{"id":7432,"date":"2006-05-17T10:13:12","date_gmt":"2006-05-17T14:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7432"},"modified":"2006-05-17T10:13:12","modified_gmt":"2006-05-17T14:13:12","slug":"its-a-non-starter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/its-a-non-starter\/","title":{"rendered":"‘It’s a non-starter’"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

”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.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) called Bush’s approach a “thinly-veiled attempt to promote amnesty<\/a>.” 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<\/a>, and I’m the majority leader of the House.”<\/p>\n

Rep. Dana [tag]Rohrabacher[\/tag] (R-Calif.) said of Bush’s proposal, “It is a [tag]nonstarter[\/tag]<\/a> 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.”<\/p>\n

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<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Now, it appears, [tag]Bush[\/tag] is too late.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7432\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}