GOP alienation marks turnabout for Bush

President Bush, weakened by an unpopular war and the loss of Republican control in Congress, is now confronting disaffection within his own party that could complicate his attempt to set an agenda for his final two years in office.

As Republicans departed Capitol Hill this weekend, some who used to dismiss Democratic attempts to investigate the administration as political posturing are now lining up behind calls for greater oversight of the executive branch.

They are advertising attacks on Bush’s foreign policy that they once kept largely private. Last week, Oregon Sen. Gordon H. Smith gave a speech calling the current war strategy “absurd” and sent out a news release with his remarks.

Some longtime Bush allies, such as Texas Sen. John Cornyn, are even adopting Democratic rhetoric to criticize the Iraq war.

And on other issues that will confront the new Congress in January -- including trade and judicial appointments -- Republican lawmakers have signaled an unwillingness to follow the White House.

“Frankly, I think there is a greater recognition and awareness of the necessity for us to exercise checks and balances,” said Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine), noting how much the Nov. 7 election changed the climate on Capitol Hill.

“If there was a reluctance to express that in the past, there isn’t anymore,” Snowe said.

To be sure, no one is expecting Republicans to abandon the president. And the ideological gap between Democrats and Republicans in Congress remains large.

But Republican disaffection marks a remarkable turnabout for a president whose command of his party was once so supreme he virtually appointed the Senate majority leader and GOP lawmakers openly acknowledged taking orders from the White House.

And it suggests that the Bush administration may have as much work to do to repair ties with Republicans as it does to build links with Democrats who will assume control of the House and Senate in January.

“They need to have a better relationship with members on both sides of the aisle,” said Rep. Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican whose early support for Bush’s war policy nearly cost him his seat last month.

Not so long ago, it was Republican members of Congress who labored to stay close to the president.

The Bush administration’s ability to win approval from a compliant legislative branch for everything from tax cuts to foreign invasions and other initiatives was a source of awe. In 2002, the president was widely seen as responsible for making Tennessee Republican Bill Frist the Senate majority leader.

That influence was slipping even before the November midterm election swept Republicans from power on Capitol Hill.

House Republicans abandoned Bush over immigration. And in the Senate, some of the chamber’s most respected GOP members stood up to the White House on Iraq and the prosecution of terrorism suspects.

In the run-up to Nov. 7, Bush weathered more defections as some Republican congressional candidates tried to distance themselves from the president’s war policies, calling for troop withdrawals and the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

But since the pivotal election, dissent has mushroomed.

And as the House and Senate prepare for what many expect to be heated debates next year over the course of U.S. policy in the Middle East, Republican lawmakers have stepped up their critiques of the war, directly challenging the White House in ways that had been the province of Democrats.

Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, Sen.-elect Bob Corker of Tennessee and others have explicitly called for more engagement with Syria and Iran, two states the Bush administration has treated as pariahs for most of the last six years.

Even some of the president’s most loyal allies, including Texas Sens. Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison, are tacking away from the White House by calling for more troops in Iraq.

While the president tried to remain upbeat after the Iraq Study Group brought its grim assessment to the Capitol last week, Cornyn offered no more encouragement than Bush’s toughest critics.

“What we’re doing now is not working,” Cornyn said, echoing a Democratic campaign slogan. “We need a change of course.”

The change in climate on Capitol Hill has been remarkable, said Rep. Walter B. Jones, a North Carolina Republican who broke with his party to oppose the war last year.

“Many of my friends said to me [then], ‘You know, Walter, you are beginning to be so independent that it may end up hurting you,’ ” Jones said. He added that a number of his colleagues told him that although they agreed with him, they feared being disloyal to the president.

“I haven’t heard that recently,” Jones said

The reason is simple, said Paul Begala, a Democratic consultant who worked in the White House when President Clinton was forced to confront congressional Democrats after the party lost its majorities in 1994.

“When you are in the White House, members of Congress respond to two things: what you can do for them and what you can do to them,” Begala said. “Here’s what [Bush] did to them: He cost them control.... Republicans are paying the political consequences for Bush’s policy failures. They don’t like that.”

Beyond Iraq, that may spell trouble for the White House next year.

Already, GOP lawmakers are signaling their eagerness to join in the kind of congressional investigation that Democrats promised on the campaign trail this fall.

Last week, Republicans scrambled to express support for expanding the power of an independent agency to monitor spending on Iraq reconstruction, a move that House Republicans had quashed in an appropriations committee earlier this year.

On other issues too there were signs of dissent last week. Many GOP lawmakers bucked the White House over trade deals with Vietnam and Haiti, forcing a flurry of last-minute parliamentary maneuvering to get the agreements through Congress.

As the congressional session drew to a close, the president also couldn’t get a hearing for a raft of conservative judges he renominated for positions on the federal bench.

Amid the growing signs of defiance, the president gave a nod to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue last week, inviting Democratic and Republican congressional leaders to the White House.

And the administration communicated a new willingness to talk with Congress about overhauling Social Security without insisting on setting up private accounts.

“We can’t have talks if everyone doesn’t start with a clean sheet of paper,” said a White House official who asked not to be named because the talks had not been announced.

But lawmakers, congressional aides and political scholars say the White House has its work cut out for it.

Other weakened presidents, including Ronald Reagan, have had to deal with a sour Congress in their final two years, said John J. Pitney Jr., a former Republican National Committee staffer who teaches government at Claremont McKenna College.

But though Reagan was saddled with the Iran-Contra affair, Americans weren’t dying overseas every day.

“Bush has low approval ratings. He has an unpopular war. And every day is one day closer to his exit,” Pitney said. “That is not a recipe for legislative success.”

noam.levey@latimes.com

Times staff writer Joel Havemann contributed to this report.