Insightful.
While I agree with a lot of what is printed here (not ideoligcally but cerebrally) I don't believe that Bush is doing these things as "strategery". Karl Rove may understand and push this, but I still think that the President operates more from personal belief than from the political equation.
Many of us do not always agree with his politics, but at least he is not operating from a poll driven agenda. If anyone listened to Hugh Hewitt last nite, he had on a retired general who met with the President in the Oval Office yesterday, and even in the face of his poll #'s and the apparent loss of support for the war, he continues to stand his ground and search for ways to bring liberty to a part of the world that has known little.
Thank God that we elected this man. He may not be everything that we could wish for all the time, but who is?
That's kind of a silly statement. Can you think of any compelling reason why he couldn't give in on immigration? "You can't have eveything" makes a catchy proverb, but it's hardly a fundimental law of the universe.
The last time the base got like this was over the Miers nomination, but that was facing the loss of almost thirty years of work on the part of the republican base. The Ports deal "looked" similar, but I don't think that was as much "base" as the opposition would like everyone to believe.
So far as I see, his loss of the base didn't become real, in the sense of the base wanting to injure him politically, until "Uno de Mayo."
Yeah, we were mad about the spending, but that could even be understood as a way to keep democrats at bay. But then when you add illegal aliens marching in the street, and the fundimental challenge to the concept of the rule of law such a display demonstrates, it calls into question why we supported the administration on anything.
America is nothing if it is not exceptional!
I am not a Bush-hater and I do support Bush's stand on the WOT as far as the foreign policy. But domestically...without securing the borders he is working at cross purposes to the WOT, to national security. His position on
1. guest workers
2. his trashing of the Minute Men calling them vigilanties
3. his apparent non-effort since 9/11 to providing more Border Patrol (seriously)
4. he did not push to seriously enforce immigration on businesses who hire illegals
As Rush has already stated, Bush is not leading a conservative movement though he has delivered on some conservative issues, he marches to his own drum. And on each of the numbered points, I oppose President Bush. He has failed to lead on principle, conservative principle.