The Bush Immigration Speech

Travel has me too booked-up to blog much tonight. I did hear President Bush's speech and approved heartily of both tone and content.

For excellent analysis of the speech and some anticipatory responses to its critics, visit Called As Seen. The whole series of immigration pieces that Harold Hutchison has written there is excellent.

Of course, Harold and I are clearly out of touch with the Republican base on this issue. Power Line's John Hinderaker thinks that after this speech, Bush may not have any chance to salvage his second term.

Let me share something with you from a well-respected conservative site, World Net Daily. There, a person named Vox Day, whose posted photograph is more than a little disturbing, wrote this:

If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of 6 million Jews,
many of whom spoke German and were fully integrated into German society, it
couldn't possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal
aliens, many of whom don't speak English and are not integrated into American
society.

I am an infrequent visitor to WorldNetDaily. What kind of editorial control does that site exercise over its writers? Is this kind of garbage typical there? Is that the kind of "base" thinking that John Hinderaker thinks Bush should appeal to?

If the blogger comments like Vox Day's and those that are appearing at this Truth Laid Bear site are typical of the conservative base, then I am going to throw up my hands and wait for the Democrat takeover of Congress. If those bloggers represent the base, then the base is implacable and suffers from a fatal lack of insight into the immigration issue. The hard-line approach on which the base seems to insist can never become law. Even the unsuccessful effort to make that approach become law will cast the GOP as the anti-immigrant party for decades to come.

In other words, the implacable, uncompromising, shrill conservative base appears poised to destroy the Republican party over illegal immigration. If they don't get their way, they'll stay home in this fall's elections.

And they're going to blame George W. Bush because instead of drinking the same Kool-Aid they do, he actually stuck to his guns on a statesmanlike solution to a difficult problem.

Republican self-immolation. Who'd-a thunk it?