It's not often that reporters are able to cut through politicians' spin to deliver the real story of what's happening in America. So credit is due for the AP's Tom Raum who finally explains to the American people that Congressional opposition to President Bush is not relegated to the Democratic Party. He ledes,

He can't just blame the Democrats. Some lawmakers in President Bush's own party are giving him an increasingly hard time over everything from Social Security to a free-trade pact for Central America to his plan to ease immigration laws. It may be an early lame-duck warning for his presidency.

Raum explains that the President's problems include:

Misgivings by four Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee triggered a three-week postponement of a vote on the nomination of John Bolton to be U.N. ambassador.

[...]

Bush's troubles in moving his major proposals through Congress are aggravated by having to do a difficult dance: angling for support from Republican moderates and reaching out to Democrats on initiatives like Social Security without driving away members of his conservative base.

[...]

Bush's proposal for a free-trade pact with six Central American and Caribbean nations is drawing opposition from nearly all Democrats — and from some Republican lawmakers from textile and sugar-producing states, including Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Saxby Chambliss of Georgia.

Meanwhile, Bush's guest-worker immigration program, first proposed in his first term, continues to draw opposition from the political right, especially Republican lawmakers from Southwestern border states.

Bush is in an extremely difficult spot on a number of issues right now. As Raum notes, the President must woo Democrats without losing conservative Republicans. And bringing the Democrats to the table won't be easy by any stretch of the imagination. As I noted last week, "on Social Security, the President must get the support of about a half a dozen Democrats in the Senate for his privatization plan to have any chance at passage, and strong-arming a bad budget through Congress and invoking the nuclear option certainly has not endeared the President to the opposition. Rather, it has emboldened them to battle to the end on fights they can win."

I don't believe the President is a lame duck yet. On the contrary, he still maintains an almost unanimous level of support among Republicans and controls both houses of Congress. Nevertheless, Raum hits on some important points and I applaud him for raising facts that are too often overlooked in the media.