How do you figure that? I've been big time for real border security and deporting illegals and no more light weight tactics with them. This speach is all the things conservatives have been wanting. What basis do you have to support your assertion that millions of registered conservatives will not vote because of a speach that outlined most all of the things that those same conservatives have wanted to hear Bush say on the border. The idea of that is just crazy. If anything, those conservatives who want real border security, like me, "border bots" as you want to call them, are saying what I did tonight, "It's about frikken time!". THAT is what the millions of conservatives who want border security are saying. The only people who hated this speach and don't like what he said in it are liberals who aren't voting Republican anyway.
No it wasn't. The speech had several flaws. The most glaring was an omission of a border length security fence. The second was insisting on wrapping border security with a "guest worker" program.
Many conservatives do not trust Bush to enforce border security - that is why a border length security fence has been called for.
Counting on Bush to defend the border is like counting on a advocate for the homeless enforcing panhandling ordinances - it's going to be done half-heartedly.
The President is sending 6000 NG troops down there, temporarily. There are 10664 total border patrol officers on both the northern and southern borders.
There are 40,000 officers in just the NYPD. What's wrong with this picture?
"How do you figure that? I've been big time for real border security and deporting illegals and no more light weight tactics with them. This speach is all the things conservatives have been wanting."
I think the BorderBots would disagree with you.
They wanted a fence or a wall, from sea to sea. They didn't get one. They got a "virtual fence", which isn't a fence. Wags have been saying all day that if a virtual fence is good enough, why not put one around the White House? They're not impressed.
And the BorderBots have been saying, all along, NO AMNESTY, not NOW anyway. Tonight, they're saying that guest worker is amnesty, or a "time bomb inside a Trojan horse", as one of them put it.
I'm not a BorderBot. In fact, I think that the Latino invasion is the key vector by which Roe v. Wade will be overturned, and I care most about that. That said, I do listen carefully to what these folks have been saying...not just saying but SCREAMING for months now. And what I heard the President say tonight was almost the reverse of what they wanted. He proposed sending in a few troops, who can be withdrawn, adding a few more cops, a "virtual" (as opposed to real) fence, and guest worker.
For weeks before the speech I've been reading and hearing the BorderBots saying HELL NO to all of these things that I heard the President say he was going to push for tonight.
"What basis do you have to support your assertion that millions of registered conservatives will not vote because of a speach that outlined most all of the things that those same conservatives have wanted to hear Bush say on the border."
Because the speech said just about the OPPOSITE of what Border-focused conservatives have been saying about the border. I am practically an open-borders-Catholicize-America Republican, but I do HEAR what these folks have been saying. And because I think that getting conservative command of the Supreme Court and winning the overseas wars are the most important thing, I have come to the conclusion that holding the coalition together so that we can do those things REQUIRES appeasing the BorderBots (I use the term affectionately) on the border issue. They are as passionate about it as I was about Terri Schiavo and Miers. I sense the same desperation, frustration and implacable anger in what they say as I have felt on my issue. I know they are no more likely to be duped on this issue of burning concern to them than I was on Schiavo and Miers.
Given that, I know - because I've listened to them so closely and don't want to see the Republicans crash and burn, that unless the Reconciliation Committee somehow scoops out a fence without guest worker, that these people are feeling utterly betrayed, and a lot of them are going to stay home. When Jeb Bush didn't save Terri Schiavo, he lost any possibility of my ever voting for him for President. Had Miers not been withdrawn and replaced by a reliably certain pro-life conservative, I would have left the GOP. Issues of principle override concerns of party.
I see that the BorderBots here and elsewhere are consumed by the Mexican invasion as a matter of principle. I think they're defeated and discouraged and enraged tonight. And that's what I see here on FR too, a torrent of it. I don't think a lot of these people are going to come back. If I felt as they did, I wouldn't.
"The idea of that is just crazy. If anything, those conservatives who want real border security, like me, "border bots" as you want to call them, are saying what I did tonight, 'It's about frikken time!'".
That's not what I see here or hear elsewhere among the BorderBots I watch. I said up-thread that every BorderBot will ultimately decide for himself. Perhaps you've decided that this is what you wanted. Look at your fellow BorderBots waving the bloody shirt here. And believe them when they say what they are feeling. They are telling the truth.
"THAT is what the millions of conservatives who want border security are saying."
No, it isn't. That's what you want them to be saying. But they are saying what I have reported them as saying.
You want to believe that Bush hit a homerun. And the opinion polls will show him coming back by a FEW percentage points.
If you're right, he'll surge back up into the 40s.
If I'm right, he'll stay mired in the low 30s.
"The only people who hated this speach and don't like what he said in it are liberals who aren't voting Republican anyway."
That's almost certainly not true.
Still 300 behind and bailing out to go see Jack...
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