GOP Center Shying Away From Bush
Moderates Cool To Policies And Presence Of President

By DAVID LIGHTMAN
Hartford Courant Washington Bureau Chief

WASHINGTON -- When Sarah Chamberlain Resnick asked moderate House Republicans recently if they wanted Arizona Sen. John McCain to campaign for them, every hand went up. 

She didn't even ask if anyone wanted President Bush's help.  

"I knew the answer," said Resnick, executive director of the Republican Main Street Partnership, a GOP centrist group.  

Although almost no Republican moderates in Congress will say flatly that Bush could hurt them this fall, they are signaling by their recent actions that they need to put some distance between themselves and the president.

Congress will return to Washington Monday and begin deliberations over the budget, homeland security and a wide range of issues, and moderates are expected to protest Bush's budget cuts. They are raising questions about homeland security strategies. And this week they began voicing strong opposition to the White House's plan to sell operations at six major U.S. ports to a Middle Eastern company. 

Rep. Rob Simmons, R-2nd District, for instance, has spoken out forcefully against certain budget cuts and the port deal. He is one of the nation's most vulnerable Republicans, representing an eastern Connecticut district that Bush lost in 2004 by 10 percentage points. 

Asked if Simmons wants the president to campaign for him this year, Simmons' chief of staff, Todd Mitchell, said that although the congressman would welcome Bush in his district, "sometimes it can be a distraction in what you're trying to accomplish." 

Bringing in the president, Mitchell said, means committing time and resources that otherwise could be used to travel around the district, explaining one's own views to constituents.

 Democrats have a different take on the moderates' reluctance to invite Bush: "These Republicans have voting records they can't defend," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Bringing in Bush, he argued, draws attention to those records. 

So far this year, Republicans have inched - and in some cases, have run - away from the president's positions. 

Reps. Christopher Shays, R-4th District, who represents a district Bush lost in 2004 by 6 points, and Michael Turner, R-Ohio, led an effort by 28 GOP colleagues to urge Bush to restore the money he cut for the popular Community Development Block Grant program, which helps neighborhood projects throughout the country. 

Shays also co-authored a letter to the White House budget office with Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., noting that Bush had cut funding for an intelligence oversight board.

 Shays teamed with another Democrat, Sen. Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, in questioning the port deal. Shays was one of seven lawmakers writing to Treasury Secretary John Snow seeking more information.

 Other moderates joined the chorus of skeptics on the ports and the budget. Discussing cuts to government programs, Rep. Michael Castle, R-Del., said, "We believe everything should be on the table." Simmons joined a bid by 27 Republicans to seek more money for Amtrak.

 But at the same time, they and other lawmakers maintained they were not being election-year rebels.

 "I'd be proud to have the president come in and campaign for me, but I'm not going to change my positions," said Shays. "Knowing he and I differ on a number of issues, I'd be grateful if he came in."

Such attitudes are common, said Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, who noted, "Members of Congress always have problems with the budget." Lawmakers always want to show constituents they are fighting for local needs; Mitchell noted that "we go through this every year." 

While that's true to some extent, this year has seen more Republican independence. The uproar over the ports was driven not just by moderates, but by Congress' top Republican leaders, House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.

 And the Feb. 1 choice of Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, as House majority leader was touted by members of conservative and moderate camps as an important step toward reform and independence; House Republicans rejected the bids of more hard-line conservative Rep. John B. Shadegg, R-Ariz., and Missouri Rep. Roy Blunt, who was close to former Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas.

 Shadegg and his allies made it clear that they backed the same kind of sharp budget cuts, particularly in domestic spending, that Bush favored, and most have continued to defend the president's position.

 "A budget is really about values," said Rep. Michael K. Simpson, R-Idaho, about reducing the size of government and the deficit, and about looking at the bigger picture and not individual programs. 

What's important, said Rep. Connie Mack, R-Fla., is that "hopefully at some point down the line I can look my kids in the eyes and say, `You know, today we cut spending.'"

 But even conservatives are wary of many of the cuts. Rep. Harold Rogers, R-Ky., recently criticized the White House for over-emphasizing border security and nuclear detection in its homeland security budget.

 "While these are homeland security priorities and rightfully so," said Rogers, chairman of the House homeland security appropriations subcommittee, "those increases are coming at the expense of everything else." 

That means less money for first responders, transit security, research and development and air marshals.

 One important political wrinkle as the elections get nearer is that most Republicans, including the moderates, support Bush on some key issues, notably Iraq, his homeland security strategy and his tax cuts. 

Simmons and Shays hardly hide their backing of the war; Shays just returned from his 11th visit to Iraq and reported continued progress. After civil strife rocked the country this week, he said he was "apprehensive" about Iraq's future, but still hopeful tensions would ease.

 The furor over the ports, though, is an important break with the administration, because it demonstrates a willingness to take an independent stand on a terrorism-related issue.

 And Democrats will hammer away at the Bush budget's potential human toll, as they remind voters that Shays, Simmons and other centrists are only "so-called moderates," as Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro, D-3rd District, put it.

 Her accuracy depends on one's interpretation of the data. Simmons, Shays and Rep. Nancy L. Johnson, R-5th District, were among the top 11 House Republicans who opposed Bush most frequently last year, according to Congressional Quarterly's annual study.

 But that still meant Simmons backed Bush on 65 percent of the 46 votes tallied by Congressional Quarterly in which the president took a position, while Shays supported Bush 57 percent of the time and Johnson voted with the president 59 percent of the time.  

Castle, the House Republican from Delaware, shrugged off any concern that he has a political problem unique to 2006. "Moderate Republicans," he said, "always are in some difficult circumstance or another."