Posted on 05/12/2006 2:05:38 PM PDT by Impeach98
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The GOP is blowing it
Posted: May 12, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern
There's a lot of talk going around about how bad the November elections are going to be for the Republican Party.
I ought to know – I'm doing a lot of that talking with grassroots conservatives every day on our four-hour radio show. The GOP has only itself to blame for its problems, and I say this as a proud conservative Republican who twice voted for George Bush and wants very badly to see him regain his political footing.
The Republican Party, which for 25 years had proudly embraced its role as the home of the conservative movement, now seems proudly defiant on an array of issues. Pick a week and you can name a different betrayal of conservative principles.
Betrayal on immigration policies
This week it's news from the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin that the Bush administration instructed the U.S. Border Patrol to share information with the Mexican government on where the Minutemen's anti-illegal immigration patrols are operating.
When I read this shocking story, I literally felt sick. Is this administration so intent on it's policy of ignoring the borders that it would turn against its own people? Would they actually put in jeopardy the lives of heroic men and women who are only doing the job that their government is refusing to do?
Instead of tattling on the Minutemen to the Mexican government, the Bush administration should take some advice that will help stop their plummeting poll numbers.
New Communications Director Tony Snow should arrange for President Bush to travel to a border town in Arizona or California and give Minutemen co-founders Chris Simcox and Jim Gilchrist a pat on the back for a job well done. In the background should be backhoes moving large piles of dirt as a concrete wall begins to rise.
While they're at it, they should have our military men and women present with guns at their side and at the ready. And as long as I'm dreaming, I'd love to see House Speaker Denny Hastert, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, and other Republican leaders down there at the border thanking the Minutemen for their efforts.
This might be a fantasy on my part, but I can guarantee a nightmare scenario for the GOP if things don't change. Can you say House Speaker Nancy Pelosi? Judiciary Chairman Carl Levin? Can you say "impeachment"?
I just don't understand how the Republican leadership can be so dumb on the politics of this issue on top of their betrayal of principle.
But I should have known better.
After the Sept. 11 attacks I naively thought that Bush and the Republican leadership would get serious on the immigration issue. I suspected that the "squishy" stand Bush and his counterparts espoused was purely based on political calculations – they wanted to hold their own among Latino voters.
But when 9-11 occurred, it seemed like a no-brainer to me that every politician should demand immediate action to secure the border at once. Wasn't that the politically smart thing to do?
We were making 85-year-old airline passengers take off their shoes and belts and wedding rings at airports in the interests of national security. Surely we wouldn't allow Islamic terrorists the opportunity to have hundreds of miles of an unprotected border for them to smuggle terrorist operatives and weapons of mass destruction through, right?
Wrong!
Blowing the War on Terrorism
Now that I mention it, the Bush administration and the GOP seem increasingly out of touch on the war against terrorism as well.
As the chairman of Move America Forward – the nation's largest grassroots pro-troop organization – I've been an unwavering supporter of President Bush's policies to combat Islamic terrorism.
Yet, despite my willingness to be a cheerleader for the GOP on the issue of the War on Terror, I have become increasingly appalled at the incompetence displayed by Bush and the GOP when it comes to communicating with the public.
In recent congressional testimony, new information emerged about Saddam's "Blessed July" program, which was described by Foreign Affairs magazine as "a regime-directed wave of 'martyrdom' operations against targets in the West."
Apparently the Pentagon has been well aware of this evidence of Saddam Hussein's history of planning terrorist attacks against the United States and our allies.
So why has the GOP and the Bush administration been silent on this?
It's similar to an incident that happened in October 2004. CNS News reporter Scott Wheeler broke a world exclusive story on newly discovered Iraqi Intelligence Service documents that documented Iraq's possession of WMD's such as anthrax and mustard gas, as well as Iraq's collaboration with Islamic terrorist organizations including al-Qaida.
What did the Bush administration do with this information? Nothing.
They made the political calculation that they could end the questioning of their motives for going to war in Iraq if they just agreed with the anti-war Left that Saddam Hussein didn't have any WMD programs or ties to terrorist groups after all.
Instead Bush and his GOP colleagues said they were victims of "bad intelligence."
That strategy only furthered the cries of "Bush lied" – despite the fact that he didn't. Bush was right about the threat posed by Iraq as a nation-state that would provide financing, training and WMDs to Islamic terrorist groups to use against American citizens.
