Anything Mr. Bush would have said Tuesday about Russia's attack on Georgia would have dwarfed his energy message, so the President let Secretary of State Rice do the talking in public on that issue.

Mr. Bush instead spoke to a group of business leaders, who of course were on board with his calls for increased domestic production of oil, gas and other energy supplies.

"I'd rather our consumers be buying gasoline made from oil here in America than from oil produced overseas," said Bush.

The President didn't exactly sound like he was giving it the ole college try when he mentioned that the Congress was on a five week break from Washington, especially considering the fact that he had just been out of town for over a week, and will be gone for two more in just a couple of days.

Meanwhile, GOP lawmakers continued their protests on the floor of the House, dutifully giving speeches to the tourists in the galleries.

Their pre-speech news conferences seem to be getting shorter and shorter each day, though they do get points for getting lots of people to come back to DC for a day and help out.

Still, without video coverage of what they're doing, it's sort of like the proverbial tree falling in the forest.

Still, GOP leaders feel like they have an issue that can work to their advantage in November, and so they are going to beat the thing like a dead horse for as long as they can.

Not helping their effort this week is the coverage of the Olympics and the Russian incursion into Georgia.

Next week, the VP search for Obama and McCain will drown them out as well.

But they'll be back at it again on Wednesday.