[bcsco]

It's driving me crazy that Rush won't put any blame on Bush for this bill.

For the most part it is a Democrat bill. If you look at the numbers in terms of votes you'll see that. The problem with Bush is, he bought into the idea of bi-partisanship; that the one issue he really wanted to secure a legacy could be obtained through a bi-partisan effort. And the RINO's in Congress abetted him by working with the Democrats behind closed doors to craft this POS.

What Rush and others are saying, is that regardless of Bush's interest in this, it never would have gotten this far without major Democrat input and influence (the DIM's would never have bought into a purely Republican bill that made sense - not in the Senate!). Consequently, the bill had little in it for Bush's base to support, thus no way to gain traction otherwise.

[raybbr]

What Rush and others are saying, is that regardless of Bush's interest in this, it never would have gotten this far without major Democrat input and influence (the DIM's would never have bought into a purely Republican bill that made sense - not in the Senate!). Consequently, the bill had little in it for Bush's base to support, thus no way to gain traction otherwise.

That's spin. Bush had plenty of republicans lined up to support this bill or something like it.

Somehow they determined that they had to pander to hispanics and their illegal cousins to maintain power.

Find Bush's press conference the day after the last election and listen to it. He's asked working with the dems on his pet project. He changed from a downtrodden loser to a man with a mission. He clearly had wanted this since before he was elected.

Bush's vision of a "new America" goes way back.

THE "NEW AMERICAN"..........<

We are now one of the largest Spanish-speaking nations in the world. We're a major source of Latin music, journalism and culture.

Just go to Miami, or San Antonio, Los Angeles, Chicago or West New York, New Jersey ... and close your eyes and listen. You could just as easily be in Santo Domingo or Santiago, or San Miguel de Allende.

For years our nation has debated this change -- some have praised it and others have resented it. By nominating me, my party has made a choice to welcome the new America.

As I speak, we are celebrating the success of democracy in Mexico.

George Bush from a campaign speech in Miami, August 2000.

You can read the speech here.

Here is an excerpt of a good critique of that speech:

In equating our intimate historic bonds to our mother country and to Canada with our ties to Mexico, W. shows a staggering ignorance of the civilizational facts of life. The reason we are so close to Britain and Canada is that we share with them a common historical culture, language, literature, and legal system, as well as similar standards of behavior, expectations of public officials, and so on. My Bush Epiphany By Lawrence Auster