This is why the leading Republican candidates must be rejected:
What political conservatives and on-the-ground Republicans must understand at this point is that they are not breaking with the White House on immigration. They are not resisting, fighting and thereby setting down a historical marker–“At this point the break became final.” That’s not what’s happening. What conservatives and Republicans must recognize is that the White House has broken with them. What President Bush is doing, and has been doing for some time, is sundering a great political coalition. This is sad, and it holds implications not only for one political party but for the American future.
The White House doesn’t need its traditional supporters anymore, because its problems are way beyond being solved by the base. And the people in the administration don’t even much like the base. Desperate straits have left them liberated, and they are acting out their disdain. Leading Democrats often think their base is slightly mad but at least their heart is in the right place. This White House thinks its base is stupid and that its heart is in the wrong place.
For almost three years, arguably longer, conservative Bush supporters have felt like sufferers of battered wife syndrome. You don’t like endless gushing spending, the kind that assumes a high and unstoppable affluence will always exist, and the tax receipts will always flow in? Too bad! You don’t like expanding governmental authority and power? Too bad. You think the war was wrong or is wrong? Too bad.
But on immigration it has changed from “Too bad” to “You’re bad.”
They think you’re stupid. They think you’re bad. They think you want what is wrong for America. Why do you support them? Why do you reject someone like Ron Paul, who actually believes in the principles you claim to hold?
Electability means nothing but “acceptable to the party leadership”.
And stand up, all of you who told me that I was wrong back in the lead-up to the 2004 election, who insisted that Bush was a good man with a double-secret conservative plan, that the prescription drug entitlement and Patriot Act and massive increase in social spending were merely necessary concessions to the Left and national security. I haven’t noticed a single one of you Three Monkeys publicly admit that you were completely and utterly wrong.