05/25/2007
Here are what some of the Republican pundits are saying about the horrible immigration bill:Deroy Murdock’s syndicated column says
Americans who want secure borders wonder why the 700-mile southern-frontier-fence Congress authorized last year stretches only 370 miles under McCain-Kennedy. And liberals fret that this bill’s guest-worker program would depress the wages of low-skilled American citizens. This is a serious, albeit debatable, accusation. By pushing this bill, John McCain is alienating GOP primary voters. Come 2008, he may become one lonely maverick. Meanwhile, by embracing this legislation, President Bush is smashing his loyal Republican base to smithereens. McCain-Kennedy is as wildly popular as algebra homework on prom night. Congress should drop kick it into the Rio Grande.[Bedlam awaits this immigration bill, By Deroy Murdock, Indianapolis Star, May 25, 2007]
Peggy Noonan writes in the Wall Street Journal an article which features all kinds of love and affection for immigrants. (Ms. Noonan, unfortunately, has a heart as big as all outdoors. There have been a number of complaints about it.) But after telling happy stories about immigrants, she calls for tough border enforcement, a moratorium, and the defeat of the horrible Bush-Kennedy bill.
Naturally I hope the new immigration bill fails. It is less a bill than a big dirty ball of mischief, malfeasance and mendacity, with a touch of class malice, and it’s being pushed by a White House that is at once cynical and inept. The bill’s Capitol Hill supporters have a great vain popinjay’s pride in their own higher compassion. They are inclusive and you're not, you cur, you gun-totin' truckdriver’s-hat-wearin' yahoo. It’s all so complex, and you'd understand this if you weren’t sort of dumb.… … … .
Let’s take time and find out if the immigrants who are here see their wages click up and new benefits kick in as the endless pool stops expanding. It would be good to see them gain. Let’s find out if it’s true that Americans won’t stoop to any of the jobs illegals do. I don’t think it is. Years ago I worked in a florist shop removing the thorns from roses. It was painful work and I was happy to do it, and I am very American. I was a badly paid waitress in the Holiday Inn on Route 3 in New Jersey.
The young will do a great deal, and not only the young. The dislike for Americans evinced by the Americans-won’t-do-hard-work crowd is, simply, astonishing, and shameful. It says more about the soft and ignorant lives they lived in Kennebunkport and Greenwich than it does about the American people. [Slow Down and Absorb Open borders? Mass deportations? How about some common sense instead? May 25, 2007 ]
And finally, John Podhoretz, asked to choose between destroying America and fighting Iraq, chooses Iraq. His idea is that if Bush hurts his base, and the Congressional Republicans this badly, he'll lose an Iraq funding vote. In the New York Post, he writes thsi article, with a picture of the president, and the caption:"W: To avoid Iraq retreat, needs a united Republican Party. "
Bush needs a unified Republican Party going into the fall, which may be the most difficult moment of his presidency. The most likely scenario is that Gen. David Petraeus will report modest to substantial improvements in the war in Iraq, but not definitively enough to fend off Democratic efforts to use his report as a key occasion to end the war.The president must have his own party in his corner at that time. And yet the party is on the verge of self-immolation over immigration. Passage of the bill would drain most of the remaining affection and respect for Bush from Republicans on Capitol Hill, who would have to deal with the populist fallout from the bill’s passage.
He needs all the help he will get. And he will lose a lot of help.
What’s astonishing about the bill’s arrival is that the White House knows perfectly well it’s political poison. In 2004 Bush first announced his immigration reform plans, and the response from the Republican base was so violent that he immediately tabled the subject. [ BETTER OFF LOSING BUSH CAn’t AFFORD IMMIGRATION VICTORY May 25, 2007]
Podhoretz really likes immigration, and really hates immigration restrictionists. He'd like this bill to pass but he recognizes that it will be suicidal for the Republican Party. What he doesn’t realize is that it would be equally suicidal for America.
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