The Discerning Texan
All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.
-- Edmund Burke
-- Edmund Burke
Monday, May 15, 2006
The Speech. It SOUNDED great...But...
I watched President Bush propose his Immigration Plan tonight, and although I agree with Hugh Hewitt's analysis (see below) as to the "just right" (politically) content of the speech, I also was sobered by Hewitt's subsequest update after interviewing Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Julie Myers (after the speech...).
Hewitt's warning to Tony Snow and the Administration that the Conservative base of the Republican party is no longer going to be content just hearing the rhetoric is spot on: unless Bush actually fights, and fights HARD for all of his enforcement provisions--and unless real progress is made in securing our borders--whatever Conservative support Bush may have picked up tonight will evaporate just as quickly if the incentive for illegal immigration is increased tenfold while the borders continue to leak like a sieve. The American public won't stand for that--no matter what El Presidente Fox, Ted Kennedy, and La Raza is trying to tell you.
Tonight--finally--Bush has talked the talk on closing the borders; it is now time to walk the walk. Or else there is a real chance we will be facing the horrific prospect of a Marxist Speaker Nancy Pelosi trying to impeach him for the next two years, while meanwhile a hostile Iran tries to send us and Israel up in a mushroom cloud.
Mr President, please--a nation is watching and holding its collective breath--please don't blow it now: your Presidency, the Republican majority, and the War on Terror all are on the line. Mr. President your country implores you: walk the walk.
Here is Hewitt's sobering analysis:
President Bush did exactly what he had to do tonight: Hit the middle, agreeing to the fence, to a large increase in Border Patrol personnel and funding, tamper-proof identification, National Guard back-up of ICE for at least a year, the end of catch-and-release, blunt talk on the impossibility of mass deportation, an insistence on English, and a commitment to a guest worker program that will take pressure off enforcement by funneling large numbers of immigrant workers into the legal line.
Now the Senate needs to add specifics (especially on the fence) and get to the conference committee asap. There is no excuse for delay.
UPDATE: My interview with Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Julie Myers staggered me, undoing in a handful of minutes my confidence in the president's commitment to border security first. Either the president's team had not communicated effectively with sub-cabinet appointees about the fence, or the president doesn't really believe in the fence, because Assistant Secretary Myers is clearly not a proponent of the fence.
Memo to Tony Snow: The blogosphere/talk radio callers/e-mailers are turning against this speech in a decisive fashion. They simply do not believe the Administration is really committed to border enforcement, and the spokespeople sent out to back up the president's message aren't doing that job. Period.
It is all about the fence. The real fence.
Hewitt's warning to Tony Snow and the Administration that the Conservative base of the Republican party is no longer going to be content just hearing the rhetoric is spot on: unless Bush actually fights, and fights HARD for all of his enforcement provisions--and unless real progress is made in securing our borders--whatever Conservative support Bush may have picked up tonight will evaporate just as quickly if the incentive for illegal immigration is increased tenfold while the borders continue to leak like a sieve. The American public won't stand for that--no matter what El Presidente Fox, Ted Kennedy, and La Raza is trying to tell you.
Tonight--finally--Bush has talked the talk on closing the borders; it is now time to walk the walk. Or else there is a real chance we will be facing the horrific prospect of a Marxist Speaker Nancy Pelosi trying to impeach him for the next two years, while meanwhile a hostile Iran tries to send us and Israel up in a mushroom cloud.
Mr President, please--a nation is watching and holding its collective breath--please don't blow it now: your Presidency, the Republican majority, and the War on Terror all are on the line. Mr. President your country implores you: walk the walk.
Here is Hewitt's sobering analysis:
President Bush did exactly what he had to do tonight: Hit the middle, agreeing to the fence, to a large increase in Border Patrol personnel and funding, tamper-proof identification, National Guard back-up of ICE for at least a year, the end of catch-and-release, blunt talk on the impossibility of mass deportation, an insistence on English, and a commitment to a guest worker program that will take pressure off enforcement by funneling large numbers of immigrant workers into the legal line.
Now the Senate needs to add specifics (especially on the fence) and get to the conference committee asap. There is no excuse for delay.
UPDATE: My interview with Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Julie Myers staggered me, undoing in a handful of minutes my confidence in the president's commitment to border security first. Either the president's team had not communicated effectively with sub-cabinet appointees about the fence, or the president doesn't really believe in the fence, because Assistant Secretary Myers is clearly not a proponent of the fence.
Memo to Tony Snow: The blogosphere/talk radio callers/e-mailers are turning against this speech in a decisive fashion. They simply do not believe the Administration is really committed to border enforcement, and the spokespeople sent out to back up the president's message aren't doing that job. Period.
It is all about the fence. The real fence.
