Bush Lame Duck Watch

This Week's Bush Lame Duck Watch: 1630 (+70)

A smaller bump up this week, but the trend is still increasing.

Significant contributors to the trend include this Knight-Ridder report on conservative factions beginning to prepare for a post-Bush world:

Conservatives now are under the twin burdens of governing and holding onto power. The pressure on them has deepened fissures within the conservative movement, pitting fiscal hawks against "big government" Republicans and social conservatives against business groups.

President Bush has managed to hold the coalition together. But as he nears lame-duck status and conservatives start thinking about the post-Bush era, the rising tensions within their ranks are forcing them to rethink their agenda. At stake is whether they build an enduring majority or slip into decline and lose power.

There was also a repeat of the phenomena we saw last week where reports of Tony Blair as a lame duck showed up because they also mentioned Bush. Except that this week the lame duck standin is Germany's Gerhard Schroeder. This was actually a major contributor to the hits this week.

(Explanation: The Bush Lame Duck Watch is a weekly measure of the hits on Google News for "Bush" and "Lame Duck". The numbers in parenthesis represents the change from the previous weeks number (It is also a link to the previous weeks post.))