Peggy Noonan writes:
What political conservatives and on-the-ground Republicans must understand at this point is that they are not breaking with the White House on immigration. They are not resisting, fighting and thereby setting down a historical marker–”At this point the break became final.” That’s not what’s happening. What conservatives and Republicans must recognize is that the White House has broken with them. What President Bush is doing, and has been doing for some time, is sundering a great political coalition. This is sad, and it holds implications not only for one political party but for the American future.
The White House doesn’t need its traditional supporters anymore, because its problems are way beyond being solved by the base. And the people in the administration don’t even much like the base. Desperate straits have left them liberated, and they are acting out their disdain.
…Now conservatives and Republicans are going to have to win back their party. They are going to have to break from those who have already broken from them. This will require courage, serious thinking and an ability to do what psychologists used to call letting go. This will be painful, but it’s time. It’s more than time.
I agree with Ms. Noonan’s point that the president and his Best and Brightest are grasping for history, and for legacy:
They are trying to lay down markers for history. Having lost the support of most of the country, they are looking to another horizon. The story they would like written in the future is this:
Faced with the gathering forces of ethnocentric darkness, a hardy and heroic crew stood firm and held high a candle in the wind. It will make a good chapter. Would that it were true!
Mickey Kaus called the immigration bill Bush’s try for an Abe Lincoln moment — the one where he rises above his pedestrian fellows and frees the oppressed in a bold stroke, his name forever linked with their emancipation and the advance of American ideals.
Submit to Stumbled Upon!
In the vein of LBJ and Walter Cronkite, I think it is fair to say that if George W. Bush has lost Peggy Noonan, then he has lost the Republican Party.
If the democrats bring up impeachment again, I’d be inclined to say “go ahead”. I’ll take 19 months of Dick Cheney.
What took so long?
“an
Abe LincolnFDR moment — the one where he rises above his pedestrian fellows andfrees the oppressedbeggars millions of hard-working, law abiding American citizens in a bold stroke, his name forever linked withtheir emancipationhis country’s ruin and theadvanceannihilation of American ideals [in favor of the interests of Wall Street].”There. Fixed it.I knew this was true in 2006, when I refused to support the party that blindly supported George W. Bush, who had already left that party behind.
I was listening to Limbaugh a couple of days ago, when a caller said that people stayed home in 2006 to “punish Bush.” Rush was shocked, or claimed to be. “Bush wasn’t running,” he brayed. But sending a message to Bush, first, and the GOP, second, was my primary reason for sitting out 2006.
I’ve moved on. Bush’s “legacy,” in fact, the “legacy” of the Two Bushes, will be that they were more destructive to their party and country than Jimmy Carter was to his.
My task now is to help retake the GOP from the Bush-type RINOs whom Bush represented and empowered, and return it to its conservative principles. That means I will work for Fred Thompson and those pols who support his brand of politics. We will get little or no support from the official apparatus of the GOP - the RNC is a hovel of Bush hacks - and, of course, the Dems and their minions in the media fear and hate a conservative leader like Thompson, who has all the tools to become another conservative leader of Ronald Reagan’s stature.
Nonetheless, we must press on. Bush hates his own party, arrogant, spoiled preppie born-again brat that he is, but the party is bigger than one silver-footed fool, and an election is on the way. Be sure that the Dems will help us by overstepping the bounds of safety and sanity. Now it is time for us to roll up our sleeves, kick out the garbage, and elect a real leader, rather than the stuttering, bumbletongued fraud who scorns the very people who gave him power in the first place.
A thought: Bush is a Republican mostly by political heredity - his power base is in the GOP. But Bush, like all out of control statists of either party, princes of political entitlement and arrogance that they are, really worships at the altar of the most power-mad President in the history of the office: Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
It’s not GWB that has the death wish, it’s republicans themselves. There are 44 million Hispanic Americans in this country, and their perception of the Republicans on the issue of illegals is one of the rich lord complaining about the peasants eating the crumbs from his table. A lot of independents see the republican position as condescending and mean spirited as well.
As long as Republicans continue to offend entire classes of Americans who are hardworking, family oriented, Catholic—i.e., CONSERVATIVE—they will be dead meat.
yours/
peter.
You, sir, are either a liar or an ignoramus. I’m not sure which is paramount, but it probably doesn’t matter, given what you most obviously are: a Bushbot hack.
