In town for their winter meeting, GOP governors gave Bush early and powerful backing -- even before he declared he was running. That support helped rally the Republican establishment around the Texas governor as the party's best chance for taking back the White House.

Now, in the face of Sen. John McCain's unexpectedly strong challenge, governors show no sign of bolting. They say Bush has made mistakes but argue he has time to correct them.

"They're a pretty solid bunch. Once they're on board, they're on for the long haul," said Gov. John Engler of Michigan, where Bush lost a hard-fought race with McCain on Tuesday.

"George Bush obviously will have to right himself, and he will," Gov. Mike Leavitt, R-Utah, chairman of the National Governors' Association, said Saturday. "It yet will turn out the way we want it to."

Governors of both parties are meeting this weekend with an agenda filled with policy issues. But politics tops the unwritten agenda, particularly for Republicans, who are watching Bush try to regain his footing as McCain shreds the assumption that Bush's nomination is inevitable.

Democratic governors are relishing the intense GOP fight.

"I'm just absolutely delighted that the Republicans are having the opportunity to discuss all their shortcomings," said Kentucky Gov. Paul Patton. "I just hope they go right down to the wire. It looks like they are."

From Republican governors, advice ranged from staying focused to allowing them to carry more of the campaign's message.

"Set the rules, but let us do it our way at home," said Gov. Ed Schafer of North Dakota, chairman of the Republican Governors Association.

North Dakota's primary is Tuesday, but Schafer can't figure out why he hasn't been more involved in the Bush campaign. "How come I'm not doing a radio spot encouraging people to go out and vote, and using my image or my trust or whatever I have with the voters to spread the Bush message?" he asked.

Schafer plans to deliver a cautionary message to his colleagues. Too many governors assumed that it was enough to turn over lists of party activists and volunteers, he said.

Bush's entire operation has been second-guessed since he lost primaries in Michigan and Arizona on Tuesday. Supporters questioned, among other things, spending $1 million on ads in Arizona, McCain's home turf. And Connecticut Gov. John Rowland bluntly said that it was stupid to visit Bob Jones University in South Carolina, which lost its tax exempt status for failing to admit blacks and whose namesake once labeled the Catholic Church a "satanic cult."

Like other GOP governors, New Jersey's Christine Todd Whitman is confident Bush will win the GOP nomination. But she worries that the visit to Bob Jones University and other efforts to appeal to the most conservative voters will come back to bite Bush in the general election, when candidates will be fighting for voters in the political center.

"The most important thing is to put together a coalition that can win in the fall," Whitman said. "It can be dangerous if you start to marginalize yourself in any way." Asked if Bush has done just that, she said: "I don't think that's happened in any kind of irretrievable way."

At the same time, governors say, these controversies, along with constant bickering over which candidate is most guilty of negative campaigning, have distracted Bush from his core messages on taxes, education and opportunity for all.

Bush lost Michigan, Schafer said, "because we were fighting about who said what first and who hit who first in the sandbox."

The campaign may be getting the message, Engler said. He applauded the move late this week to have Virginia's Gov. Jim Gilmore talk about the McCain camp's phone calls to voters suggesting that Bush is anti-Catholic, freeing Bush to talk about his core issues. Still, Bush talked more about those calls on Friday, again denouncing McCain for them.

"Our message to him," Leavitt said, "is to stay focused on his message of reform and not to get caught up in the sidebar stories."

Then again, he remembered in 1996 when Republican nominee Bob Dole met with the 17 Republican governors, each of whom took a turn at offering advice.

"By the time you got around to all 17, there' s just no way he could have even remembered all the advice, let alone accepted it," Leavitt said. "We're probably compulsive advice givers. We can't stop ourselves."