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Some of the unappeasables truly do want the Dims to win, so we can be "punished" for our sin of not being perfect. They did they same thing to Ronald Reagan and won't admit it. There are some folks who are disappointed in the President and , good God, he is not omnipotent. Several who have vented won't abandon reality, Some will, the most vociferous ,the brigadiers and the perotistas ,who fail to see that their messiahs of the true way are far more flawed in their taste for totalitarianism hidden in a populist sheath.

I don't understand the point of this type of thinking.
It reminds me of old newsreels of "The Great Leap Forward," where Maoist subjects would whip themselves into alternating, orgiastic frenzies of vitriol and delusion, to top their neighbors' frenzies.
What good does it do to presume, incorrectly, that all is well and Panglossian with President Bush and the Republican Party?
Folks are telling you now, in January, that they aren't happy with this President. Will you ignore this for ten months, until November?
If the votes you're expecting don't materialize as you believe they should, will you wonder if you made the right decision to ignore the discontent in January?
I think you have to wear some very cinched up tinfoil to believe that the rumblings you've been reading and hearing are all, or even mostly as you've described above. It is no service to this President to ignore legitimate concerns that his constituents legitimately have with him. I've seen so much of the "don't let the door hit you in the ass" type of coalition-building on this site, and I wonder if the "all-contents" realize how very much they are like the worst of the "malcontents" about which they rail.

I think you have to wear some very cinched up tinfoil to believe that the rumblings you've been reading and hearing are all, or even mostly as you've described above

Well heck,I just went by you hat maker ;-)

Seriously,you moan ,scream and look for the Mexicans under your bed, then tell me that I'm not doing anyone a service? You make some good points, and I rather enjoy agreeing with you, but you also tend to be a bit protesting too much. All the screeds about going to the Constipation Party do less service, emboldening the Left in a manner an individual as sophisticated as you obviously are ,has to be aware of.

Never believe support for the good to great things Bush has dine means I'm in lockstep with him.Just like when I shoot back does not mean I diminish your exhaustive and thought provoking posts.

"If the votes you're expecting don't materialize as you believe they should, will you wonder if you made the right decision to ignore the discontent in January?"

That's the question that we are all putting our money on, one way or the other.

Frankly, I see various groups all playing this bet.

There are the legitimate Conservatives who are honestly and fairly bothered by CFR, Immigration Reform, and over spending. These are fair complaints. No one said that Bush was the second coming of Jesus. He's human. Mistakes and miscalculations are to be expected, and real Conservatives should debate whether or not he has in deed miscalculated or made mistakes on those above 3 issues. Fair cases can be made for both sides of all three arguments/issues above, and that's what forums such as FR should be used to hash out.

Then there are the disrupters, for lack of a better all-inclusive label. I'd label as a "disrupter" those 3rd Party (Green, Constitution, Libertarian, Communist, Reform, etc.) activists whose goal is spread dissent within Republican ranks while perhaps poaching a few gullible voters from our tent into their own fold. These activists are poison to any reasoned, rational debate. Typically they range from post-and-run types to flame baiters to last-word-itus professional arguers. Their stock in trade is to sieze upon any current event and complain that it isn't and hasn't been handled to their liking, that people who are less radical than they are must be unpatriotic or RINOs or statists, etc. They also like to sieze upon legitimate Conservative dissension in order to bash away at the core of what we stand for and support. They'll even pretend that harmless laws like the Patriot Act are somehow oppressive (been oppressed lately, though?!) while often simultaneously claiming that having a radical left-wing Democrat in the White House making Supreme Court appointments will be "good" for Republicans.

And then there is the third group, those of us who've become convinced that Bush is sincere, honest, and thoughtful and worthy of our trust. We actually...gasp...give the guy the benefit of the doubt on his decisions in the highest pressure political position in the land.

For this crime (as viewed by those in group 2 above) we are labeled as "bushbots" and sent some rather nasty, though harmless, private emails, among other such things.

What good does it do to presume, incorrectly, that all is well and Panglossian with President Bush and the Republican Party?

Nobody has to presume anything; in fact, it's quite true; poll after poll has proven it.

Now, as we enter another voting season, the Gallup Organization has released a study, based on 40,000 interviews, that shows that 45.5 percent of voters identify with or lean toward the Republican Party and 45.2 percent identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party.

So is that it? After Sept. 11, the Iraq war and the Madonna-Britney kiss, could it really be that we are back to where we started? Since 2000, tens of millions of people have moved, divorced and converted; can it really be that everything in America changes except politics?

Yes and no. Yes, the political divides today do look a lot like the ones that split the nation in 2000. But no. When you look beneath the headline data, you see at least one important change. The events of the past three years have brought to the foreground issues that divide Democrats, and pushed to the background issues that divide Republicans.

The first result is that the Republican Party is more unified than ever before. Ninety-one percent of Republicans approve of the job President Bush is doing. In 1992, Bush's father didn't have anything like that level of support, and even the Reagan administration was split between so-called pragmatists and ideologues.

Today's Republicans not only like Bush personally, they also overwhelmingly support his policies. According to a Pew Center study, 85 percent of Republicans support the war in Iraq, 82 percent believe that pre-emptive war is justified, and 72 percent believe the U.S. is justified in holding terror suspects without trial.

The Bush Democrats