Less than a week after the election, a leak from Karl Rove delivered a slap in the face to the Republican conservative base: Florida Sen. Mel Martinez, the co-author of the president's bill to grant amnesty to illegal aliens, has been handpicked by the White House to be the new chairman of the Republican National Committee. The next day Bush made it official, although this choice still must be approved by state party leaders.
Did Rove learn nothing from the Republican bloodbath? What about his boss?
The Martinez-Bush amnesty plan is as popular as horse droppings. Cow droppings make good fertilizer, but horse droppings are a poor substitute. They have to be broken up or they pile up and stink.
Bush fired Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who was the favorite target of Democrats and the liberal media. It is obvious that it was Rove, not Rummy, who should have received the ax.
Bush was the target of disenchanted voters. His name wasn't on the ballot, so they simply voted against his party. Most Americans can't even tell you the name of their congressman, much less how he or she voted on the major issues. This wasn't about individual congressmen. It was about numero uno.
The media made the war the big story, and Bush and Rove dutifully followed those breadcrumbs and did nothing to address the other major areas of dissatisfaction: corruption, spending and illegal immigration. These were the festering sores under the scab of discontentment over Iraq.
War, by its very definition, is imprecise and messy. The other three issues, however, are black and white. Failure to address these problems is unforgivable!
Congress is, in large part, responsible for the first two issues but the plan to give amnesty to our illegal alien population can be laid squarely at the feet of Bush and Rove. Last spring, when the Senate passed the Martinez-Bush amnesty bill (largely with Democrat votes), this issue drew ire from Americans of all political stripes, which caused House Republicans to block it.
As the issue faded from the headlines, the only thing voters remembered was that this president and this Congress tried to shove amnesty down our throats. House Republicans were the unsung, unnoticed heros in this seminal event; Democrats were the beneficiaries.
Amnesty, or "comprehensive" immigration reform as it is called, is the only issue on which Democrat leaders and President Bush agree.
With all this talk about "cooperation" between the newly elected Democrat majority and the White House, it is reasonable to expect that this is where they will begin, right? Wrong!
Democrats got the message. The Bush/Rove team did not!
During his post-election press conference, the president brought up immigration and called it "a vital issue" and suggested that this is where he could find some common ground with the Democrats. White House Press Secretary Tony Snow has made the same suggestion on more than one occasion. However, Democrats have avoided the issue.
Soon-to-be Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to go forward with the "Six for '06" agenda:
- Make our country safer by implementing the 9/11 commission recommendations
- Make our economy fairer
- Make college and health care more affordable
- Move toward energy independence
- Guarantee a dignified retirement
- Do this in a fiscally sound way with civility, integrity and bipartisanship.
Did anyone see the word immigration in there? Clearly, Democrats are not anxious to commit political suicide. Meanwhile, Rove and company are sniffing the carbon monoxide and getting high off the fact that two die-hard border enforcement advocates, J.D. Hayworth and Randy Graf, lost in Arizona. They ignore the fact that Arizonans passed four tough immigration ballot measures and not one winning Democrat campaigned on amnesty.
In an op-ed for the Arizona Central, Harry Mitchell, who beat Hayworth, said this: "Enforcing our nation's immigration laws is an absolutely necessary ingredient to securing the U.S.-Mexico border. ... That's why the news last week that work-site enforcement of our nation's immigration laws has been cut 95 percent to virtually none at all is cause for serious concern. Even more troubling is the revelation that law enforcement officials were pressured by members of Congress not to crack down on companies that hire illegal workers."
It's no wonder many Arizona voters were confused and Hayworth and Graf lost. After all, John McCain, the Republican Senate leader of the amnesty brigade, was out there campaigning for them.
Make no mistake, Democrat leaders would like nothing better than to pass the amnesty bill if they think they can get away with it. The time to weigh in on this issue is now!
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