Huddled Masses

In other news, the Democrats have instituted an operational pause in their war against the war. Which the intra-GOP immigration civil war neatly camouflaged.

Heck, that'd conceal renewed above-ground nuclear tests.

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Here is a good summation of the conservative take on illegal immigration. In essence, "Beef up enforcement, prove that it's working over several years, and THEN we can talk about normalization, paths to citizenship, guest worker programs, and the like after we can have a measurable degree of confidence that we're not just opening the floodgates for another demographic innundation." You'll also notice that nowhere is there a mention, much less an emphasis, on mass deportation, which would be appropriate in theory but impossible in practice.

Restricting legal immigration does have its case made here. But one battle at a time, particularly when we're at such a disadvantage already.

While the aforelinked Andy McCarthy argues it's pointless to argue over the term "amnesty," it's difficult to know what else to call it when all twelve million illegals would become "legal" overnight. Not citizens, mind you, but given that they would officially enjoy almost all the rights and privileges of citizenship, I'm not certain that matters all that much. Ditto whatever enforcement aspects the bill may actually have. Why bother with the sticks when you're offering carrots the size of the Chrysler Building?

How about the way the bill underfunds the Border Patrol? According to this agent, the BP would need upwards of a third more agents on or near the border to have a fair shot at stemming the tide of illegals, drug smugglers, and, yes, infiltrating Islamists. He says the fence is secondary to the need for more armed bodies guarding the Mexican frontier.

Is it not telling that the border erasure proponents - who were taking marching orders from illegal alien advocacy groups, including "reconquistas" and racists like, well, La Raza - were in a frantic rush to plow this through the Senate in a matter of a few days, bypassing the normal legislative process of committee hearings and witness testimony for and against, passage to the floor for more debate, amendments, etc., and then an up or down vote? Fortunately, less crazy heads managed to take the collective lead-foot off the gas pedal, and there will be a three week buffer in which for the hideous details of this monstrosity to get a full airing. Which most likely means the bill is dead for another Congress.

Or so we need pray.

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Still, it is the cross-colliding political dynamics of this issue that are of the greater interest to me. For one, how immigration moderates can even still exist, and why they think that a compromise solution to the problem will EVER be attainable when there simply is no common ground on which to patch one together. I guess for the naive, hope always springs eternal.

The Democrats, of course, are interested in importing twelve million new voters into their electoral column, rebuilding their one-party dynasty for another seventy years. They see this opportunity as their last, best chance to restore their hegemony because of the convergence of factors that makes McCain-Kennedy a "perfect storm":

The folks I talked to believe this is the year. Two years from now isn't an option. The particular political circumstances we're in are nearly unique: Bush has nothing left to lose but his involvement still provides cover for Republicans, Democrats can get an immigration bill without full ownership over it, the space is open for the subject because the President won't allow action on other liberal priorities and the Congress won't countenance any conservative agenda items, and so on. You have the RNC defending a bill that, were it offered under a Democratic president, they'd be tearing apart. Meanwhile, this just won't be a priority for the next president: President Democrat will want to do health care, not amnesty, and President Republican will want to get re-elected someday. So this is the shot...

The irony is that Dems are attempting to use Republican power now in order to dupe them into pissing it away later. Induce GOPers to commit political hari-kari by blundering right into a fratricidal minefield. And too many Pachyderms evidently really are too stupid to realize what they're doing to themselves, and what it'll cost them in the very near future.

And that's if the bill DOESN'T pass. If it does, with two-thirds of Senate 'Pubbies voting "yea," as Lindsay Graham gushingly believes it will, there are some on the center-right who think
it'll be the end of both the GOP and the conservative movement as we now know them.

David Frum counts the ways - some of which actually make sense:

The White House/RNC defense of the deal only enrages Republican voters. When Tony Snow delivers a speech to the Council on National Priorities arguing that George W. Bush has been tougher on illegal immigration than any president ever .. well, he invites jeers and derision. Of the 35 million foreign-born people in the United States, some 8 million have arrived since 2001. Of the twelve million estimated illegals in the United States, some four million have arrived since 2001.

Speaking of whom, were you aware that this bill did have a provision that required illegals to pay at least some of their back taxes over the preceding five years, but it was deleted - at the White House's insistence? Even Senator McCain, in his blogconference today, wouldn't defend that (or else he knew but was pretending not to know).

As we have seen in both the Harriet Miers fight and the Dubai ports deal, this White House's first instinct when faced with dissent in the ranks is to insult and abuse its strongest supporters. "Sexist"; "elitist"; "registered bigots" were some of the terms cast during the previous fights. Brace yourselves for much, much worse. This is no way to win friends and influence people. And triggering an internecine party conflict on the eve of a difficult and dangerous election is no way to re-elect a damaged incumbent party.

And unfortunately the White House's second instinct when confronted with dissent is to revert to incompetent spin. Unlike the Clinton administration, which lied with a fluency and bravado that will impress PR hacks for decades to come, the Bush Administration stumbles, flusters, and eventually disheartens even its staunchest supporters. Or, as my friend Bill Walsh puts it, they cannot even tell the truth convincingly.

You can see all of that lining up, cantcha? Brother Hinderaker puts it most cuttingly, I think, in his post on the President's approval number plunging to an all-time low of 34%:

Do you remember all the talk during Bush's first term about how he intended to "spend his political capital?" This was said to be a lesson he learned from his father's presidency. I never realized that by "spending his political capital," he meant driving his approval rating down to zero by the time he left office.

Yeeouch.

Getting back to Frum, I wouldn't call him a complete Svengali; he thinks this intra-party scrum hurts not just McCain (for obvious reasons) and Giuliani (for reasons Rudy wants to keep from becoming obvious, particularly while all the heat is on "Sailor"), but also Romney, on the (McCain-suggested) grounds that his prompt opposition to the current amnesty bill constitutes "another flip-flop". I think that misses the point; right now the GOP base is incensed at McCain's firm stand, not anybody else's equivocation, alleged or otherwise. Only way Romney would get in hot water is after he became president and then turned around and signed an amnesty just like this one, like Bush41 raising taxes after swearing up and down that we read his lips. He also, despite arguing that "Rudy McRomney" are crippled by the immigration bill, pirhouettes and calls them "still more electable" than Newt Gingrich (which I buy) and Fred Thompson (which I don't).

But damage there definitely has been, and it will linger. Recall the last base-screwing McCain caper, the "memo of understanding" betrayal that preserved Donk judicial confirmation filibusters. The two-year anniversary of that day of infamy is two days from now. It can be argued that that was the biggest factor in the Republicans losing the Senate (at least) last November. Now here comes its equivalent sequel, and again McCain is the architect and catalyst. I don't know about you, but I'm noticing a pattern. So, probably, does McCain, which would help explain this.

They say to keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. But first you have to know who your enemies are. We can see the wages of keeping McCain in the fold. Question is, why do we keep on paying them? Wouldn't it be (or, rather, have been) better to blow him out of the party, particularly since he's gonna walk when he is eliminated from nomination contention anyway?

At least that way we'd be deporting SOMEbody....