Exactly...next November has all the potential in the World fer being a watershed election for conservatism in America. The Senate is replete with DemonRATS bailing ship in States that are rightfully GOP strongholds, we've got a war-time POTUS leading the way in a very promising economy, and the RATS are most likely gonna nominate a Northeastern Lib'ral who makes Teddy Kennedy's voting record look almost Reaganesque!! Heck, how can we lose?! Well, we could become timid and begin adopting the DemonRAT's Agenda and thereby alienate those who worked so hard to get the GOP--and Bush--to where we are!!
It's up to US, the RightWing Base of the GOP, to do everything in our Power to insure that we are not marginalized or taken fer granted!! Sure, we won't win every policy argument, but we can win our share if we refuse to back down or be cowed by the MilquetoastModerates who all-too-often seem to have the ear of this President!!
Stay true to our conservative principles and next November promises to be a '84-style landslide, imho...MUD
Any other ideas?
I have rarely (if ever?) disagreed on anything of political importance with you, Steve, but I’m afraid we part ways on this one.
Staying true to my conservative principles will no longer allow me to support yet another so-called conservative leader who has bartered those principles away to the highest (political or monetary) bidder.
Please bear with me here and read this to the end. If you still disagree with me, I will chalk it up as a genuine divergence of opinion between two intelligent, well-informed conservatives. But I’m hoping that, in this specific instance, maybe there are some facts of which you are as yet unaware.
Bush’s immigration proposal has three main thrusts:
(1) It grants legality (via temporary work visas) to the approximately ten million illegals already in the country (Do you realize that that figure represents almost 3½% of our total population? That’s a mighty huge chunk of humanity, and a mighty huge potential voting block, and a mighty huge special interest group, and a mighty huge drain on our already over-extended social services fabric).
(2) These visas would not only apply to illegals who are already here, but would also be offered to aliens living abroad who have been offered a job by a US employer. The administration claims that there are not enough Americans to fill the available American jobs, and that this will help fill the void.
(3) The visa holders would be candidates for a green card. The lid on green card applications would be lifted. (Note: one of the most insidious tentacles attached to the obtaining of a green card is the privilege of sponsoring the immigration of one’s relatives – parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles. Talk about a Pandora’s box!)
My first (and most vehement) objection to these ludicrous proposals is that nowhere contained in them is even a hint of a solution to what caused this problem to begin with. What are we doing to stem the tide of illegal immigration? Why put a (rotten) band-aid on a sore that is still bleeding profusely? My logic tells me that, rather than stemming waves of illegals streaming across our borders, this idiotic ‘solution’ will instead encourage even more. We’ll need another amnesty program five years from now for the additional ten million who will see this as an open invitation to suck America dry.
Not only does this program fail to punish people who have come across our borders illegally. It rewards those who, in addition to that first crime, have also gained employment. How does an illegal gain employment in this country? He fakes the documentation required to obtain work (birth certificate, social security number, etc.) And, if the illegal hasn’t faked his own personal documentation, then his employer has hired him without the proper documentation. So one or both of them are being rewarded for committing one crime on top of another.
And how about the drain on social services that these people (and those who will inevitably follow them) are going to cause? Anyone who believes that they will not be using up more taxpayer services than they contribute to is living in a dream world.
As this article says, The American public has always been [and still is, by a huge majority] against legalizing illegals. So the bottom-line question is Why is the President doing this? To solve the problem? It solves nothing. If anything, exacerbates the problem of illegal immigration by making it more attractive. The only benefit is a political one. A genuine conservative does not override the will of the people to gain political favors from minorities. That falls into the leftists' camp. And when the line of demarcation between the two camps blurs, it's time to take a step back and ask yourself who is erasing the line?
The only thing this President has done that has made me proud that I voted for him is his handling of the war in Iraq, in general. That’s it. He has signed into law every single big-spending, unconstitutional, socialist bill that has crossed his desk. Not one veto! He has signed on to the continued confiscation of our hard-earned money and spends it on new and improved bloated entitlement programs, redistributing our wealth so that work and success is deemed secondary to sloth, mediocrity, and a socialist nanny-state. He has signed into law an act that would allow the state to subvert more of our God-given individual liberties than any previous act or law every passed in this republic, all in the name of homeland security.
I am beginning to fear that liberty may someday be more at risk as a result of creeping socialism and homeland security measures than it is through the threat of external terrorism itself.
Of one thing I am certain. The ability of terrorism to wreak havoc here in our homeland is inversely proportional to the amount of individual liberty and prosperity we enjoy as a united people. And, in that respect, our own President is weakening our defenses with every stroke of his free-flowing pen.
~ joanie
