Dan Stein said as much the other day on C-SPAN, referring to this as the “Waterloo” issue. Which is to say, being interpreted, if we lose on this one now, then WE ARE IN BIG TROUBLE! :-o

The last amnesty was at least sold as a quid pro quo for the employer sanctions (no longer enforces, but somewhat enforced under the Reagan administration). For this amnesty immigration restrictionists get absolutely nothing. This is how far the game has gone — Americans count for nothing, America is just one big day laborer site.

Saw David Brooks on Newshour, he gives the President a ‘B+’. J. Goldberg likes the plan as ‘practical’ and conforming to ‘facts on the ground’. These are the ‘conservatives’ who received mainstream media attention.

Blue-color democrats, blacks, hispanics, working middle-class feminists and gays are base of Demo party and they are being sold down the river.

All working people in the USA are being stubbed in the back by the elites. I like the word Michael Savage uses for bi-partisan elites - Oligarchs.

Interestingly, Russians use the same word for the Mafia that stole the riches of the Soviet Union.

The Republican Party must be delt a near fatal blow over this issue. They need to understand once and for all that this immigration issue must be confronted, and fixed. I don’t want to be left exposed to the tender mercy of the Democratic Party, so I could live with Bush out, the Senate gone, and only a slim GOP majority in the House. But I agree with Mr. Auster’s friend: the GOP must take a beating that will be historic, and change the direction they are heading in, or immigration reform is doomed.

Anyone who supports this thing and still calls himself a conservative has entered Arianna Huffington Land—the realm of transparently phony “conservatives” who are, at long last, forced to drop the mask.

What Mr. Auster says is true, but will non-politicized Americans who think of themselves as conservative see it, or will they continue reflexively to vote for Republicans? The Rove calculus is that they will vote GOP no matter what. I’m afraid I see no reason to think Rove is wrong about that (unlike his visions of grateful hispanics voting GOP, which are delusions). HRS

Angry over the immigration issue - I can understand that. Sick and tired of some Republicans ‘betraying’ conservative causes - I can understand that as well. Use this issue to see that the Bush Administration is voted out of office - Stupid. You do that and you welcome ID’s for illegals, reparations, tax hikes, gay marriage, and all the rest that Leftist elites endorse.

Does Daniel think that, if Bush is re-elected, there will never be another Democratic president? Sooner or later there _will_ be another Democratic president, and then we will have to face the parade of horribles that Daniel has listed (most of which we seem to be having with a Republican, by the way). So why is the re-election of Bush in ‘04 seen as such an absolute necessity?

I never said that another Dem would never be elected president, I just don’t want to hurry along that possibility. Unfortunately a majority of folks at this blog would like that to happen so that things can get even worse, and then a ‘real’ conservative administration could take control.

In others, we should lose now so we can win in the future. I just do not understand this kind of thinking. Perhaps, Mr. Auster, you can explain it to me.

Daniel writes that it would be stupid to use the immigration issue to get the Bush Administration of office: “You do that and you welcome ID’s for illegals, reparations, tax hikes, gay marriage, and all the rest that Leftist elites endorse.”

But dude - the worst of that junk is happening anyway. And it’s impossible to get any political traction underway to oppose it when it’s happening under a Republican administration that seems to be acting simply as a Trojan horse for the agenda of the liberal elite (and is there any other kind?). Can’t you see, the only hope of stopping all these nightmare scenarios is to get the current administration out of the way.

And I can’t really get terribly exercised over tax policy when the administration has just, in effect, announced the dissolution of the American nation, culture, and people. They can tax me all they want to if it means I won’t have to push a special button to request the English menu when I use an ATM and my kids can sing “Yankee Doodle” at school.

Well, actually, one reason to keep Bush in office is the matter of judicial appointments.

I’m afraid I don’t have much of a grasp of what his record is in this area, and most Republican appointees to the Supreme Court have turned out to be disasters anyway; but we’d certainly never get a Scalia, Rehnquist, or Thomas out of a Democrat administration. A couple of Supremes appointed by a Dean circus er I mean administration could leave us with a real judicial tyranny, various abridgements of free speech, etc.

In response to Daniel:

First, if a Democratic president will be elected sooner or later, then the re-election of Bush ceases to be the all-or-nothing proposition that many people see it as.

Second, though others may feel differently, I am NOT taking this position in order to make things get worse. I am taking this position DESPITE the fact that I expect it will make things get worse.

Third, as I’ve said before, the immediate reason to defeat Bush is to stop and discredit his politics. Read Tod Lindberg (the soul of the soulless GOP establishment) in the Washington Times. Lindberg points out how Bush is devoted to excluding conservatism and its “unrealistic” agenda from the Republican party, while making the conservatives accept it because they have no place else to go. Maybe some conservatives are willing to go on kow-towing to Bush on these terms. I am not. The only way to stop Bush’s hollowing out of conservatism and of America is to stop Bush. If Bush is re-elected, his liberalizing agenda will be triumphant and will continue. If he is defeated,—and, moreover, if he is defeated by a conservative exodus from the party—that will tell the GOP bosses that they can’t get away with the game any longer.

Bush is a strong favorite to be re-elected. But he may lose. In any case, opposing him is an expression and proof that we are still alive. Kow-towing to him out of fear of the Democrats is an expression of fear, surrender, and death.

http://washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20040112-091551-3882r.htm

Mr. Auster has my assent.