Mark Steyn on Hugh Hewitt re: the President's speech

HH: Joined now by Mark Steyn, Steynonline.com, columnist to the world. Mark, your reaction to the President's speech, and the Majority Leader's comments?

MS: Well, I think the President has, in fact, actually not damaged himself, but I wouldn't say he's done anything that is going to reassure people who take this issue seriously. I think the overall tone, that sort of moderate tone, will appeal to people who are uncommitted on this issue. But I think it aggravates those of us who were hoping for a bit more daddy party talk, rather than the kind of mommified, family values don't stop at the Rio Grande type stuff.

MS: Well, I think, you know, I think as far as Senator Frist is concerned, that there isn't...unfortunately, as we saw with Dick Durbin's response, that the likelihood is the Democrats are going to play politics with the whole question of National Guard deployments on the border. And that this is going to become their way of attacking the Republican Party on this issue, making that the big centerpiece of it. And in fairness, that's invited by bringing up that issue. But I don't think this situation is going to resolve itself, either from what the President said tonight, or what Senator Frist said.

HH: Mark Steyn, my proposition is I was actually okay with the speech, thought it was a fine effort. And then Julie Myers came on my program, and just staggered me, because she clearly doesn't believe in the fence, doesn't care about it, says tunnels defeat it. In other words, all the optics are not being supported by the administration spokespeople. I don't know what it is elsewhere, but...

MS: Well, you know something, I know something about that, because as it always comes down to it, I've actually experienced...this isn't just a spectator sport with me. I've been through U.S. immigration as a participant. And what everybody tells you is that Congress and the President can announce things as often as they want, and Congress can pass laws on it as much as they want. They can pass particular programs. A couple of years back, they determined there was a need for a particular type of business category, and Congress passed a law for it. And it just sat on the desk of the relative immigration agency. The reality of U.S. immigration is that basically, you've got a lot of different...every single border guard and border post is operating a free-lance immigration policy. The border post at Pittsburgh-New Hampshire is unmanned two-thirds of the day. The border post on the Manitoba-Minnesota border is on the honor system. It's open 24 hours a day. You pull up there and there's a video phone and there's a sign saying please check in on the video phone. And 60% of the time, the video phone doesn't work. So you have to ask yourself are these people, the ones who regardless of what the President and Congress says, seriously going to enforce anything he requires anyway?

HH: You know, earlier tonight, Mark Steyn, I spoke with Jonathan Alter, Newsweek columnist, about his new book, The Defining Moment, a very good book, actually, about FDR. And when it came time to create the Civilian Conservation Corps, nobody wanted to do it. Labor didn't want to do it, the military didn't want to do it. FDR had to sit there and pound on the table to get it done. He had to force feed it through. If this President wants what he wants done, he's got to wrestle all of these people.

MS: Well, yes, I think he has. And you know, I think this is where...if I fault the President, I think this goes back to those early days after September 11th. It's shocking to me that after illegal immigrants used...the illegal immigration system was used by the 9/11 hijackers to get their picture I.D. with which they boarded the planes. It's shocking to me that this is still an issue that's being framed in essentially these horrible euphemisms, that bear no reality to anything. Incidentally, by the way, I disagree with the guest worker program. No civilized society should have a guest worker program. That's what countries like Saudi Arabia have, and that's what Germany has with the Turks, and it hasn't worked out well for them. If there are jobs that people need doing in this country that they can't find Americans for, then those people should be admitted on the same basis as any other legal immigrant. What is happening on this issue, I think this is where the President actually framed it in the wrong terms. It's not an immigration thing. I'm an immigrant. There are 200 countries in the world. A lot of them come and send citizens who want to come and live legally in the United States. And some of them send people who want to come and live here illegally. And those illegal people live in towns here and there, and they don't pay taxes, but they spend their money in the local economy. The Mexican business, you've got millions of people sending vast amounts of money in the form of remittances back to Mexico. Mexico is basically annexed a whole chunk of the U.S. economy. It's a sovereignty issue. It's not an immigration issue.

HH: Mark Steyn, I'm in studio with Truth Laid Bear's Bear, and he is covering over at Truthlaidbear.com online reaction, which is overwhelmingly negative. Now this might just be wish fulfillment, but it might also be tipping public opinion. Do you think it's the former or the latter?

MS: Well, I don't think that the President can realistically fall much lower. I mean, he's somewhere between the Janjaweed and the Ebola Virus right now...

MS: ...and I don't think...I don't think he's actually going to be...I remember once being on a TV show in Britain that had an audience so low it couldn't statistically be measured.

MS: The President is approaching that low, and I don't necessarily think that will particularly impact the fate of the Republican Party in November. I could quite see it possible, you know, a scenario where the President has 5% approval ratings, and yet somehow, the Republicans still manage to hold the House and Senate. But I do think, again, I do think it seriously gets to the credibility, not just of the administration, but of the United States. When you enforce the border, Vicente Fox calls up the White House and bawls them out for basically enforcing their jurisdiction, and he's told by the White House, oh, don't worry. We're just going through the motions, it's just for a couple of weeks. Tell your guys to lie low for a couple of weeks, and then they can sneak across, same as usual. I mean, that's pathetic to do that to the leader of a third world, basket case economy. How are Russia and China meant to think of the hyperpower in that situation?

