With friends like these…

I tend not read Robert Novak much anymore. He suffers more than most from the disease of pundit “know it all”-ism. Which is not to say the guy is a dummy; quite the contrary. After decades in Washington, you learn a thing or two. I just do not care for the constant reminders of that fact. Anyway, today, I decided to give it a go and it seems the Prince of Darkness and his fellow Republicans on the Hill are none to happy the POTUS. Here are some choice bits:

With nearly two years remaining in his presidency, George W. Bush is alone. In half a century, I have not seen a president so isolated from his own party in Congress -- not Jimmy Carter, not even Richard Nixon as he faced impeachment.

Anytime a conservative institution like Robert Novak uses Bush and Nixon in the same sentence, it is a solid indicator that the Presidential respect meter among Republicans is fast approaching zero. This is the political equivalent of being stood up by your date to the prom. Moving on…

The saving grace that some Republicans find in the dispute over U.S. attorneys is that, at least temporarily, it draws attention away from debate over an unpopular war. But the overriding feeling in the Republican cloakroom is that the Justice Department and the White House could not have been more inept in dealing with the president's unquestioned right to appoint -- and replace -- federal prosecutors.

The I-word (incompetence) is also used by Republicans in describing the Bush administration generally. Several of them I talked to cited a trifecta of incompetence: the Walter Reed hospital scandal, the FBI's misuse of the USA Patriot Act and the U.S. attorneys firing fiasco. "We always have claimed that we were the party of better management," one House leader told me. "How can we claim that anymore?"

To which I would add both wars, Katrina, fiscal discipline, and our international standing. Look, you can suck at your job for only so long as your co-workers are unaffected by your failures. Eventually, however, you are going to screw up so egregiously that it will reflect on others. That is what happened in the midterms. Republicans in Congress paid a dear price for Bush’s incompetence and yet, the Administration soldiers on with the same style and the same game plan. Clearly, the results of Bush’s policies have been bad for the country, terrible if one is a Republican officeholder, and there is precious little evidence that things are going to change. If I was a Republican up for election in 2008, I would run like hell from the President and that is exactly what we are about to see.

The U.S.S. Bush is sinking and the rats are abandoning ship.