Bush Knuckles Under To The Knuckledraggers

by DemFromCT

The unpopular Republican President has decided to try his hand at politics in an attempt to try and stop his free fall in the polls. The topic is immigration. The venue is the Oval Office. The Time is Monday evening, and the place is national television. Bush will try and get tough with the Mexicans (for twenty minutes) in an attempt to staunch the bleeding with conservatives within the Republican party.

Desperate times require desperate measures. Since it's conservatives that are deserting him (see Bush Rebounding? Nope), he's got to do something to show them that he's really one of them. Of course, he's also got to make sure that Latinos don't become alienated and reject the Republican party in future elections, hence the balancing act.

But future considerations must make way for saving one's skin. If conservatives don't supply the material for Bush's floor, there's no telling how low the numbers will sink. His entire governing philosophy is based on relying on the base's unswerving loyalty and then bamboozling the moderates into thinking there's some reasonableness and thought behind Bush policy. And we can't have 'Bush falls into twenties" repeated on every news channel. That'll start precedents and go places they don't want to go.

So use the Oval Office, Mr. 29%. Make news. Announce 'get tough' measures to get the base on your side again. Look like a war President and show those weenie Democrats how to protect Americans from their gardeners, nannies and crop pickers. You know you want to. You know they want you to. But you also know they will never be satisfied.

God bless America.

Comments

[MonkeyDog102]

And while you are at it, Mr. 29%, go ahead and further alienate everyone else. Won't it be comforting to finally give up trying to look like a moderate? Won't it be nice to just let it all hang loose? You know you want to. Go ahead: show us (again) what a thug you are.

[DemFromCT]

The good folks at NRO fear this immigration debate. Might lead to Hillary World, their deepest darkest fear.

[demtom]

Okay: it's likely true these last few points of erosion were due to losses in "the base"...but to hear pundits talk right now, you'd think they were the only ones whose concerns needed addressing. Tucker Carlson actually said tonight that if Bush had taken the right-wing line on immigration from the start, he'd be at 45% approval -- which I think represents a wild overestimation of the size of the GOP base. Come on: Bush hit the mid-30s last year after Katrina -- an issue about which there's no evidence the base gave a damn.

I recognize, they're in such sorry shape, they have to try anything, but I think there's some delusion -- bred by the '04 results -- that a Republican, Bush especially, needs only satsify his base to achieve decent electoral results. How many times have you heard that massive turnout of evangelicals won it for Bush in '04, that it didn't matter Kerry won the independents? No one seems to process that Kerry's win among indies was only about 52-48; it didn't much to offset that. Now polls show Dems taking independents more like 75-25 -- every breathing fundamentalist or Amish turning out to vote wouldn't reverse that. And every move Bush makes pandering to "the base" solidifies -- if not increases -- the determination of those indies to vote Dem in November.

[njr]

"...the determination of those indies to vote Dem in November"

if they stay home, those numbers are... ???

the Dems MUST get the voters out in November... ALL the voters

[John Forde]

Jason Leopold at Truthout is saying Rove is telling WH staffers he will be indicted:

Friday 12 May 2006

Within the last week, Karl Rove told President Bush and Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, as well as a few other high level administration officials, that he will be indicted in the CIA leak case and will immediately resign his White House job when the special counsel publicly announces the charges against him, according to sources.

[DemFromCT]

Jason isn't always a reliable source. Hope he's right on this one.

Another important story to follow is this one.

Tice was fired from the NSA last May. He said he plans to tell the committee staffers the NSA conducted illegal and unconstitutional surveillance of U.S. citizens while he was there with the knowledge of Hayden, who has been nominated to become director of the CIA. Tice said one of his co-workers personally informed Hayden that illegal and unconstitutional activity was occurring. [...] "I think the people I talk to next week are going to be shocked when I tell them what I have to tell them. It's pretty hard to believe," Tice said. "I hope that they¹ll clean up the abuses and have some oversight into these programs, which doesn't exist right now." [...]

[Jon]

Great post, thanks DemFromCT!

These are interesting times. Today, I was talking to a friend, who is a Marine recruiter, and he was complaining about the Republican Congress. I was really surprised because he's a "law-n-order" Republican, a "die-hard", or so I thought. He called this Congress the worst Congress in his lifetime and said they needed to be replaced. I simply agreed with him. Then I mentioned that it would be nice to get a Democrat President in two years. He smiled and said, "I can go for that."

On the immigration front, my Midwest family members tell me that there have been anti-immigration demonstrations in their small towns, people holding up signs saying "send them home" on the street corner. My mother said that they were doing the same thing in her town and that it had been well-covered by the local media, T.V. stations and radio and newspapers. She said that some of the anti-immigration people were going door-to-door to drum up support for sending the "illegals" back. She thought the whole protest and canvassing was mean-spirited. And she's a conservative Republican. So, the politics of illegal immigration cuts in many different and unpredictable ways.

[DemFromCT]

Jon, that's true for both parties. it's the one issue that roils everything.

[Sally]

Jon, I'm afraid that when the Republicans are faced with actually voting, they will stick with their party rather than admit they were wrong about it. It's human nature, isn't it, similar to the battered spouse who somehow still loves the batterer? I'm afraid to be hopeful that voters have seen the error of their ways.

[janinsanfran]

Hmm -- Bush goes Pete Wilson. Probably gets a short term win out of it. Very ugly. But the long term loss is huge. And, delightfully, one of the places that loss will bite back hard is Texas.

Always assuming current institutions and polity survives into the long term.

[DemFromCT]

Ahnold wary of troops.

"Going the direction of the National Guard, I think, is maybe not the right way to go," Schwarzenegger told reporters on Friday after a news conference on the state budget.