By Scott Wright

Republicans in Alabama and across the nation are shaking their heads these days. Maybe not violently enough for the rest of us to detect the motion -- yet -- but it's there: the slow, methodical back-and-forth motion of inner dismay is present and it's building.

Why? Well, the GOP is supposed to be the party of fiscal responsibility, but the yahoo my Republican friends have elected to run the country is breaking the bank. You don't have to be an economist to figure out that spending more than you're bringing in is a recipe for certain disaster -- anyone who has a checking account can do the math on that one. But thanks to the no-tax-and-plenty-spend policies of George W. Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress, financial experts say we're headed for an economic disaster and Republicans are beginning to realize that fact and the reasons behind it. As a result, they are beginning to disagree with Dubya.

As columnist Allan Sloan explained last week in Newsweek, "borrowing endlessly for Katrina and Iraq and tax cuts and Homeland Security is possible only because foreign investors are willing to keep buying U.S. Treasury securities despite the relatively low interest rates they pay."

But one day, Sloan wrote, the nation will experience one unexpected disaster too many. When that happens and we dive abruptly into an even deeper pool of debt to rebuild and recover, countries like China and Japan, could see the frivolity of their investment and begin a massive sell-off of American debt that could wreck the United States.

"We'll finally spook the financial markets on which we're now so dependent," Sloan continued. "Federal borrowing costs will rise, the economy will tank. Instead of a 'perfect storm' of the physical variety, we'll have one of the financial variety. And like Katrina, it's going to be devastating."

Another reason Republicans voters are disgusted with Washington is that, as explained last week in another article in Newsweek, today's Republicans, to put it simply, "believe in pork." The problem is, the GOP has been in power so long that its leaders don't realize how greedy they've become. They're so close to the vault they don't see what's wrong with walking away with as much taxpayer cash as they can stuff into their pockets.

The Republican head of the House Transportation Committee, Don Young of Alaska, recently swindled $200 million to build a bridge to an island with 50 inhabitants in his home district in Alaska. The jackass even had the audacity to slap his own name on the project. That's just one example, but there are over 6,400 such projects nationwide in the bill President Bush obliviously signed into law a few weeks ago.

Now, before you write in, political scholars, I know most Democrats voted for the transportation bill, too. But the Republicans are in charge of both houses, they wrote the darned bill, and they would have passed it with or without help from the Democrats. So let's nip that, right there. Besides, Dems are politicians, too. What else would you expect? Do you really think they'd turn down free money?
A little compassion for their fellow man would be good, but judging by the fact that Bush appointed the former head of an Arabian horse association to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency there's apparently not a lot of that to go around on the GOP side of the aisle these days.

You know about FEMA. That's the agency charged with (just in case the name doesn't give it away) RESPONDING TO FEDERAL EMERGENCIES. Might've been a good idea to have someone in that position who knew what he was doing, huh, Mr. President? Well, Bush gave the job to a political crony instead and all know by now what a horrible job "Brownie" did in the days after Katrina. We've all heard the stories, some good but mostly bad, about what the government did to and for the survivors of Katrina. I admit that I am not sure anyone could have pulled off a flawless rescue and recovery operation for all those evacuees, but "Brownie" proved he can't zip his fly without ending up doubled over, lip quivering and teary eyed in a pool of his own drool, in dire need of immediate medical attention. The fact that Bush chose him to begin with, and ESPECIALLY in light of all we've learned since 9/11, shows Bush's tremendous lack of compassion for his fellow man.

A little compassion from the president in the fours years between 9/11 and Katrina would most certainly have gone a lot further than the belated compassion he showed several days -- SEVERAL DAYS -- after the hurricane passed.

Basically, it's beginning to look to a lot of people like these Republicans are broken, and more and more are feeling that way with each passing day. Polls released last week show Bush's approval rating at an all-time low of 42 percent. It's probably lower than that by now.

Hell, it ought to be; think about the litany of reasons why. Instead of working from the traditional Republican playbook and cutting government spending to pay for the tax cuts they're so fond of and love to brag about (without mentioning that they only apply to the richest of the rich, of course) the Bush administration has dragged the country into two wars, created a new multi-billion dollar federal agency that has just been proven largely dysfunctional, and massively increased federal spending, all while dropping taxes on the rich.

Last week in USA Today, Jill Collingsworth, a lifelong Republican and business owner from Coweta, Okla., wrote the editor that she "no longer feels comfortable accepting a reduced tax burden for myself today, knowing full well that my children will get the bill tomorrow."

Plenty of other Republicans are beginning to feel the same way.

Want some more examples of this administration's fiscal ineptitude? How about the Medicare prescription drug benefit, which Sen. John McCain refused to support. The Arizona Republican said he would not vote for the drug benefit because "no fiscal conservative could say with a straight face that was a good thing."

Bush refuses agree to consider delaying additional planned tax cuts for the wealthy or delaying the drug benefit, even though a budget study led my GOP Rep. Mike Spence suggested both moves last week. The group also suggested canceling the moon landing and canceling Young's bridge to nowhere (don't bet on it).

I can keep going about what's wrong with Bush in the eyes of so many Republicans these days. How about this one: A week after Katrina, Dubya continued to operate under a cloud of callousness for the people who are the real victims of this tragedy. Naturally, longtime Bush business cronies working for Haliburton will make millions -- if not billions -- on the reconstruction effort along the Gulf Coast because, admittedly, infrastructure will have to be rebuilt on a massive scale.

But the president also signed an executive order which suspended the Davis-Bacon Act, which was evil and downright duplicitous. By suspending Davis-Bacon, the 1931 act that sets wages for workers on federal contracts, the president is effectively taking federal money out of the hands of the hardest working residents of Louisiana and Mississippi -- the ones who will actually be working to rebuild their lives -- and giving it to Haliburton.

As former Democratic Sen. John Edwards, who ran for vice president in 2004, explained last week, "When the only shot many people have is a good job rebuilding New Orleans, the president intervened to suspend the prevailing wage laws so his contractor friends can cut wages for a hard day's work."

Now folks, I'm not telling you the Democrats have all the answers, or ANY of them for that matter. We're all running around like a donkey with its head cut off, reacting to all the stupid, horrible, insensitive, counterproductive policies and pronouncements of the current Republican administration instead of offering up any ideas for doing anything to make the overall situation any better. And I'm right there with the rest of them, all talk and no action.

But this article is about the growing sentiment in this country that the man who snuck into the White House to begin with -- remember how happy you Republicans were about that little Houdini act -- did so on a platform of fiscal conservatism and renewed integrity in the office of president of the United States.

Five years later, Bush has lost the confidence of many in the political middle and he appears to be losing his own conservative base with his reckless spending plans. Last week, even GOP leader Newt Gingrich admitted the Republican party will "get hammered" in the 2006 elections if the president's fiscal policies don't change soon; still others claim it's already too late for Bush to alter his fate. Columnist Fareed Zakaria recently proclaimed George W. Bush "will go down in history as the most fiscally irresponsible chief executive in American history."

Too late, it looks like more and more Republicans who voted for George W. Bush based solely on party affiliation are beginning to realize what a mistake they made.

Scott Wright is a member of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and an award-winning member of the Society of Professional Journalists. He is a native of Cherokee County.