unpopular.”
Bush “boarded Air Force One bound for the Beijing Olympics and a meeting with his chum Hu Jintao, the dapper ruler of a nuclear armed, communist dictatorship. … Perhaps our Compassionate Conservative-in-Chief will bring our absent Democrat Congress some ‘Made in (communist) China’ souvenir t-shirts: ‘Bush went to Beijing and all I got was this lousy five week, paid vacation,’ ” the lawmaker wrote
It appears that at least some Republicans have discovered what much of the rest of America has known since at least 2006. That Bush doesn’t only have contempt for Congressional Democrats, but for the body of Congress as a whole (which includes Congressional Republicans). Nor does he have much respect for the Judaical branch of government or the fourth estate in American democracy (also known as the press).
To Bush there is no three co-equal branches of government, in the mind of this administration their is only a tree trunk to extend on the metaphor with weak branches, the trunk being the Executive “branch”.
Between these strong words over Bush’s attendance at the Beijing Olympics, his refusal to call congress back into session to address the current energy hardships and gas prices, and last week’s walkout by Republicans who sit on the House Intelligence Committee from a briefing by Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, over the Bush administration’s efforts to further consolidate more power usually reserved for the CIA and the administration’s failure to keep Congress as informed and cooperate with efforts to over see intelligence operations; show that the members of the President’s own party maybe feeling just as fed up with him as the country at large is.
Don’t hold your breath to see Republicans (or even congress in general) to get much tougher in standing up to this 21st century imperial presidency in the coming month, but hey at least they are slowly awakening to the fact that Bush/Cheney is harmful to the Republican party, Congress, and other living things. 
