Not in my book. "Deeds, not words", as the saying goes.
Posted on 06/04/2007 6:14:33 AM PDT by theothercheek
In an interview aboard Air Force One last week with Ron Hutcheson of McClatchy Newspapers, President Bush said:
"I'm deeply concerned about America losing its soul. Immigration has been the lifeblood of a lot of our country's history. And I am worried that a backlash to newcomers would cause our country to lose its great capacity to assimilate newcomers. And I believe that a newly arrived adds to the vigor and the entrepreneurial spirit, and enhances the American Dream."
These sentiments, coupled with Bush’s suggestion that opponents of his compromised immigration compromise "don't want to do what's right for America," are driving conservatives to apoplexy. The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan contends that Bush broke faith with conservatives, not the other way around:
Leading Democrats often think their base is slightly mad but at least their heart is in the right place. This White House thinks its base is stupid and that its heart is in the wrong place. …
You don't like endless gushing spending … Too bad! You don't like expanding governmental authority and power? Too bad. You think the war was wrong or is wrong? Too bad.
But on immigration it has changed from "Too bad" to "You're bad."
Noonan makes the case that it’s déjà vu all over again:
[T]he Bushes, father and son … are great wasters of political inheritance. They throw it away as if they'd earned it and could do with it what they liked. Bush senior inherited a vibrant country and a party at peace with itself. … Mr. Bush won in 1988 by saying he would govern as Reagan had. … [H]e raised taxes, sundered a hard-won coalition, and found himself shocked to lose his party the presidency, and for eight long and consequential years. ….
Bush the younger came forward, presented himself as a conservative, garnered all the frustrated hopes of his party, turned them into victory, and not nine months later was handed a historical trauma that left his country rallied around him, lifting him, and his party bonded to him. He was disciplined and often daring, but in time he sundered the party that rallied to him, and broke his coalition into pieces. …
There’s only one thing conservatives and Republicans can do now, says Noonan: “[W]in back their party.” She adds that “breaking from those who have already broken from [you]” and “letting go … will be painful, but it's time. It's more than time.”
The question is, how?
Deep down – maybe not so deep down – conservatives always knew Bush was a pretender, mouthing the right words and making the right gestures. But conservatives voted for him anyway, the first time to pre-empt a third Clinton term and the second time because the thought of Kerry as a post-9/11 Commander in Chief was nightmare-inducing.
This was a shot-gun wedding and after eight years of Bush, conservatives are understandably gun-shy. But holding out for an imaginary ideal of ideological purity is not the answer. And allowing Hillary Clinton to capture the White House by staying home on Election Day is not an option.
There may be a third way: A new conservative coalition that crosses party lines to include anyone who considers himself center-right. Such a coalition could as easily support a conservative Republican as a “Blue Dog” Democrat. Since neither party would be able to count on the bipartisan bloc’s vote, both will court these voters and neither will take them for granted. As an added benefit, the sheer size of this bipartisan bloc may be an equal and opposing force against the inexorable leftward pull the moonbats are exerting on the Dem party platform.
Of the 19 declared presidential candidates as of this writing, Rudy Giuliani is the most logical choice to forge this new coalition of conservatives. He is enough of a social liberal to attract Reagan Democrats, and tough enough on crime and terrorism – with the added bonus of being fiscally conservative – to attract conservatives who are putting social issue on the back burner this time around.
Over the next 18 months, several home-grown Muslim terror plots are likely to come to light - such as the thwarted plan to blow up aviation fuel tanks and feeder lines running underground from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport through surrounding residential neighborhoods in Queens. Each time, more social conservatives will conclude that preventing the aborting of the lives of those already born in acts of terrorism is at least as important as preventing the aborting of unborn babies.
Not in my book. "Deeds, not words", as the saying goes.
The writer is either an idiot or disingenuous. Rudy Guliani is *not* a conservative.
