In Defeat, a Bush Opportunity
"I'll see you at the bill signing," said a cocky George W. Bush in Bulgaria, when he heard the Senate had just fallen 15 votes short of voting cloture on the Kennedy-Kyl immigration bill he had embraced.
Bush returned home, went to the Hill and implored the Senate Republicans to resurrect his bill. They did, only to have it go down to crushing defeat a second time, 46 to 53, last Thursday.
Bush has sustained a major humiliation. But he is not alone.
Routed, too, were Teddy Kennedy and John McCain, the Chamber of Commerce and La Raza, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. For this proposed amnesty for 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens ignited a spontaneous uprising against the leadership of both parties, corporate America and the mainstream media, as well.
A defeat like this is almost unheard of in Washington. For when the establishment unites—as it did behind the Panama Canal giveaway and NAFTA—it almost always wins.
Indeed, just as it is a defining mark of a superpower that when it commits to war it wins, so it is a defining feature of an establishment that when it commits to a political course, it prevails. When the Soviet Union was defeated in Afghanistan, it ceased to be a superpower and soon ceased to exist. Our establishment has suffered a comparable defeat.
The Beltway was routed by a coalition of TV and radio talk show hosts, grass-roots activists and backbenchers with the courage to defy their masters. The regime was run off the hill by the country that it claims to represent.
Repercussions will be far-reaching, as they were from that Panama Canal debate. Ronald Reagan led the opposition in that fight, and though he lost, it propelled him to the presidency.
Consider McCain. Once thought to be the runaway favorite for the GOP nomination, he has fallen to sixth in Iowa, dropped out of the Aug. 11 straw poll, plunged to single digits in South Carolina and may see his campaign crash before January.
Among GOP senators, Jim DeMint, David Vitter, Jeff Sessions and Tom Coburn have emerged as lions, while Jon Kyl, Lindsey Graham and Mel Martinez have likely suffered enduring damage for having chartered a Teddy Kennedy Republican Club.
Among Democratic senators, newcomers Jim Webb of Virginia, John Tester of Montana and Claire McCaskill of Missouri joined a dozen others to vote down the bill. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont socialist, also voted no.
In this vote are the makings of a new coalition. On one side, Reid-Kennedy liberal Democrats joined K Street Republicans to vote for amnesty. On the other, Red State Democrats joined the conviction conservatives of the GOP. Upon what were they united? Call it a policy of putting country and community before commerce.
Eighteen months before Bush departs, it is clear that his open-borders, free-trade globalism is no longer unchallenged dogma in the GOP. Three of every four Senate Republicans rejected amnesty. And fast track, by which Congress surrenders its right to amend Bush trade bills, expired Saturday. The Doha Round of global trade negotiations is as dead as the immigration bill.
If there is a rising sentiment in America today, it is nationalism.
Americans are growing weary of seeing their sons die in wars to bring democracy to people who do not seem all that appreciative. They are tired of reading of factories going to China and jobs going to India, while illegal aliens march in their cities under foreign flags to demand their "civil rights." They are tired of reading about new billionaires as their wages fail to rise to compensate for soaring gas prices and the falling value of their homes.
The establishment is losing the trust of the people, who are coming to believe that establishment is looking out for its own interests, not theirs—and the two are no longer the same.
About President Bush, there are two questions: Does he see what is happening? Is he flexible and skillful enough to dump the Kennedy-Bush alliance and take up the leadership of the new center-right coalition that is forming?
In the Harriet Miers affair, he showed that skill. When the right raged against the nomination of his White House counsel to the Supreme Court, Bush skillfully withdrew it, sent up Sam Alito, reunited his coalition and won one of the signal victories of his second term. Reconstituting the Supreme Court could be a Bush legacy. The left is terrified at the prospect.
What should Bush do today? Graciously accept the "thumping" on amnesty, and seize the leadership of the border-security coalition—90 percent of the nation—with a tough new bill that liberal Democrats will choke on, but the country will unite around. And kiss Kennedy goodbye.
COPYRIGHT 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
Entries(RSS)
So the US ruling establishment's defeat on the immigration bill is comparable to the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan? If only!!!
I don't know whether to laugh or cry about this statement:
"The establishment is losing the trust of the people, who are coming to believe that (the) establishment is looking out for its own interests, not theirs—and the two are no longer the same."
Who are "coming to believe?" Can there possibly be anybody stupid enough to still believe that the federal government looks out for the interests of Americans? "The trust of the people?" Sweet Baby Jesus.
What the people of this country need to do is to rise up and abolish the "establishment," meaning the federal government, as well as the Constitution that helped establish it.
The system is broken. It's time to return to the Articles of Confederation.