Not all Latinos are soft on illegal immigration
I’ll never get over the fact that Americans were stupid enough to give G W Bush a second term, when they wouldn’t give Bush 41 or Carter a second term. Have Americans gotten dumber or were they just so pitifully scared of the terrorists they couldn’t think straight?
Wishful thinking Mr. Quick. What was the percentage of Latino vote in 2006 vs. 2004? 2000? Considering that we’re talking about one of the largest conservative demographics in the US, anything less than 100% is a prima facie indictment of republican cluelessness and tone deafness.
By the way, I’m hardly a “bushbot”; I’ve never voted for him. I typically vote Libertarian even though I’m no longer a member of the LP.
Sticks and stones, Mr. Quick.
yours/
peter.
I’m old enough to remember 1964. When Goldwater wanted the Republican Party to stand for principles, not electability. He was undermined and betrayed by the establishment. Nelson Rockefeller, George Romney et al did not want either conservative principles or transparent politics. They closed the party administration to “extremists”. We had to take it back from the bottom up. Their heirs, Nixon, Ford and the Bushes, control the party machinery.
If we want conservatives or libertarian Republicans for more than eight years, we will have to take back the party again. If we want a principled Republican Party, we had better be prepared to take back the county committees, the local party offices and the State party machinery.
If we don’t take the party back at the local level, we will again be inundated in RINOs. We will have the rules changed to favor Wall Street Republicans, country club Republicans and “realists”.
I want my money back.
All the money I donated in 2004 to Bush and the Republicans. It was a lot for me, and there was a decent amount I didn’t even have at the time (I put on credit cards). I want it back.
I accept that the time I spent walking neighborhoods in Philly, and phone-banking in New Jersey, I just can’t get those hours back.
By 2006 it was enough for me to turn off the donate spigot, and just not donate.
But now, by God, this president is not the one I supported. I was sold a false bill of goods. I was lied to.
Can’t I contact some government agency and report the GOP for false advertising? Bait and switch? If you can report a car dealership for that kind of stuff, why can’t I report a political party for the same, and get a refund?
I can honestly say that I went from a die-hard Republican in 2004, to utterly hating this party and it’s leaders today. Calling me a racist and un-American because I disagree with them… *grumble* *swear*.
I want immigration. Legal immigration. I want persecuted Christians from Muslim countries like Indonesia or Malaysia to be able to come here; college graduates from West Africa; computer-programmers from any country that wants to send them, regardless of their skin color. Yet I’m a racist?
Eff you George. Eff you. You owe me about $500.
Your cluelessness is truly astounding. By what standards are you classifying the Hispanic voter demographic as a whole as “conservative?”
In your ignorance, you are probably unaware that Jorge Arbusto at his most pro-Hispanic illegal immigration best was never able to muster more than 39% of the Hispanic vote.
Hispanics as a group are not conservative voters - not if you define “conservative voter” as “GOP voter.”
As for your ludicrous “sticks and stones” bullshit, I was under the impression that what you were seeing from me was pixels on a screen. Of course, for someone as unhinged from reality as you are, perhaps confusing words with sticks springs naturally from the sort of mentality that conflates Hispanics with conservatives.
You’re a “libertarian,” eh? Which means you’re as muddled about that as about everything else, apparently. Or have libertarians decided that the rule of law is unnecessary?
Maybe you’re one of those “Bill Maher libertarians,” that is to say, as Rand put it,
She had you pegged. I’m a registered Libertarian who hasn’t voted for an LP candidate in twenty years. Any party that holds up the likes of Ron Paul as a standard bearer is so much more clueless than the GOP base as to be functioning in an alternate universe - a universe bearing no resemblance whatsoever to reality.
Mr. Quick,
I’m beginning to wonder if you’ve never met a Mexican. Do you know what the average Mexican thinks about divorce? Abortion? The value of hard work? Capitalism? If conservatives could ever bring themselves to themselves to stop Mexicans as a criminal class and a danger to American culture then more of them might actually vote for the GOP. And this is old hat for the Republicans. They’re fighting tooth and nail to keep gays from legally living a more conservative lifestyle, and My God, the Party of Lincoln now has what? Ten out of eleven African Americans voting for the party that supported their slavery?
“Bullshit”? Your bad faith and name calling speaks for itself Mr. Quick, in this same paragraph even.
