Posted on 01/31/2006 11:05:56 AM PST by robowombat
Bush is kicking away his base By Phyllis Schlafly
Jan 30, 2006
The conservative movement that elected Ronald Reagan twice, George H.W. Bush once, and George W. Bush II twice, is essentially a movement of grass-rooters who don't like to take orders from the top and who revolt when they believe they are betrayed or bossed by those they elected. That's why the grass roots abandoned the first George Bush when he reneged on his "no new taxes, read my lips" promise.
The tough political tactics used by union bosses and Democratic machine bosses simply don't sit well with conservative Republicans.
Resentment against the current Bush administration is still festering about the combination of threats and bribes that pushed through close votes in Congress to pass the costly Medicare prescription drug bill in 2003 and Central American Trade Agreement in 2004.
Maybe the intra-party divisions between fiscal vs. Big Government conservatives that lay behind the former battle, and between pro vs. anti free-traders in the latter battle, were evenly balanced enough that the Bush administration alienated only a handful of Republicans. But in demanding a guest-worker plan that smacks of amnesty, the Bush administration is taking the unpopular side of a party division that is at least 80-20.
In December, the House passed a border-security bill authored by House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis.. The bill rejected support for Bush's guest worker/amnesty plan. Since 88 percent of Republican House members voted for this bill, that should have been a wake-up call to the president.
Shortly thereafter, Arizona Republican National Committee member Randy Pullen gathered enough signatures to present a resolution to the Republican National Committee at its Jan. 19-20 meeting in Washington, D.C., which endorsed border security measures and opposed any guest worker plan.
A competing resolution endorsing border security plus a guest worker plan was floated by the RNC's Bill Crocker of Texas. After he realized the strong tide against guest workers, he began negotiating a compromise with Pullen, and one version of the compromise eliminated guest workers.
When the RNC resolutions committee met Jan. 19, the chairman, Idaho's Blake Hall, brought up the original Crocker resolution that included guest worker language. An attempt by one committeeman to substitute the Crocker-Pullen compromise was ruled out of order, and then a motion to remove the guest worker language was voted down 5 to 3.
That evening, the Bush administration sent in its big guns, Vice President Dick Cheney and Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., to insist that RNC members support the guest worker plan or else they would be labeled disloyal and disrespectful of President Bush. Republican Party chairman Ken Mehlman made the rounds to regional caucuses to demand approval of Bush's guest worker plan and defeat of the Pullen resolution.
At the RNC meeting on Jan. 20, the Hall-approved resolution was incorporated and passed as part of a package of nine resolutions in order to preclude a specific vote on the border security-guest worker issue. The Pullen resolution did not come up.
This donnybrook happened on the same day that the New York Times reported that 18,207 illegal immigrants from nations other than Mexico have been the beneficiaries of the Bush administration's scandalous "catch and release" procedure in the three months since Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff promised to "return every single illegal entrant - no exceptions." Catch and release means that the illegal immigrants from nations other than Mexico are not deported. But after they are apprehended, they are released on their own recognizance with instructions to reappear a few weeks later, with everybody understanding that they will disappear into the U.S. population.
Also on the same day, Lou Dobbs reported on CNN-TV that Mexican troops are crossing our southern border twice a month in uniform, in military vehicles and carrying military weapons. The Bush administration's response to this invasion is don't ask, don't tell.
It's bad enough that President Bush is pursuing a vastly unpopular guest worker-amnesty plan, but the administration's bullying to prevent debate and a vote by the full Republican National Committee was intolerable. It forecasts the sort of intimidation we can anticipate in the upcoming Senate debate about Bush's guest worker plan.
Why are President Bush and Karl Rove so tone deaf on this issue? Some speculate that the Bush administration is in the pocket of big business lobbying interests that want the cheap labor made available by the government's failure to enforce our immigration laws.
Others speculate that Bush and Rove are hallucinating that Hispanics will vote Republican. That won't happen; Hispanics vote 55 to 75 percent Democratic because, since they are mostly in the low-income sector of our economy, they vote for the party that promises the social benefits of the welfare state, not for the party that pretends to support fiscal integrity and small government.
The administration-imposed RNC defeat of the majority view of Republicans is bad news for the 2006 congressional elections. Bush is alienating his political base and creating what one RNC member calls an "enthusiasm deficit." In the words of the old adage, elephants (i.e., conservative Republicans) never forget.
Phyllis Schlafly is the President and Founder of the Eagle Forum
Suuuure they do.
Who's the "base"??
Is it "social/fiscal conservatives," OR party hacks for better or worse?
I b*tched and moaned when Miers was chosen. Did we wind up doing better with Alito? You KNOW it.
Dubya's achilles heel is the border and immigration. 90% of the "bitchin' and moanin' is about his refusal to address it -- especially post 9/11.
It's a BIG issue. It's our sovereignty.
Howlin...Point out one of your posts here where you exhibited these yourself?
Right. The Democrats have more to worry about than the Republicans. Many have made no bones about the fact they're fed up with their candidates and threaten to run them out of office. If anyone is "eating their own" is the goofballs on the left who got left out in the cold during the Alito hearings.
Then tell me, what's the "big picture" and how I'm too "preoccupied" to know it.
In Chicago we have LOTS of illegals and not all are from Mexico. In my neighborhood the majority of illegals are from Poland. Then there are lots of Irish, Russians as well.
This "race baiting ninny" (pretty hilarious since most of the panicked are panicked because of Mexicans) does not deny a problem merely scorns the loons wanting to shoot them or build a wall.
WOW!!! Guess what? Ya caught me red-handed not being a racist. I do not care at all if you are here illegal white, brown, yellow, purple or green. I wan't your colorfull ass out of here. Simply because you do not belong here!!! Chances are if you do not belong here you are costing me (tax-payer dollars) money. Don't let the border hit you in the ass on your way out!!! BYE!!!
Thank you!
I rest my case.
Dubya IS more convicted, but he's run away from the border/illegal invasion issue and CFR and Ted Kennedy's hysterical accusations...
Inexcusible.
I'm not the one claiming Bush 41 threw the 1992 election.
I have been talking about Bush's plan -- and I posted a link to it.
Any more questions?
You know the base is not the 1%ers who always threaten to stay home or vote third party, yet they continuously claim they're the base.
So nearly 30% of federal inmates are not US citizens.
Some on the right WANT us to do the same, but we're smarter than that.....
Yeah -- maybe we can ALL pretend what we saw and heard with our own eyes and ears was a mirage in '92.
GH Bush DIDN'T WANT IT.
Looks like you're "pretending" enough for all of us though.
You know the base is not the 1%ers who always threaten to stay home or vote third party, yet they continuously claim they're the base.
AND YOU ARE!!! Do you really want to discuss this?
Well, not everybody..........LOL.
I was busy trying to talk the goofballs OUT of voting for Perot (who WOULD have voted for Bush.)
Glad to have you next to us in the pews! :)
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