Facing falling approval numbers that recently dropped lower than Bob Hope’s balls, President Bush this week resorted to his usual tactic of becoming more conservative when threatened. The president may have gone too far this time, however, alienating even his core base of religious assholes.

After having his personal dog walker rejected for a seat on the Supreme Court, and his backup neo-Nazi facing a similarly tough uphill climb, Bush outlined a bold new philosophy in a televised speech on Sunday.

“Jesus was a fag,” the president announced to a stunned roomful of didn’t-know-Jesus-was-a-fag listeners. “Love everybody? The meek shall inherit the earth? Give me a break. The man didn’t even have a reliable hairstyle.”

“Women should be seen, not heard,” continued Bush, attempting to carve out his own niche deeper in the dogmatic hinterlands. “But by ‘seen’ I mean just their eyes, as the rest of their sinful bodies should be covered up in padded dog-attack training suits to restore some modesty to this once great nation.”

Over the course of the president’s speech, Bush called for the dismantling of the Internet, a moratorium on all music, and the banning of all dancing that isn’t line dancing. This latest development has renewed national debate over where the president is crazy like a fox, crazy like a cuckoo bird, or stupid like a bathtub.

Bush’s approval rating dipped even lower during the speech, scraping audibly against some theoretical bottom of the barrel, and an instant poll immediately afterward pegged the president’s approval at 12%, a record low for a US president and below even the ratings for Osama Bin Laden, syphilis, sour milk, Gigli and total thermonuclear annihilation. Political observers, however, were most impressed that a full 12% of the population still support Bush.

“Apparently more Americans than we had previously assumed agree with the president that Jesus was a homo,” explained a stunned Walter Dumruch, of the McClurg Institute. “God knows how long they’ve been waiting for a political figure to give voice to their inner convictions. The president takes these results as a mandate to push forward with his new ‘Screw Jesus’ agenda.”

By stepping off the edge of the political world and officially becoming too conservative for even the nation’s the most extreme conservatives this week, the president embarked on a journey through uncharted territory that has left critics at a loss for words.

“It’s weird, it’s almost like he’s wrapped around to almost being liberal now, but not really,” mused Danby Frinkman, local man of letters. “He’s lapped the field, in terms of conservatism, but no one’s sure what that means.”

What it most certainly means is that Bush will have to reconsider his nomination of Samuel A. Alito Jr. for the Supreme Court, since even a man so conservative that he doesn’t believe in dinosaurs or long hair on dogs would be seen as too soft to be in keeping with the president’s current philosophy. Several deposed foreign dictators and cartoon villains are likely to be considered for the president’s next nomination.

Bush’s political handlers hope these recent developments can be explained by an external trauma, like the president being hit in the head by a falling brick some time last week, or anything a shovel-hitting intervention might be able to correct. The president’s handlers hope to jostle Bush back to his comfortably untenable “Jesus was Straight/Screw the Poor/Bomb the Brown People” conservative agenda by early next week at the latest.