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WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Despite assurances to the contrary from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Democratic insiders are certain Sen. Joseph Lieberman next year will be kicked out of the party's caucus and lose his Senate chairmanship if he addresses the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., as planned. Lieberman's Democratic colleagues willing to accept his support of Sen. John McCain for president consider speaking to the GOP convention as the last straw. Lieberman was re-elected from Connecticut as an independent in 2006 after losing the Democratic nomination because of his support for the Iraq war.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Despite assurances to the contrary from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Democratic insiders are certain Sen. Joseph Lieberman next year will be kicked out of the party's caucus and lose his Senate chairmanship if he addresses the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., as planned. Lieberman's Democratic colleagues willing to accept his support of Sen. John McCain for president consider speaking to the GOP convention as the last straw. Lieberman was re-elected from Connecticut as an independent in 2006 after losing the Democratic nomination because of his support for the Iraq war. After his 2006 election,...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- "I would say he was pretty underwhelming," said Lawyer Gus several days after he and some 200 other big-money supporters of Hillary Clinton's failed presidential campaign met with the victor, Barack Obama, in Washington on June 26. Lawyer Gus is a longtime Democratic activist, who will support and contribute to Obama as the party's nominee, but will not be enthusiastic about it. He is not alone. After the closed-door session in the Mayflower Hotel's ballroom, Gus was among 20 participants who gathered for drinks to talk it over. They agreed it was not an "exciting performance" by...

What is an "Obamacon?" The phrase surfaced in January to describe British conservatives entranced by Barack Obama. On March 13 the American Spectator broadened the term to cover all "conservative supporters" of the Democratic presidential candidate. Their ranks, though growing, feature few famous people. But looming on the horizon are two big potential Obamacons: Colin Powell and Chuck Hagel. Neither Powell, first-term secretary of state for George W. Bush, nor Hagel, retiring after two terms as a U.S. senator from Nebraska, has endorsed Obama. Hagel probably never will. Powell probably will enter Obama's camp at a time of his own...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Leaders of Sen. John McCain's campaign are looking toward "527s" as their principal means of attacking Sen. Barack Obama because they have been given a green light by McCain. "I can't be a referee of every spot run on television," McCain told the Boston Herald in an interview published June 12. He gave up after trying earlier this year to moderate an anti-Obama ad by the North Carolina Republican Party. The GOP presidential candidate, co-author of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform act, has criticized using Section 527 of the federal tax code to finance political advertisements by...

Although Obama also has deplored 527 organizations, the most prominent group is the left-wing MoveOn.org (bankrolled primarily by billionaire financier George Soros). It maintains steady fire against McCain. "DRILL NOW!" Members of Congress were swamped by telephone calls and e-mail messages Thursday demanding, "Drill now!" in response to a Republican call for increased American oil production to fight runaway gasoline prices. Lawmakers got little response to previous proposals intended to lower the cost of oil: alternative energy sources, a federal gasoline tax holiday, an excess profits tax on U.S. oil producers and pressure on foreign oil producers. In contrast, the...

Outlook The widely expected pivot to the center by Sen. Barack Obama began Tuesday with his Wall Street Journal interview in which he suggested he might cut the corporate tax rate. That contradicted everything the Democratic candidate had previously said and suggested a new economic strategy. It goes along with his move toward free trade positions and his statement that he would not negotiate with Iran without preconditions—also contradicting his primary election positions. Sen. John McCain, in contrast, made a move back toward the GOP conservative base by advocating offshore drilling (though not backtracking on his opposition to ANWR drilling),...

Sen. Arlen Specter, at age 78 suffering from cancer, was feeling miserable Monday following chemotherapy the previous Friday. But believing the best antidote was hard work, Specter took the Senate floor with a speech different in kind from the partisan oratory now customary in the chamber. Specter, a Republican centrist, never has been much of a partisan, but during five terms he has become a protector of the Senate's faded reputation as the "world's greatest deliberative body." On Monday, Specter deplored Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's use of a parliamentary device called "filling the tree" to prevent the Republican minority...

