Burning Bush

Here is how the Iraqi people fight al Qaeda:

A battle raged in west Baghdad on Thursday after residents rose up against al-Qaida and called for U.S. military help to end random gunfire that forced people to huddle indoors and threats that kept students from final exams, a member of the district council said.

U.S. forces backed by helicopter gunships clashed with suspected al- Qaida gunmen in western Baghdad's primarily Sunni Muslim Amariyah neighborhood in an engagement that lasted several hours, said the district councilman, who would not allow use of his name for fear of al-Qaida retribution.

[T]he councilman said the al-Qaida leader in the Amariyah district, known as Haji Hameed, was killed and 45 other fighters were detained.

Here is how George W. Bush fights al Qaeda:

U.S. military commanders are talking with Iraqi militants about cease-fires and other arrangements to try to stop the violence, the #2 American commander said Thursday.

Lieutenant-General Raymond Odierno said he has authorized commanders at all levels to reach out to militants, tribes, religious leaders and others in the country that has been gripped by violence from a range of fronts including insurgents, sectarian rivals and common criminals.

"We are talking about cease-fires, and maybe signing some things that say they won't conduct operations against the government of Iraq or against coalition forces," Odierno told Pentagon reporters in a video conference from Baghdad.

A rather far cry from "Either you're with us, or you're with the terrorists," isn't it?

Here is how George W. Bush stands by our close ally Israel:

Secretary of State Rice tells Israel that there isn't [any substitute for awarding Hamas a full-fledged Talibanesque national state], as she tries to discourage the Israelis from pursuing a peace agreeemnt with Syria and abandoning "the Palestinian track."

Israel has been fighting the "war on terror" for a heckuva lot longer than we have, and this is how Dubya repays them. If Israel weren't ruled by a weak-kneed fool, Bush'd probably be pushing Ehud Barak's political comeback, since he was all for the "Palestinian track" until it triggered Intifada II.

Here is how George W. Bush is fighting the war with Iran:

The first official face-to-face diplomatic talks between the United States and Iran in more than a quarter-century ended Monday. Less than a day later, Tehran announced formal espionage charges against three Americans there.

So much for those who pressured the Bush Administration into sitting down with the Ahmadinejad government by insisting that Tehran can be persuaded to help in stabilizing war-torn Iraq.

Here is a whole laundry list of Bush's domestic policy sins - all tolerated by the center-right in the interest of his steadfastness....on the war.

Here is even more evidence that not only will the "New Tone" meme never die, but it has been ingrained in all his subordinates (those who haven't stabbed him in the back, anyway):

The first couple of dozen pages of the Libby brief are basically a long list of character references. It then goes on to urge a "downward departure" from sentencing guidelines based on the "mitigating factors" of his lifetime of exemplary character and service and also because the nature of the crime was so, well,... odd (my word, not his), in that there was no UNDERLYING crime, etc. - and also because he already has suffered public opproprium for such a long time, and because he lost his job and probably will lose his law license, and because of "the improbability of any future criminal conduct by Mr. Libby."

Get that? Scooter Libby and his defense team are not, as they should be, climbing the high horse of righteous and justified indignation and demanding that any sentence be suspended pending his appeal of Patrick Fitzgerald's bogus conviction; they're only asking that interim sentence be reduced. I guess I should be reassured that Libby isn't obsequiously throwing himself on the mercy of the court by being willing to serve ANY sentence in order to "atone" for the "crimes" he never committed.

It may look like I'm scatter-shooting all over the place, but the underlying theme I think should be abundantly clear. The George W. Bush that the GOP base once knew and loved is deader than Judas Iscariot, replaced by this bootlicking pantiwaist whose "New Tone" dogma evidently doesn't extend to his own core supporters.

This brings us to GDub's Waterloo, the McCain-Kennedy immigration amnesty bill.

The political angle on this from the Bushies has always been that if we'll just erase our borders and let the Mexican population overrun us, the GOP will reap a bonanza of Hispanic votes on a par with the Democrats' domination of the black vote for lo these many years. Bush surrogates Jeb Bush and Ken Mehlman cite California's "bluing" as an example of what happens when Republicans muster the bigoted audacity to actually enforce immigration statutes.

Guess again, says Heather McDonald:

In fact, California’s transformation from “Reagan country” to labor-union country is the far more likely consequence of the growing Hispanic population per se and the corresponding outflow of white Republicans to other states. In 1990, California was one-quarter Latino and 57% white; in 2000, it was 32% Latino and 47% white; in 2005, Latinos constituted 35%, and whites 43%, of the population. Those shifting demographics have been accompanied by the growing clout of the Democratic party, and of California's public-service unions, not because of some vestigial memory of 187, but because they appeal to low-wage, low-skilled Hispanics.

So there's no political gain in opening the illegal immigration floodgates - for the GOP, anyway. It already makes a mockery of the rule of law, guarantees an ever spiraling entitlements burden, and is an unconscionable derlicition of national security duty in the age of global jihad. So what possible argument can the President make that will persuade his dwindling base of the rightness of his cause?

Hugh Hewitt - who, please recall, was on his own island in the Harriet Miers furor, and is willing to accept amnesty if preceded by serious enforcement provisions - says zippo:

This push for this bill is a disaster, Mr. President. Much much worse than the Miers nomination....or the ports deal.... On this issue there is no place to stand, and you are asking your friends in the Senate to go down fighting for a bad bill. It is a bad bill because no one believes the government can conduct millions of background checks (many spokesmen for the bill don't even pretend to know where the paperwork will go!). No one believes the bill will halt the next 12 million. No one believes you are going to assure the fence gets built. No one believes that the employer verification system will get done or work when some half-assed version of it does get done. No one believes that the probationary visas don't automatically convert illegal aliens with few if any rights into Due Process Clause covered legal migrants, with a Ninth Circuit ready and waiting to keep them here for decades.

