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Did you ever see the movie "Gettysburg"?

There's a scene in it, roughly cobbled together from real history, where General Longstreet has organized the Confederate forces and, at Lee's command, sent them marching across the cornfield in the disastrous Pickett's Charge.

In the movie, the disagreement between Longstreet and Lee over the charge is expressed by having a British reporter speak with Longstreet as the waves of Confederates in butternut grey move out of their lines towards the Union center.

The reporter, who is quite enamored of the Confederates and their Cause, talks excitedly to Longstreet about the expectation of the Confederates breaking through the Union center and rolling on to victory.

Longstreet looks back at him rather blankly, looks out at the field, and with the mechanical precision of an experienced field commander explains precisely what will happen. At a certain range, the Union cannon will open up, tearing holes in the line. Closer, the Union carronades will open up, wreaking further carnage. As the line struggles forward, rifle fire will diminish it, and when it is about to close with the Union breastworks, volleys of infantry fire will decimate it. The line will falter and break, and less than half of the attackers will make it back to Confederate lines.
Longstreet goes through the math of it coldly and precisely.
The British reporter is horrified and turns to watch as it develops precisely as the professional Longstreet described it would.

Longstreet did not will the disaster.
And he counselled against it.
When it was ordered, he executed.
But he was under no illusions as to the result.
And it happened.

I'm surveying the political battlefield here, now, and about as optimistic as Longstreet.
Who can give?
The House Republican could, but won't.
The Senate Republicans could, but won't.
The President could have, but lashed himelf to the mast.
The BorderBots could swallow their pride and conviction and come and vote Republican anyway, but it is even less likely that several million people will do that than it is that a handful of men in the Senate, or one man in the White House, will.

It's not me talking about it that makes it so.
They make it so.
I wish it were not so.
But it is so.

Now, opportunity can rise up.
It could be that salvation on this issue comes from an unexpected source. It could be that some Democrat who is conservative on border issues could step forward and bring with him some Senate Democrats who will align with the BorderBot Senators and override McCain and Kennedy. That seems about as likely at this point as either wing of the Republican Party in the Senate backing down, or certainly the House backing down.

The thing that all of the analyses I've read here don't seem to grasp is that the larger the group of people, the harder it is to turn. It would be much easier for the President himself to reverse course than for a group of Senators, easier for a group of Senators to do it than for the Republican caucus of the House of Representatives, and easier for the whole government to change its stance than for the 3 million or so BorderBot voters. The bigger the group, the harder to change its course.

The thing I DON'T see out there, anywhere on the Republican side, is a large, vocal, mobilized pro-guest worker faction to match the large, vocal, mobilized BorderBot faction.

Sure, we saw the illegals protest, but those were Democrats and future Democrats protesting against the Republican Party. They are not the issue here, because they are not voting anyway.

We're in a wierd sort of political house of mirrors here, where there is a very large, vociferous, angry and motivated Border Conservative movement, with Minutemen on the border itself and even building fences. They want something and they are screaming for it. And the House of Representatives, the most representative body in government, is solidly with them.

But then we have this very strange and extremely stubborn and powerful reluctance on the part of a substantial number of Senate Republicans, and of course the President, to listen to the obvious voting bloc. Instead, they relentlessly, insistently, and unwaveringly call for a massive guest worker program.

Where, precisely, is the constituency for guest worker?
Where is the comparable huge body of Guest-Worker-Bots who are screaming at the President and Senate to ignore the loud, huge body of BorderBots.

There isn't one.
That's the thing.
The President and the Senate are acting as though they are caught in a political vice, but if they are, it is an INVISIBLE vice. Democrats aren't going to vote for them anyway. There is no visible Guest WorkerBot coalition. There are no angry GuestWorkerBots posting anywhere, or writing editorials anywhere, at all, to counter the BorderBots.

And yet the President and the key Senators are dogged in their insistence on guest worker/amnesty-by-another-name, even though it is clear that this is sending the Party charging into the guns of its own massive BorderBot wing.

WHY?

WHAT INTEREST are the GuestWorkerBots protecting? It's not a BIG electorate, or a vocal one. So why are they doing this?
"Principled conviction" doesn't work well: they are saying, in effect, that they will refuse to allow the existing law of the land to be enforced unless they get additional avenues for bringing cheap labor into America.
That's horsetrading, not principle. And it's dangerous horsetrading, given the political climate.
So WHY ARE THEY DOING IT?

If it were JUST the President, it could be dismissed as being his own idiosyncratic principles, based on his familial ties with Mexico. But if that were the case, the Senate would simply override him and move with the House.

It's not just the President, though. MCCAIN is leading the charge! Why?

