Rebels with a cause: GOP libertarians like New Hampshire Sen. John Sununu are fighting Bush -- and their party -- over the Patriot Act.

Salon.com
Jan. 30, 2006

The Republican National Committee began running over the weekend a hard-hitting television spot that lacerates Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid for leading a pre-Christmas filibuster that prevented the rubber-stamp renewal of the Patriot Act. (In the ad, "Our Security Is Threatened" ominously fills the screen for several seconds.) Karl Rove previewed this line of attack in mid-January when the White House political svengali stressed to the RNC, "Republicans want to renew the Patriot Act and Democratic leaders take special delight in proclaiming they've killed it. That's an issue worthy of public debate."

When George W. Bush inevitably launches into a "my opponents are weak on national security" attack Tuesday night in his State of the Union Address, a clever TV producer might order up a reaction shot from first-term New Hampshire Republican Sen. John Sununu. Make no mistake, the mild-mannered, 41-year-old Sununu is an authentic conservative -- not one of those Northeastern moderates sneeringly referred to as a "RINO," a right-wing epithet standing for "Republican in name only." Rather Sununu is also emblematic of an under-appreciated libertarian strand in his party. And he and Idaho's Larry Craig are the leaders of a quartet of GOP senators who are standing up to the White House over the Patriot Act, scheduled to expire Friday, but likely to be briefly extended as the battle over its future continues.