An Elephant With No Feet Cannot Stand

Just yesterday, Jim Geraghty (aka now the "Master of the Hillary Spot," which will never not sound at least mildly creepy), made the novel observation that the Republican base is pretty much pissed off these days:

Rich [Lowry] noted that the “sunny optimism” vibe of some candidates might be out of step with the current mood of the GOP electorate. A lot of Republicans are irritable and even angry. This might be why McCain's initial pugnacious attitude ("TO THE GATES OF HELL!") is getting applause....The GOP base is a bit like the Dem base in 2003; we want a fighter. “Michael Moore, go **** yourself” isn't exactly the inspiring rhetoric we'd like to leave in the history books, but I think it accurately represents the attitudes of the GOP base right now.

And why wouldn't it be? Before last November we could laugh at the Democrats' left-wing extremist seditions and vile rhetoric and loathsome behavior and roaring hatreds and bigotry. Those were precisely the outrageous, beyond-the-pale antics that were keeping them out of power and would continue to keep them out of power for years to come.

Then came last November. When those same Democrats won the 2006 midterms and took Congress back. All of a sudden our laughter died. Now those lying, treacherous petaQ were back in power, with the ability to actually transform their suicidal radicalism into policy. What wasn't supposed to happen, what never should have happened....did. And everything that we feared would come to pass....is. Is it any wonder that the grassroots are sideways?

But then it was, too, to a large degree, a self-fulfilling prophecy. All those loud-mouthed, self-righteous, right-wing purists who were determined to backstab the GOP majority and "teach them a lesson" got what they wanted. Their own party was cashiered. They helped send the free-spending, ear-marking, "gone-native"-ists who had "forgotten where they came from" back into the political wilderness - and themselves right along with them.

The leaders of the Republican remnant would seem to have had a choice: get out in front of that base frustration and disgruntlement, as Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson recently have (and have also by "blasting" this amnesty bill), and build and mold it into an electoral army so energized that it will....well, "go to the gates of hell" to kick Democrat ass [rimshot] and send Mrs. Clinton back to her Chappaqua cave with the rest of the bats; or ignore it, even revel in it, flip the grassroots the double bird, and defect to Rockefellerville.

C'mon, you weren't really in any suspense, were you?:

A bipartisan group of senators reached agreement with the White House Thursday on an immigration overhaul to grant quick legal status to millions of illegal immigrants already in the U.S. and fortify the border against new ones…

It set the stage for what promises to be a bruising battle next week in the Senate on one of Bush’s top non-war priorities.

The group of lawmakers had been haggling over the terms of agreement for weeks were reviewing language negotiated Wednesday night in efforts to nail down a deal. Among the final sticking points was a stubborn dispute over how much family ties count toward green cards under a new “point system.” The plan prioritizes advanced skills and education levels for future immigrants.

Here's the quote that settles the question on this "bipartisan accord" for me:

In short order, the system will be overwhelmed. Whatever minimal fraud detection and prevention safeguards might be erected won’t last long in the face of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of applications and petitions to be adjudicated. What that means is the information provided on those applications and petitions, and whatever supporting documents they may have (if any), will essentially be taken at face value. Whatever the applicant alien tells the adjudicator will essentially be taken at face value. There will be little time or process available to verify anything, perhaps beyond running the applicant’s name through a standard battery of computer databases (and, even that may become so time consuming some will slip through the cracks).

And those names of the applicant aliens...those aliens who, for whatever time period they have been “undocumented” (illegal) in the United States, wherein so very many have procured and utilized false and fraudulent identification documents often in false identities... suddenly the Government will accept as true whatever those applicant aliens tell the Government on those applications and in those interviews. An undocumented alien who procured and used false documents would lie? Well, not when applying for genuine status in the US...right? So, we can be absolutely certain of who all these newly legalized persons truly are, correct? Their statements will be truthful and their support documents not fraudulent and false, right? So, when the
overburdened CIS personnel...to include those minimally trained contractors... quickly process all those applicant aliens, with the primary mission of reducing the huge case backlog, the American public can feel confident in the integrity of that process that no foreign criminal or terrorist will possibly slip through the system and be granted legal status...a “path to citizenship”...like so many others have during normal immigration times.

Right? Riiiiiight. And Michael Moore is going to start doing arobicise infomercials with Kirstie Alley.

With a party base chomping at the bit for SOMEBODY with an "R" after his/her name to go after the Donks with fangs bared, claws slashing, and both barrels blazing, our Senate contingent - led by Jon F'ing Kyl, of all people, whose conservative cachet was crucial in persuading all but three members of the GOP caucus to supinely go along with this accodianing - have signed onto what will inevitably become "a national security disaster", as well as an economic one. And now that pissed-offedness has been redirected to where it was last fall:

Hugh,

I am angry, heart broken and nauseated over this bill. I have voted Republican my entire life. Not anymore!

My husband is a legal immigrant and citizen. He now feels his citizenship to this country means NOTHING!

We live in Tucson and deal with low wages, rising crime and one trauma center for a population of one million.