I broke with the LP after 9/11 for obvious reasons. After twenty years of membership, by the way, so understand that you aren’t speaking to a child, sir. But regarding immigration, the Libs are right as rain. Just like with the war on drugs, Republicans keep demanding more of the same failed policy, a policy that has us up to our necks in illegal aliens AND cocaine, as if if we just try harder it will somehow magically work. It is outside of the power of government, sir, to keep hungry hungry Mexican laborors from stealing across to border to find work, just as it is beyond the power of government to locate and round up the 12 million illegals that are already here and deport them, just as it is beyond the scope of government power to provide us with “free” medical care regardless of how many people vote for it, or keep us safe from gun crime by confiscating our 100 million guns.
Whatever Mr. Quick. The truth is you know even less about me than you apparently do about Mexicans. Perhaps you should stick to the subject at hand.
yours/
peter.
Do you? Can you offer a single cite to back it up? Or are you, as I suspect, nothing more than a five pound bladder stuffed with ten pounds of bullshit and hot gas?
Bad faith? Oh, wahhh. You whining nincompoop. What bad faith? How have I broken faith with you, who demonstrates absolutely no cause or justification for faith of any sort, particularly in your intelligence, knowledge, or motives?
Sigh. You wave your ignorance as a flag, but offer not a single shred of evidence for your contentions. A wall may not stop all border jumpers, but it doesn’t have to - just most of them, and a wall can most assuredly do so - especially if it is properly designed and manned. Further, it is not necessary to deport 12 (more like 15-18) million illegals. Merely strictly enforce the laws that are already on the books, and many of them will self-deport. Combine a closed border and self deportation, and five years down the road, I’d be amenable to looking at legal immigration. It always amazes me how so-called libertarians can see the right to put a lock on the door to their house, defend it, and eject interlopers, but see no similar right for their country to do so. At least the looney variety of libs seem to suffer from such inconsistencies.
Obvious to you, perhaps, but not to me until you enlighten us. You know, with something a bit more substantive than hand-waving. And you dodged my question about libs and the rule of law entirely.
Your obvious and apparently impenetrable stupidity? But I thought that’s what we were discussing.
See? If you knew any Mexican/Americans you would understand how silly that demand is. Like GWB, I’m a Texan. My boss is Mexican American, as are about 1/3rd of my co-workers. So is my wife’s boss. My next-door neighbor is a forty year naturalized Mexican American. They are all conservative. Sure, I could probably Google up some polls of Mexican social attitudes, but then so can you.
No sir, you’ve mistaken for whining the fact that you’re acting like an asshole to someone who probably agrees with you about every other political topic except this one.
That would be the obvious fact that when foreign whackjobs decide they want to threaten us that we are then faced with a fight to the death whether we like it or not. As Brink Lindsay puts it, “in the Hobbsian jungle of foreign affairs there is no invisible hand.”
yours/
peter.
Dear Dumbass: Here is your original contention:
Not only have you failed to back that up with anything other than that sad old wheeze, “Some of my best friends are…” you failed in any way to respond or even acknowledge my actual cite of evidence that destroyed your contention that Republicans would be “dead meat” if they fail to submit to a tidal wave of illegal immigration from south of the border.
It matters not how much else you agree with me about: we are talking about this issue and your contention that my border-control, anti-illegal immigration position is killing the Republican party. You are full of shit, I have demonstrated you are full of shit, and you have mounted no response except the shit you are full of.
Game, set, match, and goodbye.
All the Mexicans I know are Conservative. Therefore, all Mexicans in the US and those that want to come here are Conservative, whether they are here illegally, legally, third generation, etc Doesn’t matter. Because I know 50 - 100 Mex Americans and they are all Conservative.
See the mistake in that logic?
All the people I know voted for McGovern. Therefore, Mcgovern is now POTUS.
Never mind that your definition of Conservative may be a little different than mine.
Peter Jackson: illegal immigrants may be more conservative and have stronger family values than you, but not the general U.S. population:
*Hispanics have the highest teenage pregnancy rate of any racial or ethnic group.
*In 2000, 42 percent of live births to Hispanic women were to unwed mothers
*In 2000, Hispanics were less likely to have ever been married than non-Hispanic whites.