If Barack Obama is elected president, mutual friends say the best course for Hillary Clinton might be nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court rather than staying in the Senate. Clinton is also talked about as suitable for secretary of state in an Obama administration. The consensus among her friends is that she would not be content forging a lifetime career in the Senate, as Sen. Edward M. Kennedy did after he lost the 1980 presidential nomination. A footnote: The last confirmed Supreme Court nominee without prior judicial experience was Lewis Powell, a prestigious attorney from Richmond, Va., named by President...

Just when it seemed on the last Tuesday of the presidential primary season that Hillary Clinton would bow to the inevitable, she enraged Democrats who expected her to start strengthening Barack Obama as their party's nominee. During a conference call between Clinton and other New York members of Congress, Rep. Nydia Velazquez suggested that only an Obama-Clinton ticket could secure the Hispanic vote. "I am open to it," Clinton replied, according to several sources.

Just when it seemed on the last Tuesday of the presidential primary season that Hillary Clinton would bow to the inevitable, she enraged Democrats who expected her to start strengthening Barack Obama as nominee. During a conference call between Clinton and New York members of Congress, Rep. Nydia Velazquez suggested that only an Obama-Clinton ticket could secure the Hispanic vote. "I am open to it," Clinton replied, according to several sources. That message, promptly made public, infuriated Democratic activists outside the Clinton camp. Clinton was horning in on the climax to Obama's amazing political feat. Worse yet, she was going...

<p>A partisan Democratic mantra began earlier in the book. McClellan writes George H.W. Bush's 1988 campaign "acquiesced to certain advisers, including Roger Ailes and the late Lee Atwater," who opposed Bush's "civility and decency." (McClellan, then 20 years old, played no part in that campaign.) McClellan contends that thanks to Rove in 2002, "the first cracks appeared in the facade of bipartisan comity."</p>

Political donors report Sen. John McCain complains he is under pressure from President Bush and his former political adviser Karl Rove to select former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney as his vice presidential running mate. Since losing to McCain in the Republican primaries, Romney has become a strong supporter and helper of the presumptive nominee. During their contest, McCain indicated his dislike for Romney. Many economic conservatives view Romney as the best bet for a unified GOP ticket. Social conservatives are less enthusiastic about him, and many evangelicals still oppose Romney because of his Mormon religion.

Conservatives rationalized on May 13 when Republicans lost their third consecutive special Congressional election, in the supposedly safe 1st District of Mississippi. After all, they said, the victorious Democratic candidate Travis Childers, sounded more conservative during the campaign than his losing Republican candidate. He was a county official, a good old boy who the voters figured would be an independent conservative vote in the House as one of the Blue Dog Democrats. But once in Washington, he drank the Democratic leadership’s Kool Aid. In the first 13 House roll calls contested along partisan lines after Childers took his seat in...

Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann, whose Roman Catholic archdiocese covers northeast Kansas, on May 9 called on Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to stop taking Communion until she disowns her support for the "serious moral evil" of abortion. That put the church in conflict with a rising star of the Democratic Party, often described as a "moderate" and perhaps the leading prospect to become Barack Obama's vice presidential running mate. Naumann also took Sebelius to task for her veto April 21 of a bill, passed two to one by both houses of the Kansas Legislature, which would strengthen the state's ban on...

Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann, whose Roman Catholic archdiocese covers northeast Kansas, on May 9 called on Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to stop taking Communion until she disowns her support for the “serious moral evil” of abortion. That put the church in conflict with a rising star of the Democratic Party, often described as a “moderate” and perhaps the leading prospect to become Barack Obama’s vice presidential running mate. Naumann also took Sebelius to task for her veto April 21 of a bill, passed two to one by both houses of the Kansas Legislature, which would strengthen the state’s ban on...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, a strong favorite to be elected to the Senate this year, has told associates that he is being considered as Barack Obama’s vice presidential running mate. He did not indicate whether he would be receptive to such an offer. Removing Warner from the campaign for the seat now held by retiring Republican Sen. John Warner (no relation) would turn a sure Democratic takeover to a question mark. Mark Warner is heavily favored against the Republican nominee, former Gov. Jim Gilmore, but no substitute Democratic candidate is at hand. Although no Democratic presidential...