As far as I'm concerned, John McCain, Jon Kyl and the rest of the Republican party that refuses to listen to it's constituents are TOAST!!!!!!

Fed UP,

Karen ____/ Tucson

To that woman, and the numerous center-righters like her, here is what John McCain, the Palpatine of the U.S. Senate, had to say today:

This is the first step. We can and must complete this legislation sooner rather than later. We all know that this issue can be caught up in extracurricular politics unless we move forward as quickly as possible. This is a product of a long hard trail of negotiation, and I am sure that there are certain provisions that each of us would not agree with, but this is what the legislative process is all about, this is what bipartisanship is all about when there is a requirement for this nation and its security that transcends party lines. I am proud to have been a small part of it. [emphasis added]

The "first step," eh? Two to one public opposition to another immigration amnesty is "extracurricular politics," hmm? He is right about "bipartisanship," though; Republicans capitulating to Ted Kennedy and burying themselves with their own supporters is indeed what that process is all about.

Double-H translates McCain's statement:

Deal's done. I am the guy. I made it happen. My opinion mattered, not yours. What I do in the middle of a campaign for president has nothing to do with politics. My critics are all motivated by politics. Since I have already made up my mind, no debate is necessary, so shut up. Republicans especially shut up. This is how things get done in D.C.: You roll over for Democrats. And by the way, cutting half the fence and leaving the other half subject to the whims of the anti-border security bureaucracy equals protecting national security, just like the Gang of Fourteen was good for the confirmation process and McCain-Feingold good for the First Amendment. So, if you didn't hear me the first time: Shut up. Sit down. I'm your nominee.

I'm John McCain and I approve this message.

See, this is what "Coalition of the Chillin'" Pachyderms like the Admiral don't seem to grasp. He's probably right that this is the best deal that Republicans could reasonably expect to get on this issue, and that it could have been a lot worse. On the other hand, it could have been a lot better, and the years following the 1986 amnesty show that the only part of these "comprehensive solutions" that ever sticks is the instant citizenship, while the enforcement measures wither like Walter Donovan's face at the end of Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade.

But politically, that's not the point. The GOP base doesn't want "bipartisanship". It doesn't want "compromise". It wants leaders and elected officeholders who will fight for what they believe in, and do what they were elected to do. And that does not include licking Ted Kennedy's loafers.

For all the talk about how McCain did better in the GOP debate the other night, I thought the proverbial fork was stuck in him when he declared that, as president, he would "reach out" to and "work with" the other side to "do the people's business." Recent history also shows that Republican presidents who do this tend to be one-termers; McCain would simply be the first not to be surnamed "Bush." Blessedly, that will never happen.

And let us not leave Dubya out of this disapprobious loop, nor the ironies therein. It was none other than the American Spectator's Quinn Hillyer, one of the biggest Republiciders in last year's mid-term campaign, the man who couldn't wait to sweep every GOPer on Capitol Hill into the political dumpster in 2006, who wrote just the other day:

Conservatives must face the reality that we can't escape the Bush record in the next two years no matter what else we do. While the right sort of "distancing" from Bush could gain a candidate a small tactical advantage here and there, and while conservatives are rightly infuriated at Bush on any number of fronts, the fact remains that, in the short term at least, his legacy will be considered by the general public to be our legacy. His failures will be ascribed to us. His unpopularity will be an anvil tied to our ankles. To slightly paraphrase Ben Franklin (but in another context): If we don't hang together, we conservatives will surely all hang separately.

Conversely, any comeback that Bush manages to make will make our own electoral prospects brighter. If the words "Republican" and "conservative" are associated not with presidential failure, but with success, any candidate anywhere who bears those labels will enjoy greater credibility no matter whether or not he has any direct connection to President Bush.

Consider this column as one vote on the side that says Bush still has a chance for at least a fairly significant comeback.

Hillyer recommended Republicans pursue a four-pronged strategy:

1) Back "the Surge" in Iraq to either victory or the bitter end;

2) Do something Bush hasn't done in all these years and actually tout, and take credit for, the booming, roaring, tax-cut-propelled economy;

3) "Pick some fights on which public opinion is in their favor," like judges, abolishing the estate tax, English-only education, and rolling back Affirmative Action/racial quotas;

4) Do nothing - AND I MEAN NOTHING - to help the Democrats in any way escape their congealing public image as bitter, angry, mean, dishonest, dishonorable, despicable, dhimmist, perfidious, anti-American, neoBolshevik extremists who want power for no other reason than to wage permanent political jihad against "red" state America.

All of this, you understand, to rebuild the President's standing, in order to minimize his being an anchor around their collective necks in 2008.

And Bush's answer?

It was Bush's idea to have Kyl lead the GOP side of these "bipartisan" negotiations, BTW.

A picture's worth a thousand words, but a hundred thousand wouldn't be enough to explain all the countless ways Republicans are seemingly genetically pre-disposed to demonstrate how well-earned and spot-on is their nickname, "the Stupid Party".

Once this amnesty kicks in, it'll be chisled onto their political tombstone.