Great posts.
We can all agree and disagree on the methodology of protecting the integrity of our borders, but the fact is that a country without secure borders is no longer a soverign nation.
Perhaps because we had just come out of a couple very distasteful elections and the issue of illegal immigration was the big smelly elephant in the room, that we allowed ourselves the luxury of delusion, for a time.
GWB had just won reelection. His speech on amnesty before the election was slightly, ever so slightly different before than after. Or perhaps that is what some wanted to hear. Repecting the man and wanting to continue to do so, especially after the joys of the Clinton administration, the lefty dishonest challenges to Pres Bush's election, and of course the horrors of 9/11 of course many conservatives had voted for GW inspite of our immigration related reservations.
No, he never made his immigration ideologies a secret, but he did play them in such a way so that strong border conservatives like myself who wanted to believe him and vote for him with a clear conscience could easily deceive ourselves. Some of us successfully did so.
Perhaps because Kerry was such an unacceptable alternative, it seemed that we could hope that the man we respected so much, who was so honorable, could surely be persuaded to change his thinking.
A couple years have passed and this issue has heated up considerably since the election. Should national security issues have by now awakened the most hardened party operatives in both parties to the realities of our insecured borders? If not because of patriotism, should they not be able to see the political fallout/opportunity?
The political opportunists or true patriots who in the next elections are smart enough to see that this issue is a winner for the one who is willing to wrap themselves in it, will win.
Hopefully that someone will be other than the Hildebeast.
Let the flaming begin.