When one of the Democratic Party's most astute strategists this week criticized John McCain for attacking Barack Obama's desire to engage Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, I asked what the Republican presidential candidate ought to talk about in this campaign. "Health care and the economy," he replied. That is a sure formula for Democratic victory, but it is one that McCain's campaign rejects. Obama embraced that formula once it became clear that he would best Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. He began pounding McCain for seeking the third term of George W. Bush. At the same time, Obama implores McCain...

Outlook 1. Sen. Hillary Clinton's landslide primary victory Tuesday over Sen. Barack Obama in Kentucky is cause for at least a little Republican cheer in a bleak political landscape, despite Obama’s healthy win in Oregon.There is substantial voter rejection of Obama, with half of Kentucky's Democrats (as reflected in exit polls) saying they cannot vote for Obama in November. 2. Obama's quasi-victory speech from Iowa Tuesday night was intended to accelerate the impression he has been trying to make for the last month: that the fight for the nomination is really over, and it is time for Democrats to turn...

Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, at age 38 and having served less than five terms, did not leap over a dozen of his seniors to become ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee by bashing GOP leaders. But an angry Ryan last Wednesday delivered unscripted remarks on the House floor as the farm bill neared passage: "This bill is an absence of leadership. This bill shows we are not leading." Ryan's fellow reformer, 45-year-old Jeff Flake of Arizona, in his fourth term, is less cautious about defying the leadership and has been kept off key committees. On Wednesday, he said...

One of the wisest American former officials I know asked me a few nights ago: “Michael, put on your thinking cap, and tell me where the United States will be four years from now, if Barack Obama is president.” I had been trying to avoid that question in my own mind. I have tried to tell myself the old proverb (told me by my father), “God takes care of children, drunks, and the United States of America.” I have tried to imagine that Obama will not be president. But I should try to do the responsible thing: follow the trail...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- John McCain, who has spent the last two months trying to consolidate right-wing support as the Republican candidate for president, has a problem of disputed dimensions with a vital component of the conservative coalition: the evangelicals. The biggest question is whether Mike Huckabee is part of the problem or the solution for McCain. An element of the Christian community is not reconciled to McCain's candidacy but instead regards the prospective presidency of Barack Obama in the nature of a Biblical plague visited upon a sinful people. These militants look at former Baptist preacher Huckabee as "God's candidate"...

Robert Novak May 10, 2008 -- CLOSE-in supporters of Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign are convinced he never will offer the vice-presidential nomination to Sen. Hillary Clinton for one overriding reason: Michelle Obama. Obama's wife didn't comment on other rival candidates, but she has been sniping at Clinton since last summer. Obama sources say those public utterances don't reveal the extent of her hostility.

Buyer's remorse was beginning to afflict supporters of Barack Obama before Tuesday's primary election returns showed he had delivered a knockout... --snip-- John McCain as the Republican candidate does not like that kind of campaigning, either. But a gentlemanly contest between the old war hero from out of the past and the new advocate of reform from the future probably would guarantee Democratic takeover of the White House. The Republican Party, suffering from public disrepute, faces major Democratic gains in each house of Congress -- leaving the defeat of Obama as the sole GOP hope for 2008. --snip-- The test...

Buyer's remorse was beginning to afflict supporters of Barack Obama before Tuesday's primary election returns showed he had delivered a knockout punch against Hillary Clinton. The young orator who had seemed so fantastic beginning with his 2007 Jefferson-Jackson dinner speech in Iowa disappointed even his own advisers over the past two weeks, and old party hands mourned that they were stuck with a flawed candidate. The whipping Obama gave Clinton in North Carolina and his near miss in Indiana transformed that impression. The candidate who delivered the victory speech in Raleigh, N.C., was the Obama of Des Moines, bearing no...

Operating outside public view, the House Democratic majority is taking extraordinary steps to maintain spending as usual while awaiting a Democrat as president. Remarkably, the supine House Republican minority hardly resists and even collaborates with its supposed adversaries. There has been little or no public Republican protest over seizure of the appropriating process by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her clique. For the second straight year, no appropriations bill other than defense is scheduled for passage. Instead, spending details are crafted in the Speaker's Office, negating President George W. Bush's veto strategy. In a little-noticed maneuver April 23, Pelosi won...

