It certainly is the perfect storm of aggravating or provoking congressional egos and the president getting his back up and saying the least diplomatic thing he could have said.

Bad things that were going to happen have not happened,

It's going to push some people who are at the margins of being able to afford it into the consumer category.

The conundrum they face is that they know better.

One of the assumptions is that it becomes increasingly difficult to get things done in an election year, especially things where tough decisions have to be made.

In the last two or three weeks, there has been an increasing restlessness among conservatives, mostly about the open-ended (financial) response to Katrina, ... There's a growing number of conservative voters coming to the conclusion that Republicans have lost their way.