No one believes passing the bill will help catch the jihadist sleepers already in the country. The constituency that has always been with you except on the ports deal - the security voter - has left the room. If you want them back, act quickly.

This isn't a talk radio fueled shout from the far right. It isn't the Minutemen or the Tancredo people. It is the GOP faithful who don't want it, nor anything like it.

You want it with the bark on? No one in his own party outside of the dumbasses in the Senate minority believes George W. Bush. He is succeeding in taking the rage that has consumed John McCain's presidental ambitions and sending whatever was left of his presidency up in the same conflagration.

Lest anybody doubt me, here's a random sampling of what those who have slogged long and hard in the trenches on his behalf throughout the long, annoying years of Bushophobia and the war against the War have to say about Bush the Son.

Laura Ingraham (audio clip) Highlight?

The good news is that President Bush has finally taken the gloves off... the bad news is he's chosen to take them off to beat the hell out of us.

Ace of Spades:

Hey, President Bush? Fuck off. You are going down in history in a neck-and-neck battle with Jimmy Carter as worst president of the twentieth century [plus].

And you know what? You are, pretty much, a fucking moron.

All that time we've razzed the left about claiming that? Oh, you're not diagnosably retarded or anything, but you're a fucking dim bulb, and you've got some nerve of accusing opponents of the amnesty bill (which you surely haven't even read, genius) of not being smart enough to support it.

And... Here's Bush claiming that with amnesty, we won't even need a fence! Which isn't very reassuring, because the only way that statement would be true would be if we had absolutely open borders and no concept of a American citizenship at all - were that the law, then we wouldn't need a fence, as we'd have no laws whatsover regarding the border and immigration.

Is that the direction Mr. Smart Stuff is pushing us in?

In case you were uncertain about the direction in which this post is headed, we are talking about more than just the Bush presidency carbonizing on a political funeral pyre. He looks to be taking his party down with him:

The illegal immigration fight is tearing the Arizona Republican Party apart, to the point that its members and staff wonder if it can even compete....

I’m not saying anything here that most of our readers don’t already know, but I do know that we have readers in the White House and in Congress. I hope they’re watching what’s happening to the AZ GOP, and realize that smearing the base while pushing legislation that the base despises could very well destroy the party as we know it. I wouldn’t be shocked at all to see the next opinion polls put the president’s approval rating at 20% or less, which would be yet another historic low. Maybe he’s fine with that. But we need a party after he’s gone, and at the rate things are going we might not. He wants a legacy, and he’ll leave one alright: A permanent Democrat majority.

Brother Hugh concurs:

Expect more and more Democrats to try and keep the bill as it is because of the inferno on the right. Even lefties pushing for more family member migrations etc have got to see that unity in pushing the present version forward will splinter the GOP as surely as the Corn Laws did Peel's Tories or as Ireland did Gladstone's Liberals. If the GOP doesn't get its amendment package out and adopted, the Republican Leader has got to call a halt to the meltdown. See this story for a clue on the deep damage done to the GOP over the past few days.

As David Frum's mailbag attests, this unquenchable anger isn't limited to the center-right punditocracy, but is flashing through the grassroots as well:

I voted twice for this man and his abdication of the most fundamental executive responsibility, to protect our country from foreign invasion, is cause for regret.

Talk is cheap. The most responsible course of action that this President can take on immigration is to do nothing. Leave it for the next president. Focus on Iraq and then go home.

Signing this bill would render what little good he has done meaningless by comparison. I wish he were already gone.

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It's not just a divorce. It's a messy, mean, nasty, "war of the roses" type divorce.

I am a lawyer in the Midwest. For the last six years I have daily lunched with my law partners, all of whom are partisan Democrats. I have argued about and defended President Bush for those six years besides voting for the man twice. I've vigorously defended the President, especially his handling of the war on terror, and I've proudly taken all of my partners' best shots about what a lying, incompetent we have for a President. And then yesterday I learn that the President thinks I don't want what's best for America simply because I oppose rewarding ILLEGAL aliens with an opportunity to remain legally in this country.

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I am so tired of the Washington elites and the media elites (especially Republican Senators) treating me like an ignorant, uninformed racist.

My wife and I have spent years working with Hispanic and Asian immigrants in poor, gang-ridden neighborhoods. We have taught English — we have helped keep kids in school — we have encouraged girls not to have babies when they are fifteen years old — we have done food and clothing distribution — we have organized summer sports leagues.

What do senators know about illegal immigrants that we don't know? Nothing.

We don't support the Immigration Bill because we are certain that it will make the problems worse, not better.

We don't support the Immigration Bill because we are certain that we and our children will pay more and more in taxes and direct expenses to support schools and hospitals and fire departments and police forces by adding another thirty or fifty million low-income immigrants to the population.

We don't support the Immigration Bill because we are certain that the same senators who refuse to enforce existing immigration laws will refuse to enforce the new laws (except for those provisions that grant immediate legal status to present illegals and immediate legal status to all of their "chain migration" relatives).

Yes, Senator, my wife and I are getting angrier every day. We consider ourselves part of the informed, active grass roots Republicans that got George Bush and the current crop of senators elected. We are disgusted with your performance and will not support any of you in the future.

I am leaving the Republican Party.

What do I think of George W. Bush? Does it matter? I don't have to leave the Republican Party when it's already fragmenting all around me.

And to think that this is the same President whom National Review once referred to worshipfully as "the Conqueror," and the same party that ruled Congress for a dozen years.

A riven party and a demographically doomed country. Let's see Bill Clinton top THAT legacy.