Conservative War on Poverty?

"I don't believe that everything that should happen in Louisiana should be paid for by the rest of the country. I believe there are certain responsibilities that are due the people of Louisiana."

Will the Times-Picayune run a headline: "COBURN TO NEW ORLEANS: DROP DEAD"?

Josh Marshall is shocked at a report that Karl Rove has been put in charge of the reconstruction effort:

"Every Democrat should be hitting on this. Take the politics out of the reconstruction effort. He put his chief spin-doctor in charge of the biggest reconstruction and refugee crisis the country's probably ever faced. That tells you all you need to know about his values. Nothing that happened in the last couple weeks meant anything to him. And nothing has changed. Same as Iraq. Same stuff."

Andrew Sullivan sees Bush turning the Katrina corner:

"That seems to me to be the buried lede in the NYT poll. The public is now evenly split on that question-- which may reflect the success of the recovery effort since the initial debacle. The CBS poll showed that a week ago, 58 percent disapproved. Today that number is 50 percent. More whites approve than disapprove now (49 to 46 percent), although the damage that Katrina has done to Bush's attempt to win over blacks is probably permanent.

"Yes, Bush's general numbers are still the lowest of his presidency. But if you can have his record on the Iraq occupation and Katrina response and still get 40 percent approval, you have a pretty solid floor. My own view is that 35 percent of Americans would support him whatever he actually does. That's how polarized we are."

The Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan who took a leave last fall to work for Bush's reelection, doesn't sugarcoat Katrina's impact on the president, which she says "gave the administration its first indisputable domestic black eye. Roughly half the country has been attacking President Bush for an inadequate response and roughly half the country has been defending him by pointing the finger elsewhere or parsing the federal role in local emergency response. But no one is walking around saying, 'Was this his best moment or what? A triumph!' Because no one thinks it was.

"But a president can't control everything! True. Federal power is and must be limited. But the White House made two big mistakes. The first was not to see that New Orleans early on was becoming a locus of civil unrest. When an American city descends into lawlessness, and as in this case that lawlessness hampers or prevents the rescue of innocents, you send in the 82nd Airborne. You move your troops. You impose and sustain order. You protect life and property. Then you leave. That's what government is for. It's what Republicans are for. The White House didn't move quickly, and that was the failure from which all failure flowed. The administration was slow to see the size, scope, variations and implications of the disaster because it was not receiving and responding to reliable reports from military staff on the ground. Because they weren't there. When the administration moved, it moved, and well. But it took too long.

"Second, lame gazing out the window is mere spin, not action. Soulful looks from the plane are spin. The White House was spinning when it should have been acting. I do not agree with the critique that Mr. Bush should have done a speech with a lot of 'emoting.' This is the kind of thing said by clever people who think everyone else is dumb. Bill Clinton felt everyone's pain, and that is remembered as a joke. What was Mr. Bush supposed to do, criticize the hurricane and make it feel bad? Say that the existence of bad weather is at odds with the American dream? Hurricanes come, disasters occur; don't talk, move. In this area the administration has gotten way too clever while at the same time becoming stupider."

National Review's Jay Nordlinger says the media are asking the wrong question:

"Major magazines and newspapers have been taking polls asking, 'Do you think we should cut back on Iraq spending to help rebuild the Gulf Coast?' and, 'Do you favor a partial withdrawal of troops to help with the storm damage?' Funny how the media immediately linked Hurricane Katrina to the Iraq war. There is no proper link.