‘It’s a non-starter’

May 17, 2006

The day after the [tag]president[/tag] talked directly to the nation about his [tag]immigration[/tag] proposal, lawmakers started sharing their assessments. Congressional [tag]Republicans[/tag], particularly in the [tag]House[/tag], were Bush’s target audience. Were they persuaded? Not so much.

President Bush’s prime-time immigration speech has shown no signs of softening House Republicans’ opposition to allowing undocumented immigrants to become citizens, leaving the prospects for a comprehensive immigration overhaul measure in doubt despite the president’s efforts.

Though House conservatives applauded Bush’s decision to use [tag]National Guard[/tag] troops to help patrol the Mexican border, they roundly rejected his insistence that border-control moves be linked to a broader plan that includes ways for those who are now in the country illegally to achieve citizenship.

”What he described is nothing that the Republican conference could accept,” said Representative Thomas G. [tag]Tancredo[/tag], a Colorado Republican who is chairman of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, a group of hard-line House members. ”It’s more sizzle than steak.”

Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) called Bush’s approach a “thinly-veiled attempt to promote amnesty.” House Majority Leader John [tag]Boehner[/tag] (R-Ohio) said he “understands” the president’s position, but added, “I made it pretty clear that I have supported the House position, and I’m the majority leader of the House.”

Rep. Dana [tag]Rohrabacher[/tag] (R-Calif.) said of Bush’s proposal, “It is a [tag]nonstarter[/tag] with the American people, and the Republican Party will pay the price at the polls.” He added that some House conservatives found the president’s comments to “condescending” and that his televised address “hinted at maliciousness on the part of those who are adamant that illegal immigration is bad for the country.”

On Monday, a GOP strategist with close ties to the White House told the WaPo that the president could have shown some leadership early on and derailed the House’s approach a long time ago. “The president responded to that House bill rather passively,” he said. “Leadership is standing up to demagoguery.”

Now, it appears, [tag]Bush[/tag] is too late.

Leadership is not the same thing as cheerleading.
Need I say more?

  • Tancredo is really scary. He believes that if we just enforce the laws against employers the eleven million illegals will just go home.

    I’d like to see him to try to fund the Labor department and the INS to get that done.

  • We’re seeing another step in the “Carterization” of GW Bush. Carter (for those old enough to remember) was dogged throughout his term by the mistrust, verging on outright hostility, of the Democratic leadership in Congress. This waxed and waned, but in the later stages of his term, as his approval ratings sank and problems (mainly high inflation, high gas prices, the Iranian hostage crisis) multiplied, the pendulum definitely swung towards “outright hostility”. The denoument – Ted Kennedy’s run for the nomination, apathy among many establishment Democrats after Carter was nominated anyway, the defection of a segment of suburban liberals to the third-party candidacy of John Anderson, and the corrosive ridicule of the press – brought us eight years of Ronald Reagan.

    The GOP managed to resist this scenario for a while, but now it’s all coming together: lousy poll numbers, public hostility (this time over Iraq, Katrina etc), the hostility of partisan true believers, the contempt of the president’s fellow party-members in Congress. The reaction to the immigration speech made me nostalgic for the Carter era: dead on arrival, because the potential wellsprings of support – ideological, Congressional, in the media, or in the general public – have run totally dry.

    Benjamin Wallace-Wells first spotted this trend in the Washington Monthly before the ’04 election: tp://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0410.wallace-wells.html I urge everyone to read this if you haven’t yet.

  • BC

    I like the analogy. In fact, I would like to see a Pat Robertson (or some other Religious RightWingnut) run as a third party candidate in ’08 just to ensure a Dem in the WH for the next 8 years…

  • Good, let these moronic assholes run on this platform. Once the House changes hands and Tancredo and the rest are running their offices from the basement men’s room of the House Office Building, reasonable and rational legislation will pass.

    The more these idiots get up and play to the moron base, the more Latino votes Democrats will get.

  • It’s pretty obvious to me that none of you are paying any attention at all to the massive costs involved with unfettered illegal immigration.

    From the Center for Immigration Studies…
    http://www.cis.org

    “The National Research Council has estimated that the net fiscal cost of immigration ranges from $11 billion to $22 billion per year, with most government expenditures on immigrants coming from state and local coffers, while most taxes paid by immigrants go to the federal treasury.”

    There are several articles there that could open your eyes to the fiscal beating American taxpayers are taking in the name of ‘diversity’ and ‘compassion’. From hospitals to schools to law enforcement to social services, we are paying through the nose to give these things to illegal aliens while denying them to our own citizens. How can this be right? Simply put, it isn’t.

    Wages paid to construction and service workers have fallen as much as 40% in the last 15 years because illegal aliens are taking jobs Americans WILL do, but can’t afford to do at slave wages. You might have that college degree and not be faced with the illegal competition in your own little world, but there are literally MILLIONS of Americans that are suffering because of it.

    Where is your compassion for them, your American brothers and sisters? If you want to be charitable, give money to the Red Cross. If you want to be compassionate, have compassion for your fellow citizens.

    Unless your goal is Agenda 21…

  • Guy Pinestra –
    Good points, and to add to this, let’s talk about who gains from this situation:
    Corporations
    People who hire day laborers
    The immigrants themselves & their families, and
    The corrupt people who control the countries of their origin.

    We consumers perhaps get a few pennies off our purchases, but it is far outweighed by the factors that you cite.

    The corporations & families that control them are taking us to the same corrupt model that provides no opportunity for the immigrants. I call it the Mexico Model. These are the same people who benefit most from the most recent “tax cut” signed by Bush.

    And their (class) war cry is “divide and conquer!”

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