A "Compassionate Conservative" no more, according to the public

[dissention]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...47377_2004apr3

Fewer Say Bush Is Serving Middle Class
Sun Apr 4, 1:12 AM ET Add Top Stories - washingtonpost.com to My Yahoo!

By Dana Milbank and Richard Morin, Washington Post Staff Writers

As he approaches the November election, President Bush (news - web sites) has shed a good part of the "compassionate conservative" image he cultivated during the 2000 election, a Washington Post poll has found.

Bush came to office three years ago with a message that he was different from traditional Republican conservatives because he was promoting programs for the poor and disadvantaged. But with his presidency dominated by foreign policy issues and such traditional conservative favorites as tax cuts, he has dropped from his speeches the compassionate conservative moniker that was his trademark in 2000.

The Post poll found Americans split over whether Bush has governed in a compassionate way, with 49 percent saying he has and 45 percent saying he has not. That is down sharply from February 2003, when a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll found that 64 percent of Americans thought he had governed compassionately.