I can't imagine what it must be like to be a Southerner, and to reflect on what might have been if they hadn't been stupid enough to fire the first shots that enabled Lincoln to launch The War to Prevent Southern Independence.
"...
“The establishment is losing the trust of the people, who are coming to believe that (the) establishment is looking out for its own interests, not theirs—and the two are no longer the same.”
Who are “coming to believe?” Can there possibly be anybody stupid enough to still believe that the federal government looks out for the interests of Americans? “The trust of the people?” Sweet Baby Jesus.
..."
Patrick J. Buchanan _is_ part of the establishement.
Pat Buchanan thinks President Bush can salvage something from the wreckage of his amnesty/”guest” worker Precious in the Senate, and offers The Decider some good advice in his last paragraph.
I think Pat is off-target, not because he is offering bad advice (he’s not – what he suggests is the best thing Bush could do for himself and the GOP right now), but because what he proposes is simply impossible for George W. Bush. As I suspect Pat sees it, President Bush wanted Bush/Kennedy/McCain to pass because (i) he and Karl Rove believe that with enough pandering some mass of Hispanics can be convinced to vote Republican and (ii) because those who fund the Republican Party want a never-ending supply of docile, cheap workers.
That’s true, but incomplete. Those aren’t the ultimate reasons why GW Bush the man, not GW Bush the President, is so adamantly determined to push illegal alien amnesties. Pat is focusing on the politics, not GW Bush’s emotions, so he doesn’t see why Bush can never take his advice. George W. Bush loves Mexicans. There is nothing per se wrong with that. America’s problem is that Bush’s emotional attachment to Mexico and Mexicans trumps reason when he addresses immigration issues, to the point not only of proposing mass scofflaw amnesties but even of refusing to enforce existing laws he is constitutionally bound to uphold.
In GW Bush’s mind, to turn his back on more than six years of trying to secure a general illegal alien amnesty (which has always – for Bush – been primarily for Mexicans’ benefit; when he first proposed it, in 2001, explicitly so) would be turning away and mortally insulting people he genuinely holds dear. Won’t do it; not gonna happen, as some other Bush once said. His Mexiphilia is backstopped by his establishment liberalism, which makes him think any such change of course would also be racist.
President Bush’s Mexiphilia is also the only adequate explanation for his acceptance of the Mexican government’s outrageous pattern of intruding on America’s sovereignty during his administrations, an unprecedented example of a busted banana republic (even if a large one) successfully pushing around a superpower – on the superpower’s own territory, no less.
No, The Decider is not going to take Pat’s advice. But I wish he would. HRS
The Libby pardon exploded whatver chance Bush II could see through the Beltway smoke to what was going on in the rest of the country. Pat's wishful thinking about Bush II once again goes for naught.
Even Paris Hilton had to go to jail, but no the neocons.
Mr. Buchanan seems to be indulging in a bit of wishful thinking. No way would W. turn on his allies on the immigration battle. If there's one thing the President has been consistent on, this is it. It all comes back to 1998 when he and el Jebo got a lot of praise for winning Hispanic votes in a bad year for the GOP.
Mr. Sutherland's call for the Articles of Confederation to be restored is spot on but, to be blunt, I really think that a new Constiutional Convention would give us an even worse government if such a thing is possible. Who do you think the American people would elect ? Instead of Hamilton of NY, Hillary. Instead of Roger Sherman from CT, Joe Lieberman. Luther Martin meet Barbara Milkuski. George Mason, move over for George Allen.
No thanks.
But the problem is that Bush and the other globalist elites do not want to stop illegal immigration and shut our borders. Eliminating our borders is an integral part of their North American Union plan. I'm sure they are already plotting an end-run around the recent vote. I wanted to rejoice after the defeat of the amnest bill, but then I realized that we no longer live in a representative republic, politicians aren't accountable to the people they purport to represent and states no longer have any power at all. It is one step back ten steps forward for globalization and the New World Order crowd. Sorry to rain on your parade.
Southern independence, now! See http://www.dixienet.org
Mr. Buchanan doesn't realize that this presidency is already over?
Hey, Evan Almighty, I saw the movie you took your name after. Good, huh?
I have always loved Pat Buchanan, even though I come from a Democrat family and have always voted Dem as the lesser of two evils. He is the only Republican candidate I ever contributed to or worked for in the primaries. I sensed he was FOR the people, and now I see he's FOR the nation.
On this 4th of July it's time to think about nationalism as something to value. I have been increasingly valuing it, along with many other Americans, for some time now.
If this were the movies, GWB could come back with a change of heart, but I don't think he will. I could pray for it with you, Evan Almighty.
Mariel
I second Dr Hill's motion! Deo Vindice!
As more and more Southerners, both black and white , awake to the fact that uncle is a poor guarantor of the traditions they hold dearest, independance may happen as calmly as the peeling of a country church bell.