Yet Bush and other Republican leaders chose to embrace a strategy of "surrender" to their political enemies in the hopes it would silence them.
That insanely stupid strategy has backfired. Big time.
How can the administration expect to rally support for the War on Terror if it cannot defend its own actions, especially when the facts to support it are right in front of their face?
Here come the Democrats
As poll numbers for Bush and congressional Republicans continue to plunge, it's clear that the GOP has alienated many conservatives who once supported Bush's policies in the war on terror.
Combine that with the GOP's betrayal of conservatives on the illegal immigration issue and you have the elements in place that could cause millions of conservatives to stay at home on Election Day this November.
The tragedy is that the Republican Party's failures on two of the most important issues of our time could mean a return to power for the Democrat Party. And that's ironic since the Democrats are even more out of touch with the American people on these two issues than Republican leaders are.
Hopefully, someone in the Bush administration or at the Republican National Committee who is reading this column will understand that conservatives would like nothing more than to see the Republican Party come home, and once more embrace the policies of the conservative base.
Some advice to our party elders: Most of us are conservatives first, Republicans second.
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Melanie Morgan is chairman of the conservative, pro-troop non-profit organization Move America Forward and is co-host of the "Lee Rodgers & Melanie Morgan Show" on KSFO 560 AM in San Francisco.
When you start off with a lie then the rest doesn't matter. Everyone with a computer has access to the Minutemen's location 24/7. They blast it to the world.
Bush didn't instruct them to share information. They DON'T share information about where the minutemen will be.
They provide mexico with information when mexicans are detained in our country.
If your child wandered over into mexico and was arrested, You'd be screaming for mexico to tell the american consulate so you could go take care of him.
It's a commonly accepted practice -- you detain a foreigner, and they want you to, you contact their consulate.
Wishful thinking by the Buchannanites hoping desperately that this means the Nation will suddenly start taking them seriously. Look at the individual approval ratings children. Everyone HATES all Politicians, except their own Congress Critters. Their all scum except our own local guy, he is ok. So dream on Whiners, you still will never get more then 1% of the vote.
They don't care. The big lie is now fact.
She's 100% right. Especially on the immigration issue. Ratting out the Minutemen to the Mexicans is beyond deplorable. Speaker Pelosi and President Hillary Clinton will have a great time getting their legislative agenda through Congress in the spring of 2009. We'll have no one but the GOP to blame.
Keep whistling past the graveyard. Everything is fine. We are unbeatable. All is well.
That'll be the day.
That is a joke, but the wall is a good idea and talk of National Guard on the border is not enough.
The "lie" you claim was stated came from the Border Patrol spokesperson.
You forgot the Birchers and Stormfronters.
You're becoming a parody of yourself. How about some constructive posts for a change?
Nothing could be further from the truth. My local guy is a bad as any in the house and nothing would please me more than to see him gone.
I just came back from Canada last week. Even as a US citizen with my passport, I got grilled. Not that that is a bad thing. What is a bad thing is that there seem to be one set of rules for citizens and another for illegals. What is the sense of having airtight security on the Northern border if its a free for all on the Southern one?
(Denny Crane: "Every one should carry a gun strapped to their waist. We need more - not less guns.")
Don't kid yourself. The feds got caught, and only the kool-aid drinkers are buying the "we were only complying with treaty obligations" line.
Yeah, right!
The problem with your statement is that Melanie Morgan supported George Bush over Pat Buchanan in the presidential elections. It's not Melanie Morgan who is wrong on the immigration issue it is Bush and certain GOP Senators.
Thank you for that post. I notice some people here had a knee-jerk reaction that Melanie was attacking the GOP and instead somehow hoping the Democrats win.
Melanie is upset because she sees the GOP shooting itself in the foot and the danger is that the result could be that conservatives are so depressed at feeling abandoned on their core beliefs that the Democrats win.
Yes, indeed. It was a Border Patrol spokesperson who blew the whistle on this. Michelle Malkin has done a great job at covering the Department of Homeland Security's frantic spin job to insist that nothing of the sort was done.
An earlier draft of Melanie's column included this fact and the insistence by DHS that this was not true. Melanie pointed out that since Bush has called the Minutemen a "vigilante" group that it makes the reports of tattling to the Mexican government impossible to ignore. [She deleted that part of the column because it was too long.]
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