The illusion that Bush wants enforcement

Charles Krauthammer had an article today at NRO and I wrote him an e-mail about it.

Mr. Krauthammer,

You keep asking, since there is so much diagreement on amnesty and guest workers, why don’t the parties get together and agree to do the one thing that all participants to the debate say they really want, enforcement?

The answer is that President Bush and his allies do not want enforcement.

Bush is very clear about that. He says that we cannot stop illegals from crossing the border illegally, as long as they want to do so. We can only stop them from crossing illegally by letting them all in legally. This is his true bottom line, but very few people have focused on it.

See my article: We’ll guard that border, after it’s gone; or, Bush admits the whole thing is a fraud

Lawrence Auster

—end of initial entry—

Howard Sutherland writes:

Avoiding enforcement; that’s it in a nutshell. To admit that, though, Bush’s erstwhile supporters would have to admit their man has been lying about border and immigration enforcement all along. It would be admitting that Bush is a liar, at best a scofflaw and at worst criminally negligent of his duties as president. Can they say this, even to themselves, of a man they have supported so long and so vociferously?

When the Republican Party ditched Richard Nixon, it was ditching a president who had got himself into serious trouble, and to whom very few people felt an emotional attachment. It may be getting harder to remember, but when GW Bush came on the national scene, he was the man who was going to rescue America from Clintonism. It’s especially hard to remember now that Papa Bush and Slick Willie seem to be dating.

For some reason, the neocons were peculiarly repelled by the Clinton regime. In their eyes, Bush was the clean outsider (what a laugh that is; Bush is ultimate Establishment, as Clinton is not) who would ride in from Austin and put things right in Worshington Dee Cee, as their man likes to say. They got enormously emotionally invested in the guy. September 11th and his willingness to invade Iraq only increased their love. Remember Frum’s fawning book, for example?

After all that, it is going to be very hard indeed for his supporters to acknowledge that he has been deliberately, criminally negligent of his duty to guard America’s borders, as opposed to Iraq’s or Afghanistan’s, ever since the day he was first inaugurated. What would they be saying about themselves? It’s a bitter truth for them to face even though, as you wrote even before he was first elected, Bush has never hid his preference for Latin America.

To survive this amnesty/”guest” worker onslaught, even to survive as a party, the GOP has to repudiate Bush—reject him utterly. It may not be possible. A great first step, and it’s my dream scenario, would be for House Republicans to introduce a bill of impeachment of President Bush for his willful and malicious refusal to guard the border and enforce existing federal immigration law, as he is bound by oath to do. The impeachment process would go nowhere, of course, but that’s not the point. The point would be the Republican Party’s (at the more grassroots level) formally washing its hands of Bush and his fantasies.

I’m drafting, for my own amusement and I hope for VDare to publish, a fairly simple bill of impeachment on constitutional grounds over the borders only. I’m not going to wander into the minefield of trying to impeach him over Iraq; Craig Roberts and Pat Buchanan can have a go at that if they like! HRS

RB writes:

It’s like living in the Hotel California; no matter how many times we stab it, we just can’t kill the beast. It almost seems that nothing short of some kind of demonic possession can explain why the proponents are willing to sacrifice everything in the service of the Beast. Bush throws away whatever small political capital remains to him. McCain gives up his life-long dream of the presidency. Senators like Graham and Hagel jeopardize their own re-nominations, to say nothing of their re-elections.

Howard Sutherland wrote: “A great first step, and it’s my dream scenario, would be for House Republicans to introduce a bill of impeachment of President Bush for his willful and malicious refusal to guard the border and enforce existing federal immigration law, as he is bound by oath to do.” Sutherland has a great idea. The question is whether one of our guys, in service to the Light Side would be willing to do what the minions of the Dark Side of the Force are doing—risk sacrificing even his own political careers in a desperate last-ditch attempt to stop the Beast. Some of them have already raised the possibility of impeachment, conditional on certain contingencies: a successful terrorist attack coming from across our unsecured borders, the border patrol political prisoners coming to some harm etc.

Such a bill of impeachment, a “nuclear” option as it were, brought by Republicans could bring about very useful results, even in the likely absence of ultimate passage. Pelosi has been under intense pressure from her lunatic fringe who are, even now, agitating for impeachment. They would clamor more loudly asking why she can’t do what even some Republicans can. There are a few powerful Democrats in the House leadership who would love to begin hearings. They would add numerous additional charges; the validity of which is irrelevant, it is the process that is important. The time and energy expended, the attention diverted, and the increased strife and ill feelings resulting from, even an unsuccessful, impeachment initiative would delay and hamper the passage of the beast buying us additional time; if it goes into next year, an election year, it will not be passed.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 15, 2007 10:14 PM | Send