The self-blinding of Republicans

At The Corner, which I’ve been scanning to pick up various commentary on the immigration package, Kathryn Jean Lopez quotes a reader’s e-mail:

If the current bill passes, I can assure you that hordes of Republican supporters (like me) will not support the nominee in 2008. Say hello to President Hillary. Bush has been the worst thing President for the GOP since Nixon.

I said in 2004 (about 40 times) that President Bush’s re-election would mean the ruin of the Republican party. No one listened to me of course. The Corner reader’s comment now supports my view.

But here is a curious point which shows the odd disconnect within the minds of so many Republicans and conservatives when it comes to the subject of Bush. The Corner reader’s threat not to vote for the GOP nominee in 2008 clearly indicates that he did vote for the GOP nominee, Bush, in 2004. But on January 7, 2004, eight months before the 2004 presidential election, the same Bush came out with his open borders amnesty package which was the most radical legislative proposal in U.S. history, more radical and sweeping than the current immigration bill. Yet the Corner reader voted for Bush in November 2004. How can the reader, having voted back into into office a president who was already seeking a radical amnesty and open-borders measure, complain so bitterly about that president when two years later he pushes another (and less radical) version of the same bill?

I think it’s yet another manifestation of George Washington’s profound insight that under a democratic government, the people must feel an evil, before they will see it. The fact that Bush aggressively promoted amnesty in 2004 made no impression on the reader, because in 2004 Bush’s proposal never reached the stage of a formal bill ready for a vote. So the whole notion of amnesty remained vague and fuzzy for the reader, it wasn’t something he had to think about. He therefore felt comfortable voting for Bush in 2004. But now that there is a real, written bill, and a real prospect of its being passed into law, the reader suddenly discovers the stunning fact that, yes, Bush seeks an amnesty, and he is furious about it. He couldn’t see what Bush was about, even though Bush had clearly stated his desires, until Bush’s desires took the concrete form of an actual bill that’s about to be voted on by a Democratic Congress that might actually pass it.

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David G. writes:

Your analysis of the NRO’s e-mailer is spot on. Your article “My Bush Epiphany” is one of the key pieces historians of the Bush adminisration should cite as evidence of the fact that Bush was a multiculturalist all along. I resubmit yesterday’s comment below simply because it shows, in my estimation, how Bush’s language and values, in regard to immigration, are still those of the same artificial, soft, egalitarian mindset he evidenced in 2000 and not those of a true statesman who can speak to his people directly in the vernacular of “the mystic chords of memory.”

David G’s earlier comment (which didn’t get posted due to an oversight):

According to an AP report, President Bush said the immigration proposal would “help enforce our borders but equally importantly, it’ll treat people with respect.”

Think of the sheer idiocy of that statement. Our borders will be better enforced but it’s every bit as important to treat the lawbreakers, workers, criminals and “shadow people” with respect. There is no statement offered in support of hard-line sovereignty, no statement as to the desires of the American citizen. As long as “respect” is demonstrated, why, that’s on par with protecting our borders! What other head of state would conflate his nation’s border policy with an attitude?

The term “respect” has gained new currency in recent years, by default, because of its opposite, disrespect; hence, the term “dis.” And this is what Bush is really saying—we are “dissing” the illegals right now. Bush’s comments reflect the value system of the street, tidied up in the phraseology of therapists and social workers. They are hardly worthy of a statesman.

Then Bush goes on. “This is a bill where people who live here in our country will be treated without amnesty but without animosity.” Another statement infuriating in its simplicity, among other things. The phrase, “people who live in our country” implies that such people are not necessarily a part of our country, that they are, in fact, distinct from other people, who do not merely live here but are of the country and who make up it’s essence by living its traditions and passing those traditions along to their children. Yet the goal is to instantly, and en masse, get these “people living here” to the same legal level as the traditional American citizen with no further inquiry as to their long range impact and desirability. Jim Morrison of The Doors sang in The End:

The West is the best,
The West is the best,
Get here and we’ll do the rest.

Indeed.

What’s important to Bush is that no one gets angry at these people, that no one shows “animosity,” that no one resents these people (who are just living here, after all), for their presence, for the intrusion of their language (press one for English), for their crimes, for their misuse of health and social services, for demanding rights that they don’t deserve, for demonstrating under the Mexican flag, for changing the cultural character of our country, for altering the demographics of entire states, for their racial chauvinism, for voting illegally, for their use of forged documents, for their educational costs, for driving down wages, for their unwarranted privileges (e.g., in state college tuition), for their unmonitored diseases, for their underground economy, for their audacity in saying that this really their country and for their presumptuousness in saying that no one is illegal.

The unintended consequences of the latest immigration proposal are stupefying.15 to 20 million legalized now with the family yet to come. (Can you imagine the expansion of government, the impact on the infrastructure, the cost of services, the social turmoil, etc.?) We are really playing “for keeps” here, ladies and gentlemen. If these complete and utter morons, these elected representatives of the people, with their insipid, tolerance-laden platitudes prevail then, as Pat Buchanan wrote a few years back, we can kiss the Old America Good-Bye.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 19, 2007 06:33 AM | Send