Eye-Popping Story of the Day

Top-shelf political reporter Jackie Calmes delivers a must-read front-page piece in today’s Wall Street Journal that must surely have operatives over at RHC RNC headquarters doubling the dosage of their ulcer meds. We already knew, of course, that President Bush and Republican leaders in Congress had alienated many fiscal conservatives with their profligate spending in the first six years of Bush’s presidency. What Calmes does, however, is show in detail how that alienation has caused a serious erosion in support for the GOP among members of what was once the party’s most reliable base: the business community. The union of fiscal and social conservatives was the cornerstone of the GOP’s electoral triumphs from 1968-2004. With fiscal conservatives disaffected and some social conservative leaders threatening to back a third-party candidate, the dissolution of that union continues unabated. For the GOP, the fact that this story appears so prominently in the bible of American business compounds the bad news it brings.