An Election Day Without A Conservative Pt II

Some more "disloyal" conservatives who just won't shut up about the bogus immigration reform legislation:

John O'Sullivan:

“Laws are like sausages,” said Otto von Bismarck famously, “it's better not to see them being made.” That's probably true even for good laws and good sausages. But there are times when the law or the sausage seems to represent the dubious process of its manufacture all too faithfully. In a word: it smells. And the last week of law-making in the U.S. Senate, which is expected to produce “comprehensive immigration reform” by the end of today or tomorrow, has been especially odiferous.

Mark Steyn:

Fortunately, the world's greatest deliberative body was able to agree on this sensible moderate compromise.
Meanwhile, from the Associated Press: "Mexico warned Tuesday it would file lawsuits in U.S. courts if National Guard troops detain migrants on the border."
On what basis? Posse Comitatus? It's unconstitutional to use the U.S. military against foreign nationals before they've had a chance to break into the country and become fine upstanding members of the Undocumented-American community? Or is Mexico taking legal action on the broader grounds that in America it's now illegal to enforce the law? Which, given that Senate bill, is a not unreasonable supposition.
Whatever. Under the new "comprehensive immigration reform" bill (Posse Como Estas), a posse of National Guardsmen will be stationed in the Arizona desert but only as Wal-Mart greeters to escort members of the Illegal-American community to the nearest Social Security Office to register for benefits backdated to 1973.
Meanwhile, Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, in a quintessentially McCainiac contribution to the debate, angrily denied the Senate legislation was an "amnesty." "Call it a banana if you want to," he told his fellow world's greatest deliberators. "To call the process that we require under this legislation amnesty frankly distorts the debate and it's an unfair interpretation of it."
He has a point. Technically, an "amnesty" only involves pardoning a person for a crime rather than, as this moderate compromise legislation does, pardoning him for a crime and also giving him a cash bonus for committing it. In fact, having skimmed my Webster's, I can't seem to find a word that does cover what the Senate is proposing, it having never previously occurred to any other society in the course of human history. Whether or not, as Mr. McCain says, we should call it a singular banana, it's certainly plural bananas.

Jonah Goldberg:

Many Americans understand this. They also understand that deporting the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in our midst is unrealistic (which is why, contrary to President Bush's statements, nobody has proposed that). Americans are a generous and forgiving people. But they aren't suckers, and they don't like being played for suckers. In 1986, Congress actually granted amnesty to about 3 million illegal immigrants on the promise that it was a one-time deal. The border would be secured, the rules enforced, and we'd put this thorny issue behind us.

Since then, millions more illegal immigrants have poured into the country. And now they are such a sufficiently powerful constituency, emboldened by our identity-politics culture, that they demand “justice” and further concessions in public protests across the country. Illegal immigrants are in a position to demand little — you don't break in and then insist on accommodation — but they are in a position to ask for forgiveness. Many illegal immigrants are now part of the economy and the society. But the anger over the continued failure to secure the border puts Americans in an unforgiving mood because the rhetoric of “comprehensive reform” comes across as “forgiveness now, security someday.”

Securing the border won't convert amnesty opponents overnight, but amnesty is politically impossible without it.

Thomas Sowell:

How many times have we heard that illegal aliens are taking "jobs that Americans won't do"? Just what specifically are those jobs?

Even in occupations where illegals are concentrated, such as agriculture, cleaning, construction, and food preparation, the great majority of the work is still being done by people who are not illegal aliens.

The highest concentration of illegals is in agriculture, where they are 24 percent of the people employed. That means three-quarters of the people are not illegal aliens. But when will the glib phrase-mongers stop telling us that the illegals are simply taking "jobs that Americans won't do"?

Phyllis Schlafly:

If President George W. Bush had given his May 15 speech calling for immigration reform five years earlier, we would have believed him. Now, after five years of doing nothing to protect our borders, he is not credible.

The problems he eloquently expressed didn't just emerge this year. They existed when he took office and throughout the last five years when he did nothing to correct them.

