The Republican Civil War....

[Glocksman]

...no, not Iraq.
I'm referring to the fracturing of the GOP over the 'bipartisan' shamnesty bill.
Mickey Kaus over at Slate has been keeping track of the infighting.

Linky

Endangered Pander? McCain supports legalization of illegal immigrants, loses 5 points over the month among Hispanic Republicans in California, according to SurveyUSA. Fred Thompson blasts the legalization bill from the right and his support among Hispanics quintuples, putting him ahead of McCain (and Giuliani) among Hispanics. ...

Arizona's Sen. Kyl made sure he'd be able to sense "momentum building" behind his bill by scheduling no public appearances back home during last week's recess, according to the Christian Science Monitor

P.S.: Here's what an actual pol says--

Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the lead Republican negotiator who has come under heavy attack, conceded that a Rasmussen poll showing just 26 percent of the voters surveyed favor passage of the Senate bill is probably accurate. [E.A.]

Of course, Kyl's now posing as the courageous cooperator who's willing to tell his constituents to cram it. A negative poll result isn't off message for him.** Still ...

**--It's the Reverse Howell Raines Fallacy: The great and good American people are wrong and we need brave Beltway politicians to stand up to them. If they hate the deal it must be sound!... 9:51 A.M. link

There's more, but for a lot of people here, I'm sure the spectacle of Shrubya fracturing the party is a comforting one.
As for me, Peggy Noonan put it best

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. Leading Democrats often think their base is slightly mad but at least their heart is in the right place. This White House thinks its base is stupid and that its heart is in the wrong place.

For almost three years, arguably longer, conservative Bush supporters have felt like sufferers of battered wife syndrome. You don't like endless gushing spending, the kind that assumes a high and unstoppable affluence will always exist, and the tax receipts will always flow in? Too bad! You don't like expanding governmental authority and power? Too bad. You think the war was wrong or is wrong? Too bad.

But on immigration it has changed from "Too bad" to "You're bad."

The president has taken to suggesting that opponents of his immigration bill are unpatriotic--they "don't want to do what's right for America." His ally Sen. Lindsey Graham has said, "We're gonna tell the bigots to shut up." On Fox last weekend he vowed to "push back." Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff suggested opponents would prefer illegal immigrants be killed; Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said those who oppose the bill want "mass deportation." Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson said those who oppose the bill are "anti-immigrant" and suggested they suffer from "rage" and "national chauvinism."

Looks like the Bush White House forgot Ronald Reagan's first commandment: Never speak ill of a fellow Republican.


Now how should I phrase my reply to Bush, Jerkoff..Chertoff, and the rest of the gang?
Oh, yes I know.
FUCK YOU and anyone else who supports this steaming pile.

[Vympel]

A fellow conservative had something to say re: Peggy Noonan's piece:

Link

I've got no strong objection to Noonan's analysis, and indeed I'm thrilled to see it. But it seems to me that we conservatives need to avoid falling into a historical revisionism that allows us to portray ourselves as passive victims of a feckless president.

Not saying she does this, but I think as the last wheel comes off this presidency, and the GOP comes to grips with what this presidency has meant for the Republican Party and the conservative movement, there will be a strong temptation to resist owning up to our own complicity. Success has a thousand fathers, after all, and failure is an orphan. This failure is not President Bush's alone. The Republican Party owns it. The conservative movement, with some exceptions, owns it. . . .

It doesn't take much courage to stand up for conservative principle to a president as weak as this one has become. It would have taken real courage to stand up for conservative principle in 2002, 2003, 2004, even early 2005. How many did?. . .

It is tempting to blame Bush for everything. But it's not fair, and it's not honest. Bush is today who he always was. The difference is we conservatives pretty much loved the guy -- when he was a winner.

[Glocksman]

It is tempting to blame Bush for everything. But it's not fair, and it's not honest. Bush is today who he always was. The difference is we conservatives pretty much loved the guy -- when he was a winner.

I'd say there's some truth in both.
Even back in 2002, there were conservatives (and I'm ashamed to say that I wasn't one of them) who doubted his commitment to fiscal responsibility, smaller government, honesty, and so on, and weren't afraid to speak up.

