"The Republican Congress is spending at twice the rate as under Bill Clinton, and President Bush has yet to issue a single veto," Paul M. Weyrich, national chairman of Coalitions for America, said at a news briefing with the other five leaders. "I complained about profligate spending during the Clinton years but never thought I'd have to do so with a Republican in the White House and Republicans controlling the Congress."

In another article by-lined by Bill Sammon the Times says that BUSH 2004 is feeling the right’s revolution in the political pocket book. That article quotes Phil Kent, one of the hosts of yesterday’s Georgia fund-raiser describing the effect on his efforts of the President’s immigration reform proposals: "I was soliciting checks right after the announcement, and I lost two checks from people who had wanted to come, but wouldn't," Mr. Kent said. "They specifically said this is just rewarding lawbreakers. "That was the constant theme," he added. "And even among some people who wrote the checks, there's grumbling."

Rove counted on a quick military victory and a grateful and enthusiastic Iraqi people to set the tone for the 2004 campaign. It did not turn out that way. Now Paul Bremer is headed to the United Nations to plead for support for the US and CNN reports that the Administration is offering reconstruction contracts to Russia, France and Germany in an effort to quote their support in the international body.

The President’s call for the nation to colonize the moon and reach for Mars isn’t generating the enthusiasm that greeted President Kennedy’s space race initiative 40 years ago. “Back to the Future” just is not selling as well as Rove though it would.

Rove’s style for the 2004 campaign seems to be a variation of the Dick Morris triangulation strategy used by Bill Clinton in 1996. In the Rove version it seems to be “run from the center; act like a warrior; and don’t bother to govern at all – let Congress take the heat.” The problem with that strategy is that Congress is no more predictable than were the Iraqi people. Congress, with both houses controlled by the President’s party, is not following the right’s agenda. Congress is acting like – well- Congress more concerned with bringing home the bacon than with following the Right’s party line.

It was the Right’s coalition of xenophobic class warriors and greed driven economic royalists that brought George to within an eyelash of willing the Presidency fair and square. With that coalition spinning apart in the political centrifuge, with his core threatening to stay home and throwing out the challenge the President is trying to balance on a political tight rope. Will he be able to keep his balance while the Democrats coalesce around a candidate and he is distracted by the thunder on the right?