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"At this point, he [Dubyuh] needs to shore up his conservative base and concentrate on giving us a reason to turnout and vote."

Exactly!! Of course the tax cuts are fine and dandy, and I'm impressed with his resolve regarding the War on Terrorism; however, the Right's worked for a generation to give a GOP POTUS a GOP-controlled Congress only to see us outspend Clinton and his DemonRAT-controlled Congress in non-defense discretionary spending!! That's a kick in the teeth of every single fiscal conservative I know, but Bush and his advisors seem oblivious to it!!

"There is a new election dynamic that is as yet little noted. It is that in 2000 and 2002, turnout of base voters has overall become more critical to both parties. And '04 and at least the next few elections following will be much the same. ...Rove acknowledges this, still smarting from an expected 3 million largely religious right voters that were MIA in the 2000 election. He may not admit it publicly but I think that he and Bush are very aware of it and they know that Bush had offered those people, once very loyal and regular conservative voters, very little reason to turn out and vote for Bush. And that cost votes for downstream candidates as well."

I'm not sure how you know Rove understands this, at least not from the actions Dubyuh's taken over the last coupla years vis a vis domestic spending. Fer instance, that Education Bill was an abomination, the Farm Bill displayed absolutely no spending discipline whatsoever, and I can't name a single domestic spending program that Bush and the GOP Congress has scuttled!! As Dubyuh's popularity continues to slowly dwindle, I've gotta wonder how much of that is because of Dubyuh's slip-sliding to the squishy middle...it's time to make a major move towards the Reaganesque Bush persona so many of us prayed for when we voted for Dubyuh in 2000, then voted to strengthen the Congressional majorities in 2002. At some point, it becomes impossible to argue effectively that more and more GOPers will ever result in appreciable decreases in the size and scope of the Federal Leviathan.

FReegards...MUD

At some point, it becomes impossible to argue effectively that more and more GOPers will ever result in appreciable decreases in the size and scope of the Federal Leviathan.

A sound conclusion to your preceding well-reasoned observations.

As to the point I made that Rove and Bush know they failed to get the base out in 2000, Rove has made remarks. So he knows. But he and Bush are still playing the soccer mom game. And that means more mushy liberalism from the GOP. As far as I can tell, there's no reason to believe he can ever get any more votes with this strategy than he already has. And no reason to believe he'd lose these moderates if he instead took some action to get the conservative base interested and enthused over his presidency. Failure to alter Rove's nonproductive strategy in 2000 nearly brought on a disaster and the recount will leave it under a permanent shadow of illegitimacy. And then, like now, BushCo had to know that the big California endgame with a lot of personal appearances there and all the ad money they spent on it were going to go to waste. Had Bush done more to cover the rightwing base or taken that same time and money and spent it on Floriduh, there would never have been any recount. Like I said, they had to know that Cali was a loser for Bush. The same is true today. Bush and Rove must know that the base isn't too happy with some of the things they've been up to. And the lack of conservative appellate judges.

Reading your astute post was a pleasure. Some of the commentary here at FR has gotten pretty gushy. Swooning over Bush or Arnie or such has become an embarassingly regular feature of FR. Hopefully, people will come to their senses while we still have something that resembles a party of conservative principle.