"VOTE RINO!
We'll put a sugar coating on the 'rat cyanide pill!"
Posted on 06/16/2007 6:40:40 AM PDT by kellynla
During a speech last month to Georgia law enforcement officials, President Bush opined that opponents of the stalled immigration reform bill “don’t want to do what’s right for America.” If they only understood the bill’s provisions, he implied, they would see the light. But, alas, they hadn’t “read the bill” and could only “speculate” about its complex provisions. He warned them to stop trying “to frighten people.”
These unscripted remarks unleashed a torrent of criticism from the president’s political base. Conservative talk-show hosts, pundits, bloggers and grassroots activists seized on the criticism as an opportunity to educate Americans on the bill’s many flaws. Constituent mail and phone calls poured in. Ultimately, a hardy band of conservatives forced Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to pull the bill after two weeks of angry debate.
Last week, the president ventured to Capitol Hill to dine with Republican senators in a high-profile attempt to revive the bill. But he converted no one. With congressional leaders scheduled to consider other legislation guaranteed to further annoy and divide the president’s supporters (e.g., reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind Act and approving the sovereignty-stripping Law of the Sea Treaty), the question arises as to whether the president’s immigration dilemma -- having to thread the needle between openly hostile conservatives and the usual assortment of Bush-haters on the Left -- will be the norm for his remaining 18 months in office.
Several recent polls underscore the extent of his challenge.
According to a survey by the Pew Research Center, the president’s overall approval rating fell six points between April and June (from 35% to 29%). But the drop was most intense among Republicans (from 77% to 65%), including conservative Republicans (from 86% to 74%), and Independents (from 34% to 22%).
Another poll, conducted by Gallup after Bush’s Georgia speech, found a similar drop in his standing among GOP loyalists, where his positive rating hit a near-record low of 70% (alarms sound whenever a politician scores below 80% with his core supporters). According to Gallup, the only other time Bush’s GOP approval rating was so low was about a year ago when -- you guessed it -- the Senate was angrily debating comprehensive immigration reform. Hmmm.
“It was the debate over immigration,” pollster Scott Rasmussen confirmed last week, “that cost the president support among his base and pushed his approval ratings to new lows.”
Political operatives are well aware that the disenchantment over immigration has settled primarily on Bush and those lawmakers who have led the charge in the Senate. Sen. Reid’s approval rating sunk 7 points in a month, to a microscopic 19%. John McCain (R-Ariz.) fell in many presidential polls. Yet the national GOP emerged unscathed, and may even have benefited, from the turmoil.
A month ago, Rasmussen reports, Democrats enjoyed a 14-point advantage (47% to 33%) as the party best able to handle immigration. Following the Senate debate, however, the Democrats’ advantage shrunk to only five points (40% to 35%). “Immigration,” he concludes, “is now tied with taxes as the GOP’s strongest issue” and is “the only issue on which unaffiliated voters trust Republicans more than Democrats.”
What explains the intensity so many Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents bring to this issue? My guess is that this is yet another manifestation of the ideological divide that separates Red from Blue America. Because Republicans are more reflexively pro-American than their Democratic colleagues, they place a much higher value on U.S. citizenship and therefore are more likely to vigorously oppose policies they perceive as granting citizenship too freely, especially to lawbreakers.
For example, polls demonstrate that Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say they are “very patriotic” and more likely to see America as a place where “most people living in other countries would like to live.” Also, by a 2-to-1 margin, Republicans believe “we should be willing to fight for our country … right or wrong.” A majority of Democrats disagree. Finally, Republicans attach more importance to the rule of law than Democrats do. Republicans are much more likely to want to penalize employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens and banks that offer them credit cards.
The disenchantment with Bush can be summed up in an L.A. Times/Bloomberg poll, which asked Republican primary voters whether they want the next Republican nominee for president to continue Bush’s policies or move the country in a new direction.
They opted for a new direction by the overwhelming margin of 65% to 27%.
I’m gonna give W a little break on this. It’s not stupidity. It’s not because he’s being forced into this. He REALLY TRULY thinks this is a good thing. He told us he was for this before he ran, and it was clear from his term as Governor of Texas how he felt. I just never believed he would pick THIS issue as the one as the hill he wants to die on.
So be it.
“nativity?”...don’t you mean "naivete?"
Maybe you should keep your opinions to yourself...
You Brits have enough problems of your own without sticking your nose in American politics.
Guys this is to give Hillary the presidency, divide the party and get republicans to not show up for elections.
Vote Ron Paul if you are really mad about this. They don’t want him in, and BUSH doesn’t care. Bush is trying to do something so he can involf MARTIAL LAW. He wins either way.
Congress needs to stop all lawmaking and impeach BUSH.
Maybe, just maybe, these turncoats will wake up and smell the coffee - - the American people want their borders protected.
I like your tagline, and it’s time for a change. May I suggest a trade?
You’re right. Bush isn’t dumb. He’s a rabidly ambitious globalist lord, and his priorities and desires are more in tune with those of his fellow rulers of arabia and third-world nations than they are with his fellow Americans. We really don’t count to him or to the ruling classes. His reign has no foreign policy, no terror policy, no security policy, nada.
That is a stupid statement. There is a third possibility, namely that the President is an avowed Capitalist, and that he sees the need to maintain a stable pool of low rung labor to keep wage inflation in check. That simple.
Hey dems, read 'em and weep!
The excerpt from that conference was in 2004. President Bush spoke on ending human trafficking both terms. Amnesty has always been for the victims.
From the CIA Fact Book on Mexico:
"Trafficking in persons: Definition Field Listing current situation: Mexico is a source, transit, and destination country for persons trafficked for sexual exploitation and labor; while the vast majority of victims are Central Americans trafficked along Mexico's southern border, other source regions include South America, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia; women and children are trafficked from rural regions to urban centers and tourist areas for sexual exploitation, often through fraudulent offers of employment or through threats of physical violence; the Mexican trafficking problem is often conflated with alien smuggling, and frequently the same criminal networks are involved; pervasive corruption among state and local law enforcement often impedes investigations tier rating: Tier 2 Watch List - Mexico remains on the Tier 2 Watch List for the third consecutive year based on future commitments to undertake additional efforts in prosecution, protection, and prevention of trafficking in persons, and the failure of the government to provide critical law enforcement data."
Jorge's Mexican pals are the chief source of human-traffic in this hemisphere and, as the CIA notes, the Mexicans fail to "provide critical law enforcement data", which means that they are resisting our LEO efforts to stop it.
__________________________________________________
OK, he 'spoke', what has he 'done'?
Curious how the Bush haters never notice that Congress’s approval rating fell even more during the same period. Seems the Country is just mad at everyone about everything these days.
But of course, in the ego centric world of the hard core Right, everything is about their personal political dogmas. To them it seems so obvious that what is driving this must be their latest “cause”
“Read my lips, WE WILL HAVE AMNESTY!!!
It can’t be stopped.....”
we stopped it before...we can stop it again and again and again!
tell ya what...
I’ll make you a friendly wager(Steak/Palm Restaurant) that there will not be an amnesty bill...
and I like my steak medium rare. :-]
Read what Jorge has planned for our future at www.spp.gov (that’s right, .GOV). He is not being forced into anything, we are.
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