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Uh, oh. Sounds like the nativists are getting restless

Almost three months into President Bush’s second term, a raft of economic and social issues — Social Security, immigration, gay marriage and the recent national debate over Terri Schiavo — is splintering the Republican base.

After winning re-election on the strength of support from nine in 10 Republican voters, the president is seeing significant chunks of that base balk at major initiatives, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows. One-third of Republicans say Democrats in Congress should prevent Mr. Bush and party leaders from “going too far in pushing their agenda,” and 41% oppose eliminating filibusters against Mr. Bush’s judicial nominees — the “nuclear option” that Senate Republican leaders are considering.

Do note, too, that the country hasn’t even begun to talk about the biggest hot-button issue of them all: immigration. Fortunately—insofar as one say “fortunately” here—the Minutemen loons patrolling the Southern border should bring this topic to the fore real soon.

That said, there’s a danger for Democrats here too. The popular consensus seems to be that the Democrats’ main function at this point is to check the considerable excesses of the Republican majority. That bodes well for obstructionism. It also bodes well for those who want to defeat the “nuclear option” and preserve the filibuster. (Although we’ve noted the case here that in the long run, stripping away the filibuster would benefit the progressive movement.) It does not, however, bode well for the minority party’s long-term electoral prospects. What are they going to say in 2006, “Please, please vote for us, we need a strengthened minority or we’ll never be able to stop the Republicans from going too far”? No, they would sound pathetic, and they would get slaughtered. Americans may love gridlock and divided government, but that’s not a compelling campaign message, and no one ever won an election by calling attention to his or her finger stuck in the dike.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We canā€™t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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