That's a two-edged sword. A lot of folks here on FR grumbled as Bush did a lot of stuff that was not conservative in nature - from education to entitlements to spending - but they still voted for Bush in 2004. But Bush will never run for re-election again, and the Bush Admin needs to realize that they can push the base too far, and they apparently haven't gotten the message, despite clear polling to the contrary, that they are on the brink of doing just that. And it isn't like wanting the border secured first is some kind of irrational xenophobic tendency in the base - Reagan's amnesty showed you cannot have any effective resolution to illegal immigration as long as you have not secured the borders.
So I do agree that people need to support the GOP House members this election as well as conservative Senators. But in turn, the folks on FR and elsewhere who are yelling at the dissidents on Bush's immigration plans need to instead yell at the Bush Admin for not getting the message. The solidity of the GOP is at stake, and they are driving a wedge into it with each passing failure to listen to what the base is saying.
By 2004, the annual inflow of foreign-born persons was down 24% from its all-time high in 2000, according to the Pew Hispanic Center analysis of multiple datasets collected by the Census Bureau and other government agencies.
http://pewhispanic.org/reports/report.php?ReportID=53
Well said. I'm not only going to vote for a Republican for Congress in my district, but I'm helping his campaign as a volunteer in substantial ways that I'm not going to discuss here. In fact, I'm upset by what President Bush is doing because it may hurt my candidate's chances as so many conservatives may stay home out of sheer frustration.