On Tuesday, the president pushed back against conservative critics of his immigration bill, insisting that they “don’t want to do what’s right for America.” It seemed like the kind of comment the far-right base may not care for.
With that in mind, it didn’t come as too big a surprise to see Peggy Noonan, after years of generally standing in Bush’s corner, explain that he’s tearing their party to shreds.
The president has taken to suggesting that opponents of his immigration bill are unpatriotic — they “don’t want to do what’s right for America.” His ally Sen. Lindsey Graham has said, “We’re gonna tell the bigots to shut up.” On Fox last weekend he vowed to “push back.” Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff suggested opponents would prefer illegal immigrants be killed; Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said those who oppose the bill want “mass deportation.” Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson said those who oppose the bill are “anti-immigrant” and suggested they suffer from “rage” and “national chauvinism.”
Why would they speak so insultingly, with such hostility, of opponents who are concerned citizens? And often, though not exclusively, concerned conservatives?
Where on earth has Noonan been? She’s surprised that the president would insult concerned citizens? Bush would have the gall to impugn the motives of his political rivals?
Welcome to the club, Peggy, some of us have been here for a while. As Jonathan Chait asked sarcastically, “What happened to the thoughtful, fair-minded, unwaveringly logical president we once knew?”
Noonan’s bizarre incredulity notwithstanding, it was nevertheless striking to see just how disgusted the WSJ columnist is with the president.
This White House thinks its base is stupid and that its heart is in the wrong place.
For almost three years, arguably longer, conservative Bush supporters have felt like sufferers of battered wife syndrome. You don’t like endless gushing spending, the kind that assumes a high and unstoppable affluence will always exist, and the tax receipts will always flow in? Too bad! You don’t like expanding governmental authority and power? Too bad. You think the war was wrong or is wrong? Too bad. […]
Bush the younger came forward, presented himself as a conservative, garnered all the frustrated hopes of his party, turned them into victory, and not nine months later was handed a historical trauma that left his country rallied around him, lifting him, and his party bonded to him. He was disciplined and often daring, but in time he sundered the party that rallied to him, and broke his coalition into pieces. He threw away his inheritance. I do not understand such squandering.
And I don’t understand what took Noonan so long. Perhaps if she hadn’t been such a cheerleader for Bush before….
March 2003: “The American president has, meanwhile, demonstrated to the entire world that he is neither a bombastic naïf nor a reckless cowboy but, in fact, another kind of American stereotype: the steely-eyed rocket man. Don’t tread on him. It is good for the world that it see him as he is. As for leadership style, remember Jimmy Carter micromanaging the failed hostage rescue mission in 1980? This president was told Wednesday night we may have to move early to take advantage of potentially key targets that had presented themselves. Bush said, ‘Let’s go.’ It takes guts and judgment to trust others who know how to do their jobs.”
November 2004: “God bless our country. Hello, old friends. Let us savor. Let us get our heads around the size and scope of what happened Tuesday. George W. Bush, 43rd president of the United States, became the first incumbent president to increase his majority in both the Senate and the House and to increase his own vote (by over 3.5 million) since Franklin D. Roosevelt, political genius of the 20th century, in 1936. This is huge.”
It’s funny how quickly times change, isn’t it?