Bush Giving GOP Establishment Jitters

From Capitol Hill to Sacramento, an undercurrent of nervousness is running through the Republican Party, as members of the establishment that bet so heavily on George W. Bush begin to question his election prospects.

The second-guessing came amid several signs Thursday of shifting momentum in the GOP race, including a pair of South Carolina polls that showed a dramatic surge by John McCain two days after the senator from Arizona stunned Bush in the New Hampshire primary. McCain also triumphed in a fight to get on the New York ballot and reported raising $1 million via his Internet Web site in just 48 hours.

Bush remains a favorite to win the GOP nomination. But his underwhelming performance in Iowa and devastating defeat in New Hampshire have many Republicans worried he may not be as strong a fall candidate as they thought when they jumped on his bandwagon.

“There’s a lot of concern,” said Kevin Spillane, a Sacramento campaign consultant, who has spoken in the last few days with several Bush supporters in the state Legislature. “Clearly, Bush would be a better president. But McCain has proven to be a better candidate.”

A GOP strategist and Bush sympathizer described the mood in the party establishment this way: “Concern. If he loses South Carolina, it will become panic.”

Two new polls in South Carolina, site of the next big Republican contest Feb. 19, dramatically illustrate the boost the New Hampshire victory gave McCain, who was trailing in the most recent surveys by 20 points. One survey released Thursday showed the race dead-even; the second placed McCain 5 points ahead. Bush shrugged off the results. “I don’t know about polls,” he said. “I’m going to win the state.”

As yet, there have been no public defections from Bush, though McCain’s camp claimed its surge in campaign contributions included many from Bush backers hedging their bets.

But there has been a marked shift in attitudes within the party toward the Texas governor and his campaign’s reliance on big names and big money--a wariness all the more striking given its absence in the wholesale rush to embrace Bush just a few months ago.

In California, where Bush faces criticism for skipping this weekend’s state GOP convention, polling indicated a slide similar to his drop in South Carolina. A survey done by insurance companies involved in a pair of March ballot measures found last week’s 33%-11% Bush lead over McCain shrinking Thursday to 22%-18%. “McCain has shown he’s ready for prime time,” says Allan Hoffenblum, a California Republican consultant. “But Bush has yet to prove that, and people are going to be watching South Carolina very closely.”

Since arriving in the state, Bush has been stressing his conservative stance on social issues, appealing to South Carolina’s strong religious right. Some fear that using this strategy to beat McCain for the nomination could hurt Bush with the more centrist voters he would need to win the White House in November. “All he’s accomplishing is undoing all the groundwork he laid last fall being the ‘compassionate conservative,’ ” said Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster.

By phone and by fax, the governor’s operatives were busy this week trying to reassure anxious supporters across the country. Even before the polls closed Tuesday night, staffers began calling governors as well as key Bush supporters in Congress, following up with a series of “post-New Hampshire primary talking points” distributed around the country.

“It’s natural at a time like this people would ask questions,” said Ari Fleischer, a Bush spokesman. “They deserve answers, and they’re getting them.”

On Capitol Hill, where Bush is favored by most GOP lawmakers, an aide to one Republican committee chairman described House members as “shellshocked” by McCain’s 18-point New Hampshire landslide.

“This is the heart of the establishment, and people were convinced that George Bush’s nomination was inevitable,” the aide said. “When exit poll numbers [from New Hampshire] came out, people didn’t believe them, they laughed. The next morning they woke up and were horrified.”

The “talking points,” a suggested script for Bush supporters who speak to the media, blamed the governor’s loss in part on “the special attention” McCain lavished on New Hampshire’s “liberal independent voters” and added, “Gov. Bush is . . . a better candidate because of his New Hampshire experience.”

But far from mollifying nervous allies, some found the campaign’s diagnosis cause for even greater alarm.

“I understand talking points are for the GOP establishment to go out and put the happiest face on things,” said one recipient, an occasional Bush advisor. “But it was all external: ‘We did nothing wrong. It was the environment, it was the opposition, it was those who chose to vote.’ It didn’t seem to reflect any real introspection on the part of either the candidate or his campaign.”

Some in the party voiced genuine concern that momentum could irreversibly move away from Bush to the insurgent McCain, who has spent much of his campaign challenging his party’s establishment.

“Firewalls be darned,” said one Eastern state chairman, referring to the Bush strategy of building institutional support in early-voting states. “There are a lot of people who feel now if Bush loses South Carolina, that bump in the road may turn into a sinkhole.”

Bush will likely face a more difficult fight than expected in at least one other state, New York, after Gov. George Pataki announced he would drop plans to try to keep McCain off the March 7 ballot in several parts of the state. Bush strategists feared the effort, exploiting the state’s byzantine ballot access laws, would ultimately backfire by playing into McCain’s outsider image. McCain is expected to prevail Monday, when a judge issues his ruling in the matter.

More fundamentally, some Republicans say Bush has yet to present voters with a compelling reason to support his candidacy. “Your message cannot be, ‘I have money, I have endorsements, I am inevitable,’ ” said Fabrizio, who worked for Bush’s rival, Elizabeth Hanford Dole, until she dropped out of the race. “You have to give people some other reason to support you.”

Most observers, however, continue to believe that Bush and his message of conventional conservatism will ultimately prevail in the nominating fight, if only because of his monumental financial advantage over McCain’s hand-to-mouth campaign. The greater worry is how Bush fares in the general election, presumably against Democratic Vice President Al Gore.

While Gore seems to have become a stronger candidate as a result of the stiff challenge he has faced from Bill Bradley, many Republicans worry that Bush has failed to show similar growth.

Said a supporter in Sacramento: “A lot of people think he needs to show some fire in the belly, that he really wants this thing. In the final week in New Hampshire he was talking about missing his pets and the Governor’s Mansion in Austin. Meantime, Gore is campaigning nonstop and showing he’ll do whatever it takes to win. That lack of energy, lack of drive on Bush’s part concerns people.”

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A SHIFT IN EMPHASIS

Gore, Bradley face issues of concern to upcoming primary states of California and New York. 20