There has certainly been an invasion of body snatchers among the GOP and the Bush Administration.

Matthew Dowd, the chief strategist for the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign, recently broke ranks with his White House buddies and denounced Bush’s leadership. He said he sees a president who only hears what he wants to hear, from those who know not to challenge him with competing ideas. “I think he’s become more, in my view, secluded and bubbled in,” Dowd said.

But what about the rest of the White House? It’s one thing for an insecure leader to block out news that might upset him, but surely the president’s team knows not to insulate themselves, right?

Wrong.

Dowd’s assessment is shared by many Republicans in Washington. “Isolation is inevitable in any White House,” says a former Bush aide who returned to the West Wing recently to chat with former colleagues. Now that he is out of the bubble, the former aide says, he can see an isolation he didn’t recognize before. “People in the White House are talking only to each other, reconfirming each other’s and the president’s perceptions and judgments,” he says.