HH: Oh, and I also think...you did not hear this Julie Myers interview, and I'm just still abadabadabada about this thing. She comes on and immediately walks the dog backwards. I mean, it's not even ten minutes since the President went off the air, and she's saying well, you know, the fence really doesn't work, and you can tunnel under fences, and stuff like that. And so, they're getting worked by the President of Mexico, getting worked by the people below them. And what does Bush do next? Because I actually think that you can't lead this way. You can't...

MS: Well, you know what I find very interesting about this, and again, as I said, I'm like poor old Christopher Hitchens. Whenever you have subjects of Her Britannic Majesty on the show, Hugh, we've all experienced this thing as a hard end. You know, the President says he wants to do this thing in an atmosphere of respect. The reality is, a lot of us who go through the legal system aren't treated very respectfully. You know, they're quite capable of cracking down on individuals if for one reason or another, they just decide the individual didn't fill in the RU-12 within the 30 days or whatever, and they decide to tie him up in bureaucratic hell for some minor infraction. They're quite capable of doing that if they want to. And yet, at the same time, their basic modus operandi is to let Congress pass whatever laws it wants, and then just put them in the bottom of the filing cabinet and life goes on as usual.

HH: 30 seconds, Mark Steyn. Did the President help himself? Did he advance immigration reform in solution and border control tonight?

MS: No, I don't think he helped himself, and I don't believe he seriously tackled what is a sustained assault by Mexico on U.S. sovereignty.

When it's all said and done, that speech will go down in history with Whip Inflation Now.....

Something terribly wrong happened right after the 2004 election.

All the wind went out of the Bush administration's sails.

Perhaps 4 years of intense criticism found a home.

Since that November, this administration has chosen poorly on nearly every decision.

They are truly out of touch with the American people.

Perhaps they SHOULD have read the polls more often.

The Dubai Ports deal was a fiasco!

Now their stance on immigration insults the brave and law-abiding mass of good Americans.

I feel almost the same now that I did at this stage of the Clinton administration.

And I have been a staunch Republican conservative for the past 26 years.

I've never seen a better imitation of the Keystone Cops than this bunch in the White House!

They operate in slow motion....always.....always reacting too late or not at all to unwarranted attacks from the opposition.

If only the President would meet with any 6 FReepers for an hour a week !!

He could not do any worse than he does now.

"Something terribly wrong happened right after the 2004 election.

All the wind went out of the Bush administration's sails."

He came out and said for Social Security reform "I'm going to use all my political capital."

Fine if he wants reform, but to say this risking "all" his capital was risky.

And he never actually presented a plan on paper.

He came out and said for Social Security reform "I'm going to use all my political capital."

There will be SS reform or it will vanish.....

I've invested as if there will be no SS for me when I'm ready and now I don't have to worry.

Clinton started his first year with "gays in the military" followed by "Hillary care" and it was the most serendipitous thing that could have happened to him...he was saved by defeat in the 1994 Republican congressional landslide.

Newt Gingrich and the freshman revolution kept spending under control, reformed welfare and successfully reduced capital gains taxes significantly.

And that bum, Clinton got the credit!!

Talk about a Forrest Gump president........he was there at the right time.

Bush has had nothing but bad luck.

His one shining domestic victory...tax cuts and a booming economy making millions rich from property and stocks has been overlooked.

It's so sad how such a decent man squandered all the goodness he brought to the office.....

and now he is reviled.

sixty million is a conservative estimate. another and more realistic estimate is 193 million. that's right. 60% of the present population of the u.s. we're gonna import 193 million welfare recipients in the next 20 years.

gee. i seem to remember everone going gaga about ten or twenty million boomers retiring.

...I think I can trump you - Carter's "Malaise" speech.

I'll go with Carter's "Malaise" speech, because it was such a disappointment--at least to his supporters--after the media had raised such high expectations about it.

This speech was supposed to re-invigorate Carter's sagging presidency. He had spent several days at Camp David crafting it, and I recall watching the presidential helicopter carrying him back to the White House, where he would deliver it.

When it was over, I knew that Carter would be moving out of the White House in 1981.

No I don't revile him, but the President and the Admin do not seem to be able to put a foot straight since the 2004 election. From the Dubai ports deal, to Harriet Miers, to not being committed to getting their message out, and to this wishy-washiness on illegal immigration, it's been a mess. And the bottom line is that I don't think anything will come out of Congress on immigration till the next session, and maybe not till after 2008. And that's probably a good thing. What good will some six-hundred page bill do other than create another bureaucracy? Someone will run in 2008 on an anti-illegal immigration platform (Tancredo?) and if they do well their stand will have to be adoopted by the party as a whole, or we'll have a credible third-party candidate.

Maybe the five years of unrelenting, vicious, unprecedented, daily attacks from all points of the MSM compass have had an effect.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.