In the aftermath of the visit by Pope Benedict XVI, a troublesome question is asked by traditional Catholics: Did American pro-choice politicians receiving Communion at the papal masses indicate a softening on the abortion question by the pope? The answer is that it did not. On the contrary, it reflected disobedience to Benedict by the archbishops of New York and Washington. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sens. John Kerry, Christopher Dodd and Edward M. Kennedy received Communion at Nationals Park in Washington, as did Rudolph Giuliani at Yankee Stadium in New York. They were present because they were invited to...

In the aftermath of the U.S. visit by Pope Benedict XVI, traditional Catholics are asking a troublesome question: Did pro-choice politicians receiving Communion at the papal Masses indicate the pope had softened on the abortion question? The answer is no. On the contrary, it reflected disobedience to Benedict by the archbishops of New York and Washington. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sens. John Kerry, Christopher Dodd and Edward M. Kennedy received Communion at Nationals Park in Washington, as did former mayor Rudolph Giuliani at Yankee Stadium in New York. Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington and Cardinal Edward Egan, archbishop of...

Big-time Republican contributors are complaining that prospective presidential nominee John McCain is poorly organized for the campaign and off to a bad start in raising money. McCain begins well behind Democrat Barack Obama in the 2008 money derby, and longtime Republican givers say there is no coherent plan for catching up and getting ahead. The bright spot for McCain in the opinion of the GOP money men is the presence in his campaign of New York investment banker Lew Eisenberg, an experienced Republican fund-raiser. Eisenberg, a pro-choice social liberal who has often contributed to Democrats, was attacked by conservatives when...

Traveling the country the past few months, I have encountered habitual Republican voters so entranced by Barack Obama’s potential to lead the nation that they plan to vote for him in November. Once Hillary Clinton’s defected supporters return to loyalty, Obama Republicans could produce a Democratic presidential landslide. But Obama’s current missteps jeopardize their support and imperil his election. These apostate Republicans never were deluded into considering him anything other than a doctrinaire liberal who wants a more intrusive government with higher taxation and tougher regulation. But they have leaned toward him as an exceptional candidate in the mold of...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Friends of Sen. Chuck Hagel, the Senate's sharpest critic of President Bush's Iraq policy, say there is no chance he will endorse a Democrat for president this year. That does not mean, however, that Hagel necessarily will back the Republican candidate, his friend John McCain. That could depend on whether McCain devises an Iraq exit strategy. Hagel and McCain, who occupy offices in the same second floor corridor of the Russell Senate Office Building, have been spotted conferring on two recent occasions. A footnote: Although the conservative Hagel is an unlikely running mate for either Barack Obama...

WASHINGTON -- Immediately after Mark Penn resigned as Hillary Clinton's chief strategist a week ago, he was on the phone with at least two prominent Democrats to assure them that nothing had changed. He said that -- though lacking a title now -- he still was polling and crafting her message, adding that he had just participated in a top-level conference call. De facto retention of Penn signified a desire to defeat Barack Obama at any cost. One day later, word was spread in Democratic circles that Geoff Garin, hired as a pollster by Sen. Clinton last month, had supplanted...

While conservatives inside the administration are unhappy about intervention in markets, President Bush seems content with how the Federal Reserve and Treasury cooked up the deal with erstwhile colleagues in Wall Street. There is little conservative or Republican about the administration's approach to the fiscal crisis, as reflected in Room G-50. Uncritical Democratic senators were not even inquisitive. The closest a senator came to asking who set the price for JPMorgan was this apologetic question from Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd: "There's just reports -- I want to share them with you -- that JPMorgan Chase would make an offer of...

Barack Obama’s speech last week, hastily prepared to extinguish the firestorm over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, won critical praise for style and substance but failed politically. By elevating the question of race in America, the front-running Democratic presidential candidate has deepened the dilemma created by his campaign’s success against the party establishment’s anointed choice, Hillary Clinton. In rejecting the racist views of his longtime spiritual mentor but not disowning him, Obama has unwittingly enhanced his image as the African American candidate—as opposed to being just a remarkable candidate who happens to be black. That poses a dilemma for unelected superdelegates,...

