George you have lost your supporters

After openly dissing President Bush’s fraudulent plan for tougher border enforcement in a blog entry yesterday at The Corner, Richard Lowry followed it up today with an even more disrespectful article calling the proposal “boob bait for the bubbas.” He describes how the White House expects the bait to work:

The idea is that the House, where conservatives have the most sway, will pass a bill with new enforcement measures, only to see the Senate pass a different bill with an amnesty and guest-worker program, which will be shoved down the throats of the House on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. Supporters of tougher enforcement will have gotten their “noise,” and Bush and the business lobby will have gotten their policy. Unfortunately for this strategy, conservatives aren’t nearly as stupid as the White House political shop apparently thinks they are….

Only after our immigration system is under better control should we discuss Bush’s proposed guest-worker program and any kind of amnesty for those illegals who are entrenched in our society. Until then, don’t take Bush’s bait.

Character is fate. George W. had a much better act than his father, but it was an act after all, and now even his once devoted supporters know it. His repeated, ever-more audacious displays of bad faith on immigration, on relations with radical Muslim groups, on campaign finance, and on so many other issues, exemplified by his taking sides with the hostile leader of a foreign country against patriotic Americans who were seeking to protect their country, and then reaching a climax in his nomination of Harriet Miers, have finally borne fruit. His conservative base now distrusts him, or, to be more precise, they trust him completely—to be untrustworthy. They’re looking at him, not with the adoration and sychophancy of old, but with hard skepticism. They’re getting in his face and telling him, “Mr. President, with all due respect, you can’t jerk us around anymore.”

Now some readers may be thinking that I’m falling for Lowry’s own boob bait. We’ll see. For the moment, let us enjoy the sight of mainstream conservatives starting to join us traditionalists where we’ve been standing by ourselves these last five years.

And driving the above points home, here’s a letter sent to Lowry by a reader who was present at the president’s immigration speech. Note how the correspondent, after calling himself a strong supporter of Bush, describes himself as “embarrassed” for the president when he “attempted to hoodwink” the audience.

Good morning Mr. Lowry:

You are correct that conservatives (and people in general) are not stupid about what the President is trying to accomplish with the temporary worker plan. I was in the audience during the President’s Tucson speech. Whenever he would talk about the plan a great many people would mutter “no” and shake their heads. Listening to the conversations in the crowd I take it as the consensus opinion that the temporary worker plan is simply an amnesty in waiting. I am a strong supporter of this President, yet I felt embarrassed for him when he stood up there and attempted to hoodwink a bunch of people who knew better. I also came away from the event convinced that the Republican party is not evenly split on the issue of immigration. I feel that the vast majority of party members are against an amnesty/temporary worker plan. In fact I don’t really know who in the party is for it.

Thus Bush’s relationship with his conservative base is exactly as I predicted it would be if he withdrew Miers and appointed a decent conservative judge in her place: the president would regain the formal support of his supporters, I said, but all their love for him would be gone.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 30, 2005 12:19 AM | Send