I had my doubts, but I didn't speak up because I kept telling myself 'He couldn't be as bad as Gore would have been'.
I was wrong.
We can't dodge responsibility by shifting it all onto Bush, but at the same time. hindsight is 20/20 and we can learn where we went wrong and what the warning signs we ignored were.

[SirNitram]

Honestly, the Republicans earned this one. Sorry, but that's how it goes. You cater to Big Business(Which loooooves them illegals) and rural xenophobes(Who hate immigrants from strongly allied European nations, to say nothing of an illegal) was going to explode in their faces as soon as they had power enough to ramrod through things. Only the sheer incompetence and laziness of the 109th prevented it from exploding then.

Myself, I'm just cranky on the whole thing. The amnesty concept is a bandaid over a severed limb. Immigration policy is a joke. Work Visa? The H1-B not only filled up in two days this year(All the year's quota, two days.), but it's increasingly obvious it's just a bit of bullshit by managers wanting cheaper tech-heads. Want to come over and become a Resident? A grand up front, and be ready to wait literal years. Oh, you're a Resident and want to be a Citizen? Two grand, insane background checks, and you better memorize ridiculous minutae of American history no American schoolkid learns; the test has been revised in utterly stupid ways.

Just to round out the absurdity of it all, would you like to know what I would gain from being a Citizen, legally? I would gain the ability to be required to sit on a jury. I would gain the ability to be picked by the Draft if it ever came back. I would gain the lovely right to pay taxes to the USA even if I move to another country. Oh, and I can run for office. Sound like a good return on investment? Years of delays, insane paperwork, stupid minutae, three grand? So you can run for President and get some penalties and additional responsibilities? Stupid, stupid, stupid.

[Knife]

Hmm, I was kind of hoping the two bigger parts of the pary would have gone for each others throats a couple years ago, but ok. Guess it took a big defeat to get the gears rolling. Personally, I'm all for the fiscal conservatives to break away and beat the shit out of the social conservatives.

[Eris]

Honestly, the Republicans earned this one. Sorry, but that's how it goes. You cater to Big Business(Which loooooves them illegals) and rural xenophobes(Who hate immigrants from strongly allied European nations, to say nothing of an illegal) was going to explode in their faces as soon as they had power enough to ramrod through things. Only the sheer incompetence and laziness of the 109th prevented it from exploding then.

Indeed, I've been waiting for this sort of thing to start happening for the last six years, and while I won't say it's been worth it, I am getting a certain misanthropic thrill from the governmental proceedings as of late. I mean really, if they can't be competent the least they can do is be entertaining.

Two grand, insane background checks, and you better memorize ridiculous minutae of American history no American schoolkid learns; the test has been revised in utterly stupid ways.

A friend of mine from Japan who was seeking citizenship at the time -- it's amazing how many Japanese women after leaving Japan never want to go back, but that's another story -- once shared with me some of the kinds of questions they ask. I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry -- I couldn't have passed that test, and I'm a native yankee girl with an impressive academic pedigree and background. The sorts of people who immigrate illegally would have precisely no chance in hell even if they knew what it entailed.

So you can run for President and get some penalties and additional responsibilities? Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Even worse, we don't even let you run for President. I'm really quite mystified about why many would want to enter the US legally: frankly it's quite a nightmare, and for most of the people coming it's easier and cheaper just to do it illegally. Really, aren't the Republicans supposed to be the free market party? Can't they see that if they make it more attractive economically to immigrate illegally than legally that people are going to do just that? Stupid doesn't begin to cover it.

[The Yosemite Bear]

So do we get sherman to burn the neocons to the ground?

please tell me yes?

[Patrick Degan]

And so, the party rebuilt by the racists, the sweatshop managers, plutocrats, and the religious kooks, starts coming apart at the seams —driven toward destruction by a failed war, a ruined city, crushing national debt, and a steaming turd of an immigration bill.

I wonder how the Democrats are going to manage their own defeat next year..?

[Crossroads Inc.]

I wonder how the Democrats are going to manage their own defeat next year..?

It's gulling to think that with the GOP on the verg of collpase the Dems could STILL Screw this up.

[The Yosemite Bear]

well with my current roomate and the number of anti-union co-workers, who keep calling to me to save them....