Beautiful, isn’t it? Why doesn’t Barbara Boxer hold up one of THOSE charts and start a debate? Better yet, why doesn’t W. peruse that information and LET IT SINK IN. These are NOT opportunities, these are PROBLEMS. GAWD, when is common sense going to make a return to those in charge?!?
Assimilate? In central Florida where I live the only assimilation I’m seeing is OURS- we are BEING ASSIMILATED by a foreign culture and language.
In my neighborhood the swimming pool is full of people who play LOUD Latino? Mexican? music all day and late into the night on weekends...and not one of them speaks a word of English. 2 years ago, the pool area had a mixed group- a variety of blacks, whites and latinos. Everyone had fun together..now there is no variety- only those who will not assimilate.
Sometimes it truly does seem as though our president is not living in the same country as the rest of us...
I disagree with President Bush on the illegal aliens issue, but Peggy No-one has turned into a real {enter your own non printable word here}. She is becoming the next ariana puffington.
You mean the BUSH that could see Putin’s soul and could see it was so GOOD ?
I’ll pass on his judgement of people’s souls.
Yup. You’d think he would have figured out that we aren’t stupid after the Harriet Myers debacle.
This neatly states the dilemma we face if we choose to deal with Republican lack of backbone by sitting on our hands in the next election. The problem is how to instill some spine in our representatives without simultaneously getting something far worse. We don't want to bite our noses to spite our faces. The only effective answer I've come up with is a contribution strike against the RNC, the Republican Congressional Committee, and the Republican Senatorial Committee. As Lyndon Johnson said, "Money is the mother's milk of politics." If we cut them off NOW AND DECISIVELY, tell them exactly why we're doing it, and what they can do to get us to turn the money flow back on, then we have a good chance of defeating this immigration monstrosity and doing something about other things. The beauty of this approach is it causes immense initial pain that's likely to get attention and compliance, while avoiding permanent injury. Nothing else shows any genuine hope of being really effective.
Yup. He’s lost me, that’s for sure.
Good luck with that.
We can rally around winning the war that Bush made a hash of and we can rally around stopping Islamofascism and homegrown terrorism and we can rally around stopping runaway spending in Washington. Not every conservative is a social conservative - and this election is starting to show that. But if we succeed in creating a coalition that crosses party lines, the next candidate we support could be a conservative Dem like a Zell Miller. There’s strength in numbers.
Spot on! Prior waves of imigration were people who wanted to be part of the American dream. Not migrant workers who wave foreign flags while shouting about how rotten our country is and demanding taxpayer funded entitlements. Big difference there.
But if you voted for Bush you voted for someone who does not appear to care about our nation’s sovereignty or the rule of law.
Me too. Removed all kinds of things I had for Bush. I will save them however, because they might be worth a fortune one day due to the turn this President made and how he betrayed those of us who fought like hell for him and defended him so fiercly. Sad but true.
In her original article, Peggy Noonan never mentioned Rooty, this piece has been skewed to help Rooty. Shameless.
Conservatives will never “take back” the GOP because as Bush has so clearly demonstrated it was never really ours to begin with. Any GOP candidate who wants to win our votes just tells us what we want to hear then does what he damn well pleases when he doesn’t need us anymore. Conservatives in the Republican party are like Blacks in the Dem party. Taken for granted, then discarded as soon as it’s expedient. This has to stop.
Among the nine dwarves who are running, she will win the nomination. And she has the money and the political organization to crush anyone who opposes her - unless that candidate can match her in both.
I've read a lot of the books by Corrie Ten Boom, who hid Jews in Holland during WW2. Sometimes to do so, she had to lie to the authorities.
In this case, I don't think Bush is acting on Christian Principles, but obtaining cheap labor for his buddies. While I'm not a Bibical Scholar, I know both New and Old Testaments say a lot about "Crapth Not on ye nations poor, for thou willist offend me and I will go a smothing and such".
A corporation. On illegal immigration, the Reps are just as corrup as the Dems. Maybe more so.
This just about says it all, thanks.
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