Conservatives are warning that President Bush’s decision to bring in a new White House chief of staff won’t be enough by itself to salvage an administration lagging in the polls.

They are saying that personnel changes alone will not address core concerns of the president’s base on the growing deficit and the war in Iraq.

The president of Americans for Tax Reform, Grover Norquist, yesterday said, “People are unhappy because the government is spending too much money. This is not driven by a White House staff decision. It’s a problem with the House and the Senate,” he said. “The other concern is about Iraq. But the chief of staff is not shooting at our soldiers. This gets fixed when we win in Iraq.”

The vice president for government relations at the Heritage Foundation, Michael Franc, said he hopes the resignation of Andrew Card will be the first step in addressing what he called “an enormous level of angst among president Bush’s political base.” Mr. Franc suggested the White House go beyond staff changes to alleviate the worries of Republicans by taking steps such as nominating a new slate of appellate court judges and taking a tough stand against congressional pork.

President Bush yesterday praised his outgoing chief of staff, Mr. Card, for his “wise counsel, his calm in crisis, his absolute integrity and his tireless commitment to public service.” Standing with the president at the announcement was his new chief of staff, Josh Bolten, who first began working with Mr. Bush in 1999 and most recently was the director of the office of management and budget.

Behind the scenes, however, leading Bush supporters are calling for more dramatic changes at a White House dogged by approval ratings in the mid-30% range, the prospect of unraveling stability in Iraq, and a federal budget with deficits in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

Last week, the author of a pro-Bush book, Fred Barnes of The Weekly Standard, penned an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal recommending that the president ask the vice president to step aside and take over the top job at the Pentagon; that he appoint Secretary of State Rice to the vice presidency; move Karl Rove out to the Republican National Committee; and make a former spokesman for Paul Bremer in Iraq, Dan Senor, the new White House press secretary.

Mr. Norquist yesterday said bluntly that Mr. Card’s resignation was “in response to the Barnes article.” He added, “The response was, ‘We are doing fine and we will make decisions as we wish and we will not be flailing.’ Nobody with the possible exception of their wives will notice this change.”

The White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, yesterday left open the prospect of additional staff changes at the White House. “The president will look to Josh for his advice and counsel on management and staffing issues throughout the administration, but I think it’s premature to try to speculate about what, if any, decisions might come,” he said.

A former White House speechwriter, David Frum, yesterday said he did not interpret Mr. Card’s resignation as portending a larger White House shake up. “Card was not a policy maker, he was an institution manager. His departure will not have policy implications. And Bolten has been part of the Bush team since 1999. This move indicates great continuity,” he said.

“The president is being hurt by a perception of stalemate in Iraq and by the legacy of Katrina and Dubai and his perception on immigration. Those political facts are not altered by alternations of personnel,” Mr. Frum said.

Mr. Franc yesterday said, “You are looking at an opportunity to make some decisions with personnel, how to address sources of angst, to put in place folks who will address head on the widespread sense among political and voting Republicans that the government spends too much of their money.”

Mr. Franc proposed that the president send an aggressive message on budget earmarking by instructing his staff to ignore the special requests for funding in committee reports and only acknowledging budget items voted on the floor in the full legislation. Mr. Franc also said the White House can reinvigorate conservatives by nominating replacements for some 17 appellate court judges that have left the bench.

He also recommended an initiative to force the U.N. secretary-general to make more reforms at Turtle Bay. The object of this last legislative strategy would be to cause opponents like “Senator John Kerry to go out and defend the United Nations on the Senate floor.”

Mr. Card’s brother-in-law, a former political director at the White House for George H.W. Bush, Ronald Kaufman, said yesterday that “history will be very kind to Andy,” noting that he is the second longest serving chief of staff in history and presided over a robust economy and changes in healthcare regulations and education policy that will have long lasting impact.

“I enjoyed listening to cable today, with everyone talking about the White House being reorganized. The truth is this is a very orderly transition,” he said.

Mr. Card, 58, is best known for delivering the news of the September 11 attacks to President Bush as Mr. Bush read to children in a Florida elementary school. Mr. Card was also pilloried by war critics for saying, “You don’t roll out a new product in August,” in reference to the White House campaign to sell the Iraq war to the American public.

In 2004, Mr. Card assisted the FBI in their investigation into his second cousin, Susan Lindauer, who was charged as being an unregistered agent for the Iraqi government before the war in 2003.