It is only recently that the browbeating and rhetorical battle has developed a more personal slant and has become a serious problem within the party.
Basically, the far right has defined Conservatism to mean ...."like them". This has caused a backlash of major proportions and the party faithful will indeed hold firm. They have had enough name calling and insults to last a lifetime.
You are not going to shove this party to do what you want. What you will get is a huge headache from banging it against a very thick wall.
The immigration issue is not black and white. We are not to blame for it, it simply is. It is both complex and simple, with some solutions having multiple issues, just as others do not. It requires a comprehensive solution and all we need to do in order to see this fact is to see the results of or past attempts to fix it.
You call me a liberal, which is a response that I have gotten here for a couple years or more. Every political test I have taken puts me to the right of center and just a tad authoritarian. It puts me in line with Bush and only slightly left of Reagan,,,very slightly. As I said, there are two perspectives and I see you as just being wrong. There is no liberal or conservative right and wrong. Conservatives have been wrong a great deal lately. They are being agitated by those who wish to agitate, and they have been doing a lot of emotional thinking and rationalizations. They are doing this willingly and without much introspection, and that is not a good thing. Most conservatives look before they leap. At least they once did...but something happened after the 2004 elections. I think the party was infiltrated by those who wish to do us harm.
In the end, all this will cause the loss of the one thing that can effect change, and that is political power. Without it, nothing happens, and unless the party can come to agreement, nothing happens or will ever happen.
Sometime gridlock is preferable to big tactical errors, so if nothing comes from this immigration debate except for the usual tweaks, it won't matter.
If they can somehow meld the House and Senate versions by dropping the extremes of both, we might have something that can be used as a foundation for a long term fix to the security, assimilation, and numbers problems. If not, the status quo will get another mark in the win column, just as happened in Social security, which was also the result of party infighting.
This term is dead, so I would not blame Bush if he withdrew and concentrated on foreign policy. Clinton was forced to do the same, so it appears we have a trend.
I think the major reason for it all, is far too much thinking with the wrong side of the brain......sort of a estrogen fart.
Wrong, the nature of our country is at stake. This matter has reached critical mass and must be dealt with, whatever your perception of how we got here. This is not an "immigration debate" as the liberal left would like to couch it. It is a matter of how we deal wilth illegal aliens over-running our society. As for you claim to Conservatism, if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it most likely is a duck, protestations to the contrary not withstanding. You define yourself my friend, I have nothing to do with it.