If you are a Republican, and you’ve lost a Benton County newspaper, you and your party got trouble Mr. President.

Benton County Daily Record - George Stephanopoulos asked the nervous Mr. Bush about reports that his dad’s old buddy and former secretary of state, James Baker, was working on a new plan for Iraq, one that lies somewhere between stay the course and cut ’n’ run. Bush shifted in his seat and chortled, “ We’ve never been stay the course, George !”

The lie and his squirming, grinning and promotion of yet another new and improved empty slogan are, by now, so predictable that we would be disappointed if he withheld them. It’s a twisted satisfaction, but if George Dubya is anything, he is consistently inconsistent. It took me half a minute of researching that claim to find reports and recordings of Bush staunchly proclaiming that his policy, and thereby America’s policy, in Iraq was to “ stay the course.