The Occasional Observer

It seems like the the President's continued push for amnesty for illegal immigrants, coupled with his and his team's insuations that those opposed to amnesty are "bigots" (Sen. Graham), "chauvinists" (Michael Gerson) or simply "don't want to do what's right for America" (the President), has irreperably damaged a relationship that was already on life support. From Speaker Gingrich to Peggy Noonan, major names in the conservative movement are not merely murmuring, but rather shouting at the top of their lungs that they've had enough. Erick Ercisson is wondering aloud if the Bush administration is a Democrat sleeper cell in the GOP. His article mentions the firing of NRC fundraisers who are presiding over a steep decline in the number of donors. Hey, I'll admit, I'm one of those. The two issues I bothered to write Chairman Mehlman about when I was a paying donor were the filibustering of CCA nominees and our complicity in amnesty programs. When the NRC rolled out Sen. Martinez as it's new Chair, it was a pretty clear F.U. to me and the almost 80% of GOP voters who oppose Hagel-Martinez and any other form of amnesty. They won't be seeing my cash for a while, although selective GOP candidates certainly will.

When the most strident foreign policy interventionists in the conservative blogosphere are piling on, you get the feeling, as Peggy Noonan wrote, that conservatives finally understand that this President has little but disdain for them. Here's her conclusion:

One of the things I have come to think the past few years is that the Bushes, father and son, though different in many ways, are great wasters of political inheritance. They throw it away as if they'd earned it and could do with it what they liked...

Bush the younger came forward, presented himself as a conservative, garnered all the frustrated hopes of his party, turned them into victory, and not nine months later was handed a historical trauma that left his country rallied around him, lifting him, and his party bonded to him. He was disciplined and often daring, but in time he sundered the party that rallied to him, and broke his coalition into pieces. He threw away his inheritance. I do not understand such squandering.

Now conservatives and Republicans are going to have to win back their party.