On Immigration, Bush May Finally Destroy Himself Completely

When you hear a political story about supporters, from within the same party, abandoning their leadership, it's usually highly provisional. People who were in favor of government spending parted ways with Bill Clinton on welfare reform, or the base deserted Bush over the Harriet Meirs supreme court nomination. It's not really abandonment - it's more like a strong expression of dissatisfaction.

This is different. Republicans are abandoning Bush on immigration - totally throwing him under the bus, once and for all, thank you very much. This is abandonment. We're talking: Leave the baby in the middle of a cornfield, get in the car, and speed away type of abandonment.

It's a potent combination of things that has brought people to this point. One, the current plan is tremendously insulting to people who are legally attempting to enter America from countries that do not share a geographical border. Two, laws that are currently on the books should mean something and be enforceable, otherwise it taints the notion of law-and-order government -- an item on which Republicans take pride. Three, seriously secured borders should come first BEFORE we talk about what happens to people who are already in-country. And four, there's a profound and very powerful sense that the coastal elites - including the country-club portion of the GOP - is shoveling this bill down our throats.

Moreover, It hardly cuts down party lines: Even 54% of Democrats are against the immigration package.

Sure, there are those who habitually claim that any resistance to a generously open-border policy is about some kind of discrimination towards people from South and Central America -- the same old reflexive, knee jerk response. Maybe the congress and the president are afraid of that accusation. But this is amazingly cowardly and wrong. Most people who are abandoning the president are clearly in favor of safe, secure and even high-volume immigration of people from all different courtiers and ethnic backgrounds. Just make it as fair for the PhD from Kenya and his family as for the nonskilled gentlemen from Oaxaca.

Back to the president: In strictly political terms he was on life support anyway. Sure 20% of the country hates him with a cross-eyed vengeance, and another 40% simply doesn't like him, but he had the rest of the voting population, right? That was still a few million folks - people who dutifully stuck by him on Iraq, through thick and thin - even when it's been a "long hard slog". But now, with his incomprehensible support of this reform package - if it passes, and he signs it into law - he's going to manage to enrage everybody else who wasn't already disgusted with his presidency.

That takes a special kind of skill.