Bush is losing Wall Street — will he lose Main Street as well?

David Wighton and James Harding report in the Financial Times that George W. Bush has alienated former supporters among the financial folks:

Wall Street’s enthusiasm for US President George W. Bush appears to have cooled as the presidential race tightens and concerns grow about foreign policy and fiscal deficits. Some leading fundraisers of Mr Bush’s re-election bid have stopped active campaigning and others privately voice reservations. The New York financial community is expected to give the Republicans a lavish welcome when the president’s party arrives for its national convention next week. Wall Street has been a big contributor to Mr Bush’s record-breaking re-election fund. But one senior Wall Street figure, once talked of as a possible Bush cabinet member, said that he and other prominent Republicans had been raising money with increasing reluctance. “Many are doing so with a heavy heart and some not at all.” He cited foreign policy and the ballooning federal deficit as Wall Street Republicans’ main concerns. A Republican in the financial services industry concurs. “Many of them may be maxed out,” he said, referring to campaign contributions that have hit the legal ceiling, “but they are backing away from Bush.” The deficit has been criticised by Peter Peterson, chairman and co-founder of Blackstone Group, the New York investment firm, and former commerce secretary under President Richard Nixon. In his new book, Running on Empty, he accuses both parties of recklessness but attacks the Republican leadership for a “new level of fiscal irresponsibility”. One New York dinner in June 2003 raised more than $4m, partly thanks to the efforts of Stan O’Neal, chief executive of Merrill Lynch. Yet Mr O’Neal has done no fundraising for the campaign at all since then and friends say he is not supporting Mr Bush. “He is best described as independent,” said one. Another senior Wall Street figure, who has given money to the campaign, said he was among many Wall Street bosses who were impressed with Mr Bush’s handling of the September 11 attacks. “But since then, I have lost faith over foreign policy and tax,” he said. Even those who are campaigning for Mr Bush sound increasingly defensive. “Whether or not you like him, you can’t change leaders during a war,” said the head of one Wall Street firm.

This jibes with the disaffection felt with the Bush economic team by Republican-leaning policy wonks. And from the other side of the Republican spectrum, David Kirkpatrick reports in the New York Times that traditional conservatives aren’t pleased with the Republican party platform (link via Noam Scheiber). The interesting question will be whether any of this will affect the election. In another post, Scheiber asks the key question:

I don’t know many Democrats who think right-wingers are going to end up defecting to Kerry. (Except for maybe a handful of libertarians living in Dupont Circle–but I don’t think they’re going to swing the election.) So the fact that 90 percent or more of GOP voters support Bush over Kerry is neither here nor there. The key question for the Bush campaign is what percentage of conservatives will end up staying home on election day. And I think its entirely plausible that a smaller fraction of self-described conservatives would vote for Bush if the election were held today than did in 2000–partly because Iraq isn’t especially popular among Sunbelt isolationist types, and partly because of a handful of smaller greivances, like the budget deficit and the Medicare bill, and the brief flirtation with immigration reform and a mission to Mars. Of course, it’s important not to confuse D.C.-based conservatives with the much more electorally significant group of self-described conservative voters. (The D.C. breed is probably far more upset about the budget deficit and the Medicare bill, maybe Bush’s too-grudging support for an anti-gay marriage amendment, too.) Still, I think there’s a large enough group of conservatives out there who think Bush hasn’t quite panned out for the Bush campaign to be concerned.