"Is this straight from truthout?"
What's "truthout"?
It's axiomatic.
2006 is an off-year election, when turnouts are always bad.
Conservatives are the key to low-turnout elections, Border Conservatives, the "BorderBots", are a key part of that constituency all across America.
Before the speech they said, loud and clear over and over again, what they needed: a real FENCE, and NO amnesty. President Bush didn't give them that. He gave them a "virtual" (i.e. "unreal") fence and amnesty-by-another-name.
Here on FR, you see the BorderBots howling like boiled cats, and it's entirely sincere. A certain number of them will sit out this election, or vote for third parties. They said so before, and they will execute now. In an offyear election, losing a key constituency, while the Democrats have just organized the legal and ILLEGAL Hispanic vote as never before, spells disaster in enough congressional districts to give the Democrats control of the House and the Senate.
Pelosi and others have already said they would immediately begin investigations, and she's been coy about impeachment.
Each of these things is linked, and always was linked, and folks have been saying it for a long, long time. That's why Bush had to give a speech tonight: to try and break the iron triangle forming around him.
Ask the BorderBots on the thread. They were the ones saying BEFORE the speech, for weeks, that if there was amnesty and no fence they were sitting out this election.
Go ahead and ask how many of them have changed their minds.
If that reflects the Border Conservatives' view, as I strongly suspect it does, the Republicans will lose Congress, and impeachment will follow in train.
Of course, if the BorderBots swallow hard and decide they have to vote Republican anyway, to save the rest of the agenda, disaster will be averted. I see no reason whatsoever to believe that they will do that.