Robert Novak: "John McCain's team that is taking over the Republican Party has decided on Bobbie Greene Kilberg, a liberal Republican from Virginia long detested by conservatives, to run the party's national convention in St. Paul, Minn., in August." - UPDATE: "Politico.com" - "A McCain aide says that Kilberg has not been tapped to run the convention and is only serving as a liasion with the RNC. McCain has not decided yet on who will run the convention, said this source." http://www.politico.com/blogs/jonathanmartin/0308/This_will_get_GOP_insiders_a_buzzin.html

RUSH: McCain.....has picked a liberal Republican to run the Republican National Convention, a woman, according to Bob Novak." - Update: "Politico.com" - "A McCain aide says that Kilberg has not been tapped to run the convention....." - Original Story: Mike Allen's "Playbook" - http://dyn.politico.com/playbook/

Democratic Racial Divide By Robert D. Novak Monday, March 17, 2008 WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Geraldine Ferraro often has seemed puzzled during nearly 24 years since she was thrust from obscurity as a congresswoman from Queens to become the first woman nominated for vice president of the United States. But her current confusion is palpable because she has been condemned for repeating what she has heard from fellow supporters of Hillary Clinton and pursuing an apparent major goal of that campaign: to indelibly identify Democratic presidential rival Barack Obama as an African-American. "If Obama was a white man, he would not...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The disgraced Eliot Spitzer had hardly resigned as governor of New York when Republican strategists began calculating a return to power in Albany via New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Lt. Gov. David Paterson, Spitzer's successor as governor, is considered a weak prospect for the 2010 election and might not even be the Democratic nominee. Bloomberg, finishing two successful terms as mayor in 2009, might find life as a private citizen boring enough to try for governor. Bloomberg, who changed his affiliation from Republican to independent, could obtain the Independence Party nomination for governor, and then be endorsed...

Preparing to hear oral arguments Tuesday on the extent of gun rights guaranteed by the Constitution’s Second Amendment, the U.S. Supreme Court has before it a brief signed by Vice President Cheney opposing the Bush administration’s stance. Even more remarkably, Cheney is faithfully reflecting the views of President George W. Bush. The government position filed with the Supreme Court by U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement stunned gun advocates by opposing the breadth of an appellate court affirmation of individual ownership rights. The Justice Department, not the vice president, is out of order. But if Bush agrees with Cheney, why did...

Conservatives and party regulars were not happy about the selection of Carly Fiorina to head the Republican National Committee’s “Victory 2008” campaign raising funds for the presidential election. She was one of the nation’s most visible CEOs before she was fired by Hewlett-Packard in 2005 for not generating enough profits. Federal Election Commission records show Fiorina contributed nothing to the Republican Party the last eight years. Her only political giving was to Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign—$2,100 in 2006 and $2,300 in 2007. Fiorina was at McCain’s side when he campaigned in the critical Michigan and Florida races. Fiorina has...

The scope of Hillary Clinton's latest resurrection can be appreciated only in light of the elaborate preparations that had been made for her expeditious burial. That she is very much alive can be attributed to her true grit but also to the revelation that Barack Obama is not a miraculously perfect candidate after all. Assuming that Clinton would at best eke out a victory in Ohio on Tuesday to end her long losing streak, prominent Democrats were organizing a major private intervention. A posse of party leaders would plead with her to end her campaign and recognize Obama as the...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- As Sen. Barack Obama nears the Democratic presidential nomination, a corruption trial of his former fund-raiser Antoin (Tony) Rezko on charges of influence peddling begins in Chicago today (Monday). Sen. Hillary Clinton's operatives have tried frantically, but not effectively, to interest U.S. news media outside Chicago in Obama's possible connection with his home state's latest major scandal. Obama bought a mock Georgian mansion on Chicago's south side on June 15, 2005, the same day Rezko's wife bought a plot next door from the same seller. Obama then purchased from Rezko another parcel at above-market value. Federal prosecutors...

