Posted on 05/15/2006 9:47:42 PM PDT by Aussie Dasher
Arguably America’s most prominent American political consultant, Dick Morris tells NewsMax that President Bush’s key national address on immigration reform Monday night was "a great speech.”
"It included all the elements it had to,” said Morris, who noted the president is living through record low approval ratings.
But Morris conjectures Bush’s border plan may help lay the ground work for a comeback.
Morris is almost universally credited with piloting Bill Clinton’s stunning comeback re-election victory in 1996 after the Democrats lost Congress to the Republicans two years before.
The presidential plan to beef up the southern border fence in both real and virtual terms is both the "key to securing the border and securing the president's base,” Morris opined.
As to Bush’s vital guest worker proposal, Morris sees it as "the key to keeping the GOP competitive with Hispanic voters.”
And leaving open paths to citizenship for those already in the country, albeit illegally, will serve to make "Latinos a GOP stronghold,” Morris advised.
Morris has warned that the Republican risks losing its dominance in the near future if it doesn’t grab a larger share of Hispanic voters. Hispanics are rapidly growing in the U.S., especially in states like Florida, Texas, and other states once considered strongly GOP.
As Morris has written in the past:
"By moving away from English-only policies and reaching out to Hispanics, Bush has closed the gap among Latino voters. Gore carried them by 30 points, but Kerry only won among them by 10. But the border backlash may be undoing all this good work.
"The obvious answer is to couple a fence with a good guest-worker program, with a citizenship track predicated on good behavior.”
Morris further advised at the time that if the Republican Party allows the enforcement-heavy House bill to become law - a fence with no guest-worker program - it will antagonize the vital Latino vote and the GOP would consign itself to permanent minority status.
bttt
Sorry Sen Santorum -- I have that Soprano episode on my mind lol
Good. I think you should feel that way. I'm always amazed at how so many lose their faith in this President when their "pet issue" comes up to bat.
The Presidency is a tough job, fraught with compromises. It has ALWAYS been that way -- one of our basic precepts is from Lincoln: you can't please all of the people all of the time. President Bush has taken on some of the toughest issues imaginable in five years -- many of them he has taken on even though his predecessors preferred to ignore them or simply offer them lip service.
And yet there are those even in his own party who give him hell for wanting to DO something -- even if it's not quite what they would have him do -- about the problems he is brave enough to face, when others would not.
I think he has earned our support. And I KNOW there are many things he has done to keep us safe that will never be reported until years after he is out of office. I think that part bugs me the most. None of us even know the HALF of it, and yet some of us feel we have a perfect right to trash this good man.
Good grief! What a LOAD.
"Good grief! What a LOAD."
LOL yeah thats a little over the top. Does Dick Morris even consult anyone anymore? I don't include appearing on Fox and Friends and the Sean Hannity radio show as evidence that he is the most prominent American political consultant. I like the Guy but his ego a tad big.
English is also the language of science and technology.
A tad?
Carl got a little carried away, huh?
ROFLMAO.
Phil, you kill me. But you always have!
The only problem with the analogy is that the housebreaker wouldn't get near that far in his speech if he were in *my* house, namsayn? "Say hello to my little friend!"
Ditto. While I am a strong Bush supporter, I would take much harsher methods to control illegal immigration than he will do. However the hysterical people i.e. Bush-haters on this forum should realize that illegal immigration is not at the top of the list of what worries the average American the most.
There are a host of other issues including, believe it or not, a war against an evil, implacable foe which Bush is fighting admirably which outrank this problem. Apparently all the pessimists/Bush-haters have forgotten that in their eagerness to heap scorn on the prez. He has other coals in the fire.
If it's all about the votes, than he is right. The short-term hispanic vote will favor republicans with this sham.
Somehow I don't think we'll see a government funded fence/wall go up, the senate won't do it and you know some pro-illegal mayors will whine about it even though they can't do anything about it (and when a law comes via their state legislature or city council, they'll go for the BS federal issue argument.)
His batting average the last few years has been pretty low.
"Making illegal immigrants turn themselves in, get to the back of the line, and jump through a couple dozen hoops to get into good immigrant standing is hardly "amnesty"."
If someone breaks the law by entering the country illegally, is not punished and is not returned home, it IS amnesty. The things you have described are NOT a punishment for having broken the law, they are simply the mandates required for 'earning' amnesty.
"I know there are many FReepers who won't be happy unless we round up 12 million people and ship them back to Mexico, but that AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN. EVER."
I could be counted as one of those FReepers. However, even if it "ain't gonna happen", why does the answer STILL have to be "to compromise", to give them a chance to 'earn' their stay (or amnesty)? If the borders were effectively secured all that would need to be done is to ENFORCE the laws and the illegals would deport themselves. There would be NO need to compromise. But, if Bush is not going to penalilze employers and will go to the extent of offering a 'guest worker program' as a means of rewarding and protecting both the employer AND the illegals with amnesty, then he never intened or intends to enforce our immigration laws or to effectively secure the border, as evidenced in his speech.
The very core of Bush's intent, agenda, plan, to grant amnesty to illegals while protecting employers, is found in ONE sentence of his speech. It is the mother of all spin and I'll reapeat what I said earlier:
"Second, to secure our border, we MUST create a temporary worker program."
This is SOOO NOT TRUE and the VERY CORE of the spin he is using to connect the two issues, making one dependent on the other. THIS is why border security and enforcement of immigration laws ALONE (without 'earned amnesty') were not addressed. HE IS NOT GOING TO SECURE THE BORDER WITHOUT A GUEST WORKER PROGRAM.
Is this his only ridiculously stupid justification for a temporary worker program? That is a crock of you know what. He says a 'temp worker prog' is necessary because the illegals will risk their lives to come here to work if we don't give them one? Then he goes on to say, "To secure the border effectively, we must reduce the numbers of people trying to sneak across. " and a guest worker program is the answer? NO IT ISN"T. If the laws were ENFORCED and the employers were SEVERLY PENALIZED, there would be no jobs to come to.
So, what this is about is NOT PENALIZING EMPLOYERS. It's about AMNESTY for the EMPLOYER and AMNESTY for the ILLEGAL. The moment that a guest worker program is installed, BOTH are off the hook !!
Border security is NOT dependent on the installation of a 'guest worker program'.
Geez oh man......He spun it just like a Democrat."
Hillary will try to go to his right. Watch.
Be Seeing You,
Chris
They will receive amnesty from the law that requires them to get out of the USA.
Now if certain politicians want to replace the common English-language meaning of amnesty with some strawman re-definition of Amnesty ("automatic citizenship", etc) that's fine, politics involves a lot of word games, but it doesn't change the reality that what the President and Senate propose is amnesty for illegal aliens.
he's the one that needs a bump in the polls not me, I would have advised him to use the word "wall", fence sounds weak.
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