Bush attacks his own base as ignorant manipulators and undermines the party
The Boston Globe brings us this article that shows us what the President really thinks of the conservative base of the Republican party. And the news is not at all good. It seems that the President considers the base of the party to be completely disposable as long as he has the votes of liberal Democrats and RINO Republicans who will keep the borders wide open. How could it be otherwise given his propensity to smear critics in the manner of a liberal rather than deal with the legitimate issues that they have raised? We expect more from someone who is the leader of the party and who should know better than to alienate the conservative base.
For a long time this President has shown that he has a tin ear when it comes to understanding the dynamics that got him elected and how to hold a party together. It was the conservative base that donated money, time and energy to make sure that the President won re-election. Bush seems to have forgotten that fact. On issue after issue he has strayed to the left. And time after time he has acted with disdain for the party base, apparently on the assumption that we had nowhere else to go.
He seems not care about the long term damage that will be the result if this bill should be passed into law over the objections of those people who worked so hard in the election of 2004. Reagan would never have been so arrogant and would never have made this sort of error. Indeed, it is the Reagan legacy that this President is abandoning for the sake of this amnesty bill. And the long term result will be serious, if not fatal damage, to the Republican party in addition to the damage it will do to the country. The conservative base will not soon forgive such a serious betrayal, nor will they give money or time to the party in the foreseeable future if they have no confidence in the party leadership. And that is the current situation.
Conservatives from across the nation have spent the last two weeks looking at this bill in extraordinary detail. From The National Review to The Heritage Foundation to just about every major player in talk radio to the entire conservative blogsphere, the critics have spent huge amounts of time and energy dissecting this bill and trying to determine, not only what the bill actually says, but the long term ramifications of putting it into place. Whether you agree with the position of the President or the critics, there can be no doubt that the base has given serious thought to the consequences of this bill. But the President, in his remarks reported in this story, shows that he is tone-deaf and out of touch with his party's base and has no real idea of what is going on in the heart of the country with regard to immigration.
Bottom Line: The base wants security first and they don't want amnesty. Get that Mr. President? Push this bill though at your own peril and the peril of the party. The base will not support you or the party in the coming election. Indeed, a major house cleaning is probably already a forgone conclusion given the way that the party leadership has failed to uphold conservative principles. Attacking the party base only serves to underline the need for new leadership and a return to Reagan conservatism. The end result will be that conservatives will stay home on election day rather than allow this to continue. Many of the current crop of liberal Republicans will be turned out of office and we will have to suffer for a while at the hands of Democrats. But there will be little other alternative. For one has to ask how our current situation is much different and why allowing it to continue would be better for the nation or for the party in the long term?
This administration has been liberal on most every issue other than defense. And even on the war, the President has been half hearted and unable or unwilling to intellectually defend the need for a strong defense policy. He has not gone after the media for leaking national security secrets. He has not prosecuted the leakers. He has not hit back against the critics of the war. He has been unwilling to play the kind of hardball that is the reality of Washington politics. He has projected, not strength, but continuing weakness and moral confusion. He might as well be wearing a "kick me" sign on his back. The result has been a slow, constant undermining of our defense on moral grounds. In the long run, that is a losing strategy. It seems clear that the time has come for a major house cleaning. We need to return our party to its conservative principles. We need a leadership that actually believes what it says about our ideas. And while it may take some time to achieve this, it will be better to have a President and a congress who are willing to defend America from both a moral and practical point of view, than the current crop of politicians who sell us down the river because they think it will get them the votes of illegal aliens.
This President has demonstrated that he is not a conservative and that he will throw the conservatives who elected him under the bus when he thinks it convenient. That is not strategy for long term success. It is not a strategy for the future of the nation and the party.
Time for a broom.
No comments:
Post a Comment