Supporters of Sen. Barack Obama concede that Sen. Hillary Clinton's aggressiveness rescued him from a serious blunder in last Tuesday's presidential debate at Cleveland, when he hesitated at rejecting a lavish endorsement of him by black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan. Continues...================================================================ Warning: PhotoGRAPHIC! I thought Hillary would be easier than Obama to beat, then along came The Photo, which was clearly doctored -- the suicide belt was removed! It shows Obama decked out in Muslim garb during his '06 trip to Kenya to interfere in Kenya's politics. Whip out a red-states/blue-states '04 election map and see how many red states...

Minnesota's Republican governor, Tim Pawlenty, carefully prepared his plan for controlling greenhouse gas emissions to present it at the annual winter meeting of governors in Washington. That effort coincided with Pawlenty's fast-rising prospects to become Sen. John McCain's choice for vice president. But behind closed doors, governors from energy-producing states complained so vigorously that Pawlenty's proposal was buried. Pawlenty's position as chairman of the National Governors Association may prove to be his undoing. While party insiders sing his praises as ideal to be McCain's running mate, leading conservative Republican governors have been less than pleased with him..... Pawlenty, 47, has...

NPR: Democratic Party Insiders Believe Hillary Campaign Is Dead by Robert Novak and Timothy P. Carney Posted: 02/27/2008 Outlook The best indicator of Sen. Hillary Clinton's (D-N.Y.) distress is the fact that erstwhile supporters, including former Clinton Cabinet members, are badmouthing her as a very poor candidate. Inside the Democratic Party, it is already taken for granted that the queen is dead and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is the king. Conservative apprehension about Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has less to do with issues than personalities. For example, the picture of Republican moderates and liberals at McCain's side as he celebrated...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Strategists for Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign believe it is imperative to identify her high-flying opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, with the "McGovern wing" of the Democratic Party -- but they want to keep their candidate's fingerprints off the attack. During the two weeks remaining before the important Ohio and Texas primaries on March 4, Clinton insiders want to spread the message that Obama represents the radical left-wing politics of George McGovern's 1972 candidacy, which won only one state. But they don't know how to accomplish this. When Clinton herself has launched past attacks on Obama, it has...

Reagan's son criticizes McCain ! .. at CPAC "An Inside Report by Robert D. Novak Saturday, February 09, 2008 WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Sen. John McCain's managers, fearing an unfavorable reaction at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Thursday, wanted to precede his speech with a video of Ronald Reagan praising McCain. Talk show host Michael Reagan, the late president's son, offered his own video criticizing McCain. David Keene, chairman of the sponsoring American Conservative Union, turned down both.down".... http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/political_commentary/commentary_by_robert_d_novak/mccain_at_cpac

There is no mathematical possibility of tomorrow's Mega-Tuesday Democratic balloting for 1,681 delegates in 22 states -- labeled the first "national" primary -- giving either Clinton or Sen. Barack Obama close to the 2,025 delegates necessary for nomination. That unexpected reality is produced by Obama's appeal, Clinton fatigue and the extreme proportional representation used by the Democratic Party. The nation's two major political parties have reverted to form after appearing to have exchanged identities. A year ago, Democrats seemed to be emulating Republican practice in settling for an early anointed candidate, Clinton, while the divided GOP field resembled historical Democratic...

Robert Novak reports that President Bush won’t support Mitt Romney because he changed his mind about shamnesty (hat tip - reader Rosebud). While President George W. Bush has maintained neutrality among contenders for the Republican presidential nomination, he privately expresses to friends his exasperation with Mitt Romney’s hard-line stance on immigration. Bush is upset that Romney changed his position on the issue, compared to what it had been when he was governor of Massachusetts, at the expense of the president’s immigration reform. Bush and Sen. John McCain are not close, but the president is grateful for McCain’s support on Iraq...

President Bush has maintained neutrality but privately expresses exasperation with Romney's hard-line stance on immigration......Bush is upset Romney changed his position at the expense of the president's immigration reform. Bush and McCain are not close, but he's grateful for McCain's support on Iraq and immigration. Florida Gov. Crist's unexpected late endorsement, which helped propel McCain to victory, was an unpleasant surprise to state Republican leaders. Crist had said he was not making an endorsement after shunning Giuliani's courtship and suggested that they also stay neutral. His support for McCain irked Republican activists who generally would have preferred former Romney. Romney...