The answer, of course, is that the business wing of the Republican Party is ABSOLUTELY ADAMANT about maintaining a flow of cheap, exploitable, unprotected labor. That's not a big, vocal constituency, but it is the moneymen at the very heart of the finances of the party.

What we have, really, is a faceoff between the Republican rank-and-file conservative voters, who are visible and loud, and the silent, invisible, but incredibly powerful business roundtable Republicans who finance much of Republican operations in the pay-to-play system that is Washington. The Senate Republicans know that they need Business Roundtable money - and there's nobody who knows how to get money from business sources than John McCain - and, faced with a direct confrontation between the mass of BorderBot conservative voters, and the invisible influence of the power Business Republicans, many Senators have chosen to follow the money and not the noise.

That's what's really going on.

Seeing that, what can you do?

It's more depressing, really, because the answer is that, given that dynamic, there ISN'T anything you can do. Illegal labor is so cheap relative to protected American labor, that anything that really closes that border will hit business' bottom line irrevocably. Americans can't be made as cheap as Latino peones. Profit calculations drive the equation, and business is not going to concede profits for political peace.

Look at it from a business perspective. What happens if there's a closed border and no guest worker? The cost of labor starts to ratchet up. If there's no guest worker and an eventual amnesty, and an effective border, the cost of labor doubles or more...and all of these Mexicans who are currently uninsured and can't sue employers will be protected. The cost of employing Americans is staggering, so staggering that when one does the hard cold analysis, the additional regulation and taxation that would come with a Democratic takeover of goverment would STILL NOT equal the costs of actually having to employ Americans for everything.

Business Republicans will fold their hand and stop giving as much to the GOP if the border is closed effectively and there is no guest worker. They'd rather have Democrats like Clinton (they got very rich under Clinton) than pay American wages to every worker...and that's what they'd have to do with a truly closed border and an amnesty.

Notice, therefore, the careful pitch of the President and the Senate Republicans: a PARTIAL, "virtual" fence (i.e.: a barrier whose effectiveness can be ratcheted up and down behind the scenes by the political authorities), a robust guest worker program providing a continuous flood of LEGAL cheap labor to American business, ending the threat to such businesses of INS investigations and sanctions, and NO AMNESTY. Amnesty would turn Mexicans into Americans, and give them protections.

The Bush/Senate plan is perfectly tailored to the labor demands of business in every respect. There is no large Republican constituency calling for guest worker - in fact, other than the President and the Senate, there's no Republican constituency vocally calling for guest worker AT ALL. And yet the party is being smashed all to pieces by a struggle between the President and Senate who want this strange set of policies which has no vocal GOP support base, and the angry conservatives and BorderBot Base.

WHY have the fight at all?
Money. Follow the money, and the reason for the collision becomes obvious.
It also becomes clear that compromise really is probably impossible.
Because the bottom line truth is that Business "Republicans" are first and foremost economic actors and businessmen, and they will shift their money support to pro-guest worker Democrats before they support a Republican party that will really close the borders and not give them a steady flow of cheap guest workers.

The GOP is trying to hold onto two mutually incompatible bases. One votes with votes. The other votes with money.

We've all been talking here for days about how the BorderBots should knuckle under and support the Republican Party even if there is guest worker and an ineffective border.

Let's flip that.
Big Business should continue to pump millions of dollars into the Republican Party even if the Republican Party acts directly against its desires and interests by making labor much more expensive for business by closing the border. The Business Roundtable should understand that winning the War On Terror is so important, that they should be willing to endure 50% increases in labor costs, over time, to keep Republicans in power, against their own economic interests in cheap labor, and even though Democrats with their regulations and higher taxes actually offer a cheaper option, because labor savings outweigh taxes.

Businesses who withdraw their money from the Republican Party in time of war, even if Republicans enact policies that massively increase the cost of labor, are traitors to America, because they will let the Democrats win.

That's what folks have been saying about the BorderBots and their votes. It seems very odd when you flip it around and apply it to the other side in this guest worker debate. Is BUSINESS morally obligated to give monetary support Republicans, no matter what the GOP does to businesses (no guest workers would be a MASSIVE blow to business, equivalent to perhaps a 50% tax hike)?

Why not?
Same logic applies to BorderBots and their votes.

Is there a way out of the box?
No.
Either the Republicans alienate business, and take their chances with conservative populism, or their alienate the conservative base and keep the business roundtable money flowing.

The President and Senate are trying to split the baby, still, but their doing it in a way that still gives business everything it wants, and only pretends to give the BorderBots what they want. House Republicans are giving the BorderBots what they want and giving business nothing they want.

I'm probably depressing you further.