Major Trouble
Peggy Noonan is openly distancing herself the Bush administration in an extremely harsh column today. This should serve as a wake-up call for the Republican party - a call to wake up before it is too late. Her column spells major trouble for the Republicans.
What political conservatives and on-the-ground Republicans must understand at this point is that they are not breaking with the White House on immigration. They are not resisting, fighting and thereby setting down a historical marker–"At this point the break became final." That's not what's happening. What conservatives and Republicans must recognize is that the White House has broken with them. What President Bush is doing, and has been doing for some time, is sundering a great political coalition. This is sad, and it holds implications not only for one political party but for the American future.
The White House doesn't need its traditional supporters anymore, because its problems are way beyond being solved by the base. And the people in the administration don't even much like the base. Desperate straits have left them liberated, and they are acting out their disdain. Leading Democrats often think their base is slightly mad but at least their heart is in the right place. This White House thinks its base is stupid and that its heart is in the wrong place.
For almost three years, arguably longer, conservative Bush supporters have felt like sufferers of battered wife syndrome. You don't like endless gushing spending, the kind that assumes a high and unstoppable affluence will always exist, and the tax receipts will always flow in? Too bad! You don't like expanding governmental authority and power? Too bad. You think the war was wrong or is wrong? Too bad.
But on immigration it has changed from "Too bad" to "You're bad."
The president has taken to suggesting that opponents of his immigration bill are unpatriotic–they "don't want to do what's right for America." His ally Sen. Lindsey Graham has said, "We're gonna tell the bigots to shut up." On Fox last weekend he vowed to "push back." Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff suggested opponents would prefer illegal immigrants be killed; Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said those who oppose the bill want "mass deportation." Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson said those who oppose the bill are "anti-immigrant" and suggested they suffer from "rage" and "national chauvinism."
And this name-calling by administration officials and Bush himself is a recipe for disaster. Noonan points out the exact same thing I have been saying all along: first the border. Break the monstrously complex compromise into smaller pieces with the border secured everything else can be worked out. But alienating the base is a disaster for the party and a way to fracture the coalition that conservatives have had with the Republicans.
Wake up folks. I still believe that this issue was a major reason for the Republican defeat in the midterms. Don't make it an even worse disaster in 2008 by going down this road.
Immigration Reform, Politics | Gaius Friday, 1 June , 2007
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Sensible Mom — Friday, 1 June , 2007 @ 1:18 pm
By feeblemind, Friday, 1 June , 2007 @ 8:10 am
Name calling is generally what happens when you don’t have the facts to win a debate.
By Eric Blair, Friday, 1 June , 2007 @ 9:55 am
Does anybody really care what Peggy Noonan says?
1st thing is fine the businessmen, but *that* isn’t going to happen is it?
Its as simple as this: If employers weren’t hiring illegal hispanics then there’d be no reason for them to come here.
By daveinboca, Friday, 1 June , 2007 @ 1:09 pm
I have a semi-long rant riffing on sweet Peggy’s demure piece entitled “PN sees Bush Deranged†which exaggerates her ire:
“Peggy is being too kind. GWB has the lack of depth and perspective a C-student at Yale who never cracked a book might be expected to have. Although his reasons for invading Iraq were not ironclad, we gave him the benefit of the doubt. But he devolved the peace after the war into the hands of a total arrogant incompetant named Rumsfeld, who grabbed the development of democracy from seasoned “professionals like Jay Garner and his team, and gave it to a loyalist hack named Bremer. And GWB was somnambulent as Ken Lay was at Enron, allowing “experts†like Cheney and Rumsfeld to overrule Shinseki and do a peace on the cheap. Of course, it was new wine into old wineskins and the seams broke.â€
“Peggy does a somber sum-up that reflects my own misgivings—especially about Poppy Bush and his singular insouciance about taxes and the economy that led to Perot. Then his son squandered trillions with a Republican Senate resembling Ali Baba and his forty thieves. GWB is now realizing that the Dems write the history books and is trying to salvage his reputation by serving as Teddy Kennedy’s tea-boy, the same Kennedy who in ‘65 promised that that Immigration Law would “not allow a million immigrants a year nor change the ethnic composition of the country.†both of which it eventually did. [ditto ‘86]â€
“Now REAL conservatives will have to latch onto a real Republican of the Reagan/Goldwater stripe—not transplanted Rockefeller Easterners affecting drawls and down-home cowboy charm. Like Fred Thompson or Romney. Peggy continues with a sad summary of the Bush Betrayal Family Tradition, both father and son wobbly and spineless…â€
But to keep the SCOTUS from turning us into a Eurabian dystopia, I’ll hold my nose and vote for Giuliani, as long as he has Fred or Mitt on the ticket.
By Sean Hackbarth, Friday, 1 June , 2007 @ 2:47 pm
It’s not so simple if the government can’t figure out there are illegal aliens with stolen identities on their payroll. The case of a illegal alien working as a Milwaukee police officer is an example. How can we expect the government to enforce employment law when it can’t do it to itself?
Plus, in order to help employers figure out who is legal and illegal we’ll probably have to have a national ID card. Along with the massive database that will go along with it do we want a government that instrusive?