Earlier this week I took a look at the straw poll conducted at the Conservative Political Action Conference and asked, "Are the Conservative Elites Ready to Abandon Bush?" Taking a gander at the response to the prosecutor purge, particularly from some of the most elite within the conservative establishment, it seems that some indeed are edging closer to removing their support from the current occupant of the White House. First, Nevada's Republican Senator John Ensign, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, someone who supported President Bush's position 90 percent of the time in 2006 and who voted with his party on party-line votes 91 percent of the time in 2006 (both according to CQ), speaks out in opposition to the mass firings. Steve Tetreault has the story for the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Ensign, R-Nev., said the removal of the U.S. attorneys "has been completely mishandled."

"It is not unusual to let U.S. attorneys go, but you need to have good reasons especially if you are going to do seven at the same time," he said.

[...]

"What the Justice Department testified yesterday is inconsistent with what they told me," Ensign said. "I can't even tell you how upset I am at the Justice Department."

Asked whether he believed he was misled, Ensign said, "I was not told the same thing that I was at the hearing, let me put it that way."

Ensign is not the only member of the conservative elite to be outraged by the partisanization of the United States Attorneys. US News' Michael Barone had the following to say yesterday on his periodical's website.

The emerging scandal surrounding the dismissals of eight former U.S. attorney  should signify to American voters the depth, breadth, and permeation of corruptio  in the Bush administration

When a U.S. senator (to wit, Pete Domenici, a New Mexico Republican) feels free to call a prosecutor at home and hang up on him for resisting political pressure in the course of executing his prosecutorial duties, the line between politics and law enforcement has been so thoroughly violated that it no longer exists.

[...]

Domenici would not have made that call had either a Democrat or a law-abiding Republican been in the White House. He would not have had the temerity to throw his weight around to such an outrageous extent.

What's going on in Washington is not sufficiently removed from the routine doings of a tawdry Third World dictatorship to give any American comfort.

Although I was hopeful that this move by a Republican President to summarily fire Republican prosecutors for partisan political reasons would awaken some of the conservative elite, showing them just the type of man they have so strenuously supported over the last six plus years, I was not necessarily optimistic that such a thing would occur. After all, it was just yesterday that David Gergen, advisor to three Republican presidents (and Bill Clinton, too), said, "This is an administration that has been mostly free of scandal over the last six years and now they have the taint that they cannot erase." But apparently some elite Republicans and conservatives are finally realizing the damage George W. Bush is doing both to their movement and to this country, and are, as a result, finally beginning to distance themselves from his administration. And as I noted on Monday, "If these elite sentiments trickle down to the base -- and they quite possibly will -- we could see a further deterioration of support for President Bush, both around the country and potentially up on Capitol Hill, further weakening the White House's hand as it tries to advance its radical agenda."

Update [2007-3-8 17:43:41 by Jonathan Singer]: Barone now says that his site was hacked, that he did not write the post in question. I think the larger point does still stand -- that if bastions of the conservative and Republican elite begin to waver in their support of the President it bodes poorly for his chances of achieving anything in the next two years.