*About one-third of Hispanic households was headed by a single parent, compared to 18 percent for non-Hispanic whites
*Forty-three percent of Hispanics aged 25 or more did not have a high school diploma compared with 22 percent for blacks and 12 percent for non-Hispanic whites in 2000
*Since 1976, Republican presidential candidates have won no more than 37 percent of the Hispanic vote, when Ronald Reagan ran in 1980 and 1984. George W. Bush won 35 percent of the Hispanic vote compared with 62 percent for Al Gore.
Info stolen from Population Resource Center.
My quarrel is with his contention that an anti-illegal stance is responsible for the dimming luster of the GOP. Never mind that the last Great Amnesty was entirely the product of Ronald Reagan, or that the current push is entirely the work of GWB (if Bush had simply announced he would veto such legislation, it never would have been written), why, Hispanics hate Republicans (whom they would otherwise vote for, because Hispanics are sooooo conservative) because some Republicans stand for the integrity of the US borders and the US laws. (Which, of course, “conservative” Hispanics don’t).
Ah, phooey. It’s all a mess of potted logic and wishful thinking, coupled with the rationality and intelligence of your average don’t-gore-my-ox “libertarian” thinker.
Well, I live in San Francisco, only a few blocks from the heavily Hispanic Mission District, and I know a few Hispanics myself. The ones I know tend to be anti-illegal immigration, and worried about competition for jobs from the hundreds of illegals who line Cesar Chavez street every day waiting to work for a few bucks an hour. (Not to mention the thousands of illegals working in the City’s food and hotel industry and elsewhere).
Of course, I don’t have much use for the ranting La Raza Hispanics who are also present in the City, so perhaps my self-selected cohort of friends and acquaintances isn’t entirely representative? I, at least, understand the difference well enough not to try to write demographic generalizations my ass can’t cover.
peter jackson:
Bill:
Y’know, Bill, it’s strange that you’re a dog person. The way you’re tormenting this broken-winged birdbrain, I’d think you were a cat person. C’mon, show some decency and put him out of his misery.
Well since you want cites so badly, here . I don’t know about “dimming luster” but votes? It’s called math: Latino support of Republicans went from 44% in 2004 to 29% in 2006. And that’s 29% of a larger number of voters in 2006 (2.1 million additional Latino voters from 2004 to 2006), so the actual loss of total votes is even higher than these numbers indicate.
So you’re saying they’re generally conservative, right? Unbelievable.
Anyhoo, here’s the GOP’s real problem. According to these polls, Americans who favor legalizing current illegals outnumber those who oppose it by a 2 to 1 margin. You tell me, how much luster is this going to take from the GOP?
http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/15053
http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/14977
And here’s three more polls on the same aggregator demonstrating how anti-gay they are and how the Army and the Catholic Church are the two most trusted institutions in Mexico. The last one claims a higher percentage of Mexicans support the death penalty than Americans. I dunno. Sounds pretty conservative to me…
http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/15044
http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/15237
http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/15608
Lastly, here’s a poll showing what Mexicans think of this legislation:
http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/15432
Have a nice day.
yours/
peter.
Unfortunately the GOP got rid of such departments once elected. When you tinker with a finely balanced system of checks and balances, this is what you get. Any GOP voter worth an independent thinking cell would’ve recognized that. You planted a bush that has now grown to a tree with roots sucking everything around dry.
It went from 39% - see my original cite on the matter - and the overall vote in 2006 was vastly lower, not just the “hispanic” vote. See how disingenuous you are? Your own stats make you a fool.
Only when the question is so twisted its agenda is plain:
The margin, by the way, is 3-2, not 2-1. But you’re so accustomed to lying these details are probably meaningless to you. Also, you need to learn how to read polls in general.
Who gives a fuck what Mexicans think of it? Why didn’t you throw in Ethopians or some other foreign demographic as well?
You confusion is astounding - or perhaps not, given you obviously aren’t very bright. Which way do you want it? Legal hispanic immigrants are conservative but they support breaking the immigration laws and seeing wage competition from imported wage serfs? I don’t think you have the first notion of what “conservative” means.
Finally, not one damned cite you posted lends any credence to your initial claim that not supporting illegal immigration and open borders means “the death of the Republican party,” due to Hispanic hostility. But thanks for the cites - it’s always nice when fresh meat posts the evidence on which it bases its own stupidity.
Yeah. Democrats would never tinker like that. Tell it to the Democratic congress currently trying to destroy the checks and balances between the executive and the legislature. Moron.
Bill Quick said:
Are you just slow in understanding or quick in shooting through your ass or both?