Republicans worried about state of the union expectations

From USNews.com:

Some senior Republicans are worried that White House strategists are placing too much emphasis on the State of the Union address to lift President Bush out of his political doldrums.

"The danger for Bush is he has so much riding on the State of the Union," says a former adviser to two Republican presidents. "The problem is increasingly that the American people are tuning him out. When people watch Bush on TV, they hit the remote to change the channel. It's the same old, same old."

Bush needs to come up with something innovative in his address on January 31 and try to shake up the dynamic, these GOP insiders say. White House strategists have been pointing to the State of the Union as the next big event on Bush's calendar, one that will set the course of the entire year. But they have told U.S. News that the president's goals must be tempered by the political reality that it's an election year and Congress has little desire to do anything big or bold.

Republicans are nervous because Bush's approval rating is now at 36%. They know that Bush is going to repeat the same old lines as he did in the last state of the union address. The only reason anyone will watch is to count how many times he says "stay the course", "it's hard work", "we're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here", "911". Look for President Bush to include his newest catch phrase, "terrorist surveillance program", which is his spin on the domestic spying program. As someone pointed out on another blog, if it was really a terrorist surveillance program then why haven't all those terrorists who are being surveilled been arrested?

I'm hoping there aren't too many college kids out there playing that drinking game where they have a shot of whiskey everytime Bush repeats a certain catch phrase. There would be a lot of incidents of alcohol poisoning. Also look for him to mention that he's "protecting the american people" at least a half dozen times. The american people are finally starting to see through all that rhetoric. Of course it would have been nice if it would have happened last year.