Is He Serious?

by digby

Jacob Weisberg says:

Bush doesn’t worry about being politically correct or care what other people think of him. He likes to listen to white guys singing country and rock and doesn’t care if Jerry Falwell objects to some of the lyrics.

Right. He’s a real maverick:

He flew halfway across the country in a vain effort to save her life, but in the week since, President Bush has retreated back to his ranch and remained largely out of sight as the nation wrestled with the great moral issues surrounding the fate of Terri Schiavo.

The president has said nothing publicly about the bitterly contested case since Wednesday, when reporters asked about it and he said he had exhausted his powers to intervene. On Saturday, as he used his weekly radio address to express condolences to the victims of a school shooting in Minnesota and extol a “culture that affirms life,” he did not mention the most prominent culture-of-life issue in the public eye.

The juxtaposition of racing through the night in Air Force One to sign legislation intended to force doctors to reinsert Schiavo’s feeding tube and choosing not to use his bully pulpit to advocate for her life afterward demonstrates how uncomfortable the matter has become for the White House. For years, Bush has succeeded politically in stitching together the disparate elements of the conservative movement, marrying the libertarian and family-values wings of his party. Now he faces a major Republican rupture.

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