Diana West:

A nation has borders and defends them. "We" do not. Otherwise, building a fence against an unprecedented invasion by Mexico wouldn't be considered a harsh and radical position in the political mainstream. A nation has laws and upholds them. "We" do not. Otherwise, the Babbitts of the business world wouldn't illegally build American commerce on the backs of law-breaking (and ill-paid) aliens, and seek their mass legalization (along with their families). A nation defines itself as a nation.
"We" certainly do not. We are, as we are endlessly told, a Nation of Immigrants, a concept that blows to smithereens the unique nature of the "nation" to which immigrants have traditionally assimilated: the European-derived, mainly Anglo-Saxon polity, born of the Enlightenment and extraordinarily blessed by Providence, which the current president is now rapidly phasing out.

Of course, long before immigration finally became The Big Issue (thanks, Tom Tancredo; thanks, Minutemen), the nation of "We the People" had become a confederation of "We the Peoples," an amalgam of groups professing or tolerating multiculturalism, sharing a common welfare state, and participating in an ever-burgeoning economic zone that stretches from the People's Republic of China to the peoples' repositories of Wal-Mart.

But so what if we all have more stuff? That's just not enough for the long haul, especially when the long haul is the next 20 years during which the Senate immigration "reform" bill would permit about 200 million new legal immigrants to take up residency in the US of A -- this according to two different studies conducted by the Heritage Foundation and Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., as the Washington Times reported. What kind of nation survives a seismic demographic tsunami like that?

David Limbaugh:

With all due respect to the casual elite, we are talking about nothing less than the destruction of America as we know it. This will come about not so much by "foreigners," but through our own complicity in devaluing the rule of law by neglecting immigration enforcement and the disgraceful abandonment of our national identity. This will prevent us from promoting the English language, our own sovereignty, our unique constitutional system and our traditional values.

Though we are the greatest nation in the history of the world, we often project anything but pride about that. We act as though we are ashamed of the American culture and Western civilization and must promote a destructive, euphemized multiculturalism, instead of an American blend of multiethnicity. We must celebrate our multiple ethnicities, but promote our common cultural identity. To do otherwise is national suicide. Not only will we become a hopelessly balkanized nation if trends continue, but we'll bankrupt ourselves in the process.

Cal Thomas:

Throughout his address, the president kept referring to the immigrants and their rights and desires. What about those of us born in America, or who legally immigrated to this country? Do we have a right to preserve the nation the way it was handed down to us, with our English language, our culture and our loyalty to America first with no agenda other than this country?

Ann Coulter:

Bush has also apparently learned that the word "amnesty" does not poll well. On Monday night, he angrily denounced the idea of amnesty just before proposing his own amnesty program. The difference between Bush's amnesty program and "amnesty" is: He'd give amnesty only to people who have been breaking our laws for many years -- not just a few months. (It's the same program that allows Ted Kennedy to stay in the Senate.)

Bush calls this the "rational middle ground" because it recognizes the difference between "an illegal immigrant who crossed the border recently and someone who has worked here for many years." Yes, the difference is: One of them has been breaking the law longer. If our criminal justice system used that logic, a single murder would get you the death penalty, while serial killers would get probation.

Terence Jeffrey:

The bottom-line question about President Bush's speech Monday night is whether or not it demonstrated he is finally serious about securing the U.S.-Mexico border.

The answer is a resounding and exasperated no!

The illegal immigration crisis now threatens to mark George Bush's legacy the way the Iran hostage crisis marked Jimmy Carter's. The question is how long America will be held hostage.


Back in 1980, voters could retaliate against Carter for his feeble response to the hostage crisis by throwing him out of office. Voters cannot throw Bush out for his feeble response to illegal immigration, but they can throw his party out of its congressional majority.

Unless Bush immediately undergoes a St. Paul-type conversion on illegal immigration, come Election Day the evidence will be indisputable that he was not serious about securing the border: Illegal aliens will still be flooding over it.

Hugh Hewitt's fond of saying "when everybody tells you you're drunk, it's time to sit down."

What message is the conservative punditocracy sending the President and the GOP establishment regarding immigration if not, "You're drunk. Sit down"?