USTIN, Texas - As angry as George W. Bush sounded yesterday morning about the Florida Supreme Court decision, Julie Crenshaw was even madder.
Disgusted that the mostly Democratic panel of judges seemed to be deciding the course of the election, Crenshaw, the wife of golf champion Ben Crenshaw, took her family to the sidewalk outside the Texas governor's mansion here, armed with a stack of protest signs. She stood there under gray skies for hours, holding up a poster that read: ''Supreme Court rip off!''
It was her first political protest, she said, born out of a resentment that had been building for more than two weeks. Finally, she said, her feelings turned from frustration to hardened outrage Tuesday night.
She was in good company, surrounded by a group of supporters outside the Bush residence that has swollen by the day as the election has dragged on. And, according to Republican officials, a similar groundswell is becoming evident nationwide, with conservative activists and GOP supporters expressing mounting anger at the possibility that an election they thought they'd won might be ripped from their grasp.
Unlike the support for Al Gore, who has faced questions from other Democrats about whether he should step aside, Bush's backing among Republicans seems only to have grown with every turn.
''The Republicans are hungry,'' said Mike Franc, vice president for government relations at the Heritage Foundation, a think tank in Washington. ''There's also a sense that the way this is playing out is reinforcing conservative Republicans' views of the world. It's not as if George W. Bush is relying on activist judges to get him over the goal line. It makes it easier for Bush partisans to think Bush is doing everything right and Gore is doing everything wrong.''
Perhaps for that reason the Republican National Committee has been bombarded with mail and phone calls from supporters in the last two weeks, almost all of them encouraging Bush to continue his fight and ''not let Al Gore take what isn't his,'' said Cliff May, communications director for the Republican National Committee.
''There's a lot of outrage among Republicans who voted for George Bush about what Al Gore has been doing these past days. I think it has reached sort of a critical mass,'' May said. ''We don't even need to gauge support among Republicans. We know how the Republican and conservative base feels. It's overwhelmingly clear.''
The opposite has been true for Gore, whose ''loss'' to Bush on election night - the result of premature calls by television networks - created an instant perception that he was the loser in the race. Democrats rue that turn of events, blaming it for creating an insurmountable public relations battle for the vice president.
But Democrats themselves have sent signals they are on the fence about his continued pursuit of the presidency, even when their candidate has appeared to be well within striking distance of a win in Florida. Two days after the election, Gore dispatched his campaign chairman, William Daley, to Capitol Hill to shore up support among congressional Democrats; Bush, congressional Republicans said yesterday, would never need to do the same.
''It just has not been necessary on the GOP side,'' one senior House Republican aide said.
And although Gore has the vocal support of key Democats - prominent among them Senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, who has become a constant presence on TV - the volume of Republican outcry has been downright overwhelming, with conservatives of all stripes issuing a flood of statements almost every day.
The outrage reached a peak yesterday, following the Florida Supreme Court decision to force the secretary of state to accept the hand recounts of three counties. US House majority leader Dick Armey instantly called it a ''partisan decision'' and urged the Bush campaign to fight back; Representative J.C. Watts issued a press release condemning Gore as a ''candidate who will not win or lose honorably, but will instead employ the cutthroat tactics that eight years under President Clinton have taught him.''
Senate majority leader Trent Lott was equally vociferous, saying the decision ''serves as a chilling reminder of the need for vigilance to ensure that the actions of unelected judges do not usurp the right of the people to govern themselves in a democracy.''
''This cannot stand!'' Lott said in a written statement.
That was certainly the tenor of the remarks made yesterday outside the Texas governor's mansion, where dozens of Bush supporters gathered on Lavaca Street carrying signs and chanting. Crenshaw led one of the largest contingents, flanked by her three young daughters and her husband, who was captain of the US golf team that won the Ryder Cup last year.
As cars honked while driving by in a show of support, Crenshaw waved and smiled and held her sign higher in the air. Her husband held another homemade sign: ''Florida: No more mulligans!''
