Three months into his second term, President George W. Bush already is experiencing realities of being a lame-duck president.

And, unfortunate from his perspective, he is likely to experience much more resistance by Republican lawmakers over the next three-plus years to issues that those lawmakers regard as political hot potatoes potentially damaging to their political future.

During the remainder of the Bush presidency, GOP lawmakers will be willing to support the president in a broad sense, but increasingly, when it comes to issues that could come back to haunt lawmakers' future re-election bids - for example, issues that extract money and popular benefits from certain big constituencies - they are unlikely to "stick their necks out" very far for the president.

Within the next four years, House members will face two campaigns, while most senators will face one re-election bid, in which they will have to answer to the voters for their legislative performance.

Not Bush. He has waged his last political campaign.

As he prepares to leave office in January 2009, his attention will focus increasingly on preparations for his presidential library, not on the prospects for pushing bold new initiatives through Congress.

Bush initiatives likely to erode support for GOP incumbents - whether new initiatives or holdovers from his first term - will be under consideration technically but, in reality, on the shelf, as far as prospects for passage are concerned.

The president understands the realities of a second-term presidency and is cognizant of the dilemma his GOP legislative colleagues face as they consider his proposals. He knows that support for him on some issues could cause certain lawmakers more political harm than what they might experience by distancing themselves from him.

He knows Democrats will be watching closely any opportunity to gain political fodder to use against GOP opponents.

Still, the president has cause to be unhappy about developments in Congress over the past three months. In recent weeks, the Senate has voted to block Bush's proposal to cut community block grants for cities. In addition, uneasiness by congressional Republicans caused the administration to drop its effort to cut government payments to farmers.

The latest development is that about one out of five members of the GOP's House contingent oppose curbing Medicaid spending to the degree set out in a budget resolution approved in the House in March.

Such a reduction would "negatively impact people who depend on the program and the providers who deliver health care to them," the GOP lawmakers said in a letter to the chairman of the House Budget Committee.

Lawmakers would prefer to "negatively impact" as few people as possible. From their perspective, it is more palatable to negatively impact a lame-duck president's agenda than risk cutting short their own political future.

The president will continue to work hard on initiatives that he would like to see be a part of his legacy - things for which he hopes to be remembered in future history books.

However, in 2009 as now, most of his divisive wish-list items will still be just that, regardless of their long-term potential merits and regardless of how hard GOP allies claim to be working on behalf of his objectives.