Embittered Insiders Turn Against Bush - washingtonpost.com

Embittered Insiders Turn Against Bush - washingtonpost.com: "Since the Nov. 7 elections, Republicans have pinned their woes on the president.

'People expect a level of performance they are not getting,' former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said in a speech. Many were livid that Bush waited until after the elections to oust Rumsfeld.

'If Rumsfeld had been out, you bet it would have made a difference,' Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said on television. 'I'd still be chairman of the Judiciary Committee.'

And so, in what some saw as a rebuke, Senate Republicans restored Trent Lott (Miss.) to their leadership four years after the White House helped orchestrate his ouster, with some saying they could no longer place their faith entirely in Bush.

Some insiders said the White House invited the backlash. 'Anytime anyone holds themselves up as holy, they're judged by a different standard,' said David Kuo, a former deputy director of the Bush White House's faith-based initiatives who wrote 'Tempting Faith,' a book that accused the White House of pandering to Christian conservatives. 'And at the end of the day, this was a White House that held itself up as holy.'"