Posted on 05/18/2006 5:29:51 PM PDT by RWR8189
What the president's immigration speech and "The DaVinci Code" have in common.
What was missing in the president's approach the other night was the expression, or suggestion, of context. The context was a crisis that had gone unanswered as it has built, the perceived detachment of the political elite from people on the ground, and a new distance between the president and his traditional supporters. The president would have done well to signal that he knew he was coming late to the party, as it were; that he'd come to rethink his previous stand, or lack of a stand, and had begun to consider whether there was not some justice in the views, and alarm, of others.
Without an established context the speech seemed free-floating: a statement issued into the ether, unanchored to any particular principle and eager to use, as opposed to appreciate, whatever human sentiment flows around the issue of immigration. It was a speech driven by an air of crisis, but not a public crisis, only a personal and political one.
To acknowledge what he apparently thinks are the biases of the base, he used loaded words like "sneak"--illegal immigrants "sneak across the border"--as if to establish his populist bona fides. This was, not to put too fancy a rhetorical term on it, creepy, and managed to be offensive to everyone.
What was needed was a definitive statement: As of this moment we will control our borders, I'm sending in the men, I'm giving this the attention I've given to the Mideast.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
Stand aside. I'm sure I'm older than you.
If I were 50lbs lighter she and I wouldn't know eachother!!
Oh dear....Peggy Noonan is now a troll to FR's sternest.
LOL
read later
If memory serves me correctly, isn't she the author of President George H.W. Bush's speech, "A Thousand Points of Light" and the infamous, "Read my lips, no new taxes" statement? It was not a good speech, and I believe some of his aides tried to get him to strike that sentence from the speech. Peggy is more impressed with Peggy than I am with Peggy!!
Hey man!! You're talking to yourself again!!!
What you say is true but Bush did appoint two decent SCOTUS nominess though we had to force him on Alito.
And he is very serious about the WOT...if he'd just quit talking PC about Islam at every chance
and all his lower judges have been stellar
He's jumped the shark on amnesty but he is still way way above Toon....though Toon was a damned sight beter than Gore woulda been. Gore was/is a veritable moonbat.
Bush hasn't changed, but Noonan has done a 180 on him.
It is a good thing she's sparing some poor sap that fickleness of hers.
Hi and welcome to Free Republic.
You must have missed the President talk Monday, and all his other ones on the same topic.
(I miss Marty Robbins.)
Out in the west Texas town of El Paso!!!!
Yep... I do it all the time on FR... ;-)
Just Checking!!!
Precisely. Not only that but Noonan has had to do a 180 on her own rhetorical flourishes. She is a hypocrite.
"Where's the same level of outrage?!", is my interrabang.
You are correct, bush is giving AMNESTY to 10 times as many, if not more.
our fellow Americans are the far larger proportional drain
That's kinda what a person would expect, Don't you think
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