Otherwise, she's dead right after the Republican primary. Now she lives on to fight another day. This is the only way she can stay alive, and she's putting the best face on it. |
Reading the tea leaves of what they have been saying, there are more changes coming. |
She wanted no part of any of this from the get-go when they got married. She's gotten comfortable to the point that she seems engaged. |
She's starting slow, ... If she's not able to raise sizable chunks of money to come within one-half or one-third of what George W. Bush has raised, people might start raising questions about her viability. |
She's starting slow. If she's not able to raise sizable chunks of money to come within one-half or one-third of what George W. Bush has raised, people might start raising questions about her viability. |
Since her husband is down in the polls, she's picking up the slack. There's no one remotely associated with the administration who is at the popularity level that she's at now. |
Texas comes out smelling like a rose so far. |
That used to be his sanctuary, out in the middle of rural Texas where he could get his mind off his troubles. And now his troubles are right down the street. |
The base in Congress is eroding as members worry about their own electorates, start to back away from him on immigration, start to back away on Iraq and start to consider the president as an optional ally rather than a vital one. |
The fight for the soul of the party has not been concluded yet. The centrist Democrats are still alive, they want fiscal prudence, no big social spending programs. The Howard Dean wing of the Democratic Party has said you don't win by running as a paler version of the Republican mandate. Those two factions have not come to terms, |
The longer a party holds power, it's harder to make sure everyone marches to the same tune. |
The only way she can establish a beach hold of credibility is to try and play into what's likely to be a kind of anti-incumbent, anti-politician campaign season. |
The president will try to reassure his base by telling them to watch what she does, to watch what she says, and that she will turn out to be a conservative. |
The reason that trust is so important has to do with the long-standing belief that you could trust him, even if you don't always agree with him and don't understand what he's doing. The honesty dip is partly caused by a loss of faith in his credibility on Iraq. |
Their biggest problem is developing some bipartisan way to deal with Iraq. They're still alternating between bipartisan rhetoric and impugning the patriotism of those who disagree with Bush. The daily bad news from Iraq doesn't help. |