Taxes, Health Lead Hill Agenda

But in the first big domestic battle on Capitol Hill, 18 Republicans in the Senate and 45 in the House abandoned their leaders to side with the Democrats on a five-year, $35 billion expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program.

House Republicans are expected to muster enough votes to sustain Bush's anticipated veto of the SCHIP bill, but Boehner conceded that Congress is liable to override the promised veto on a $21 billion water-project bill so crammed with home-district projects that it has been denounced by taxpayer and environmental groups alike.

"There's deadlock on Iraq. Bush is intransigent. It's clear we're not going to get the 60 votes to change course on the war. But Republicans are hurting too, so they're breaking with him on all these domestic issues," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Indeed, on the domestic front Republicans may be in the same bind that they face on foreign policy: Their conservative base is not where the rest of the country is.

For more than a decade, the Democratic polling firm Hart Research and the Republican firm Public Opinion Strategies have read two propositions to Americans: "Government should do more to solve problems and help meet the needs of people" and "Government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals."

In December 1995, at the height of the Republican Revolution, a less-intrusive government won out, 62 percent to 32 percent. This month, a more activist government won out, 55 percent to 38 percent. Independent voters sided with government activism, 52 percent to 39 percent.

But Republican voters, by a margin of 62 to 32 percent, still say government is doing too much.

"The big tectonic plates of American politics are shifting, and the old Republican policies of limited government aren't working like they used to," Schumer said. "Their problem is, the Republican primary vote is still the old George Bush coalition -- strong foreign policy, cut taxes, cut government, family values. But Americans aren't there anymore."

But the same poll did find some hope for the GOP, said Neil Newhouse, a partner at Public Opinion Strategies. Americans said they do not see a role for the federal government in the current mortgage crisis.

"Americans seem to be saying that the problems the country is facing demand a more activist government, but that this does not extend to all issues or every problem," Newhouse said.

That's a difficult needle to thread, but it can be done, said former senator Jim Talent (R-Mo.), a top domestic policy adviser to Republican White House hopeful Mitt Romney. Then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush showed in 2000, with his stand on education and his general slogan of "compassionate conservatism," that Republicans can win on traditional Democratic turf. They can do that again, especially on health care, Talent said.

"Part of what is at the core of the party is smaller government, fiscal restraint," said Sen. Mel Martinez (Fla.), general chairman of the Republican National Committee. "But like in this debate on SCHIP, it's very important that we as Republicans make it clear we are for insuring children."

"It's no longer permissible for us to think 47 million Americans being uninsured is okay," Martinez said.