What political conservatives and on-the-ground Republicans must understand at this point is that they are not breaking with the White House on immigration. They are not resisting, fighting and thereby setting down a historical marker--"At this point the break became final." That's not what's happening. What conservatives and Republicans must recognize is that the White House has broken with them. What President Bush is doing, and has been doing for some time, is sundering a great political coalition. This is sad, and it holds implications not only for one political party but for the American future.
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.
How bad are things in the party? Well read this!
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."
Why would they speak so insultingly, with such hostility, of opponents who are concerned citizens?
Good question, Peggy. The answer is that they are Repbulicans and that is what Republicans do. Don't you watch Fox News? The Republican party has been so devoid of political ideology, policy ideas and ethical leaders for so long that all Republicans know how to do is to speak insultingly, with hostility of their opponents who are simply concerned citizens. Peggy, you really ought to stop your whining.
What happened to Republicans is that they got so caught up in their hatred of Government that they decided not to ever govern. Peggy, were you the one who wrote the Reagan line in his first inaugural address, "Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem." Post-Reagan Republicans get elected so that they could have power and use that power to enrich themselves and their friends. They don't care about governing or good government. There is no vision for what government ought to be -- only a vision for what government ought not to be. As a result, the Republican party and its' leadership has become both ethically and ideologically corrupt.
Peggy Noonan did get the following right when she wrote of the current administration,
What I came in time to believe is that the great shortcoming of this White House, the great thing it is missing, is simple wisdom. Just wisdom--a sense that they did not invent history, that this moment is not all there is, that man has lived a long time and there are things that are true of him, that maturity is not the same thing as cowardice, that personal loyalty is not a good enough reason to put anyone in charge of anything, that the way it works in politics is a friend becomes a loyalist becomes a hack, and actually at this point in history we don't need hacks.
Hacks got the jobs in Iraq. Qualifications didn't matter. Hacks got the jobs in FEMA. Qualifications didn't matter. Hacks got the jobs in the Justice Department. Qualifications didn't matter.
Jimmy Carter never should have retracted his statement that the current Bush administration is the worst in history.
Just remember what this same writer said of the LAST administration:
ReplyDeleteClinton's policies were deemed an extension of his inner evil. Clinton, in Noonan's columns, does not just pursue misguided policies; he pursues them with malicious intent. "They are atheists. They don't believe in God," she quotes the Miami mayor as saying of the Clintonites in a column on the Elián Gonzalez affair. She dismisses the possibility that Clinton believed he was acting in Elián's best interests and speculates that Castro blackmailed him, sexually or otherwise. ("Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to," she explains.) She ends the column by wondering "what Ronald Reagan, our last great president, would have done." One answer is that her hero "would not have dismissed the story of the dolphins [sent by God to rescue Elián] as Christian kitsch, but seen it as possible evidence of the reasonable assumption that God's creatures had been commanded to protect one of God's children." She concludes, "But then, he was a man."