** Update follows the post (6/2/07)
As much as I appreciate the many virtues of George W. Bush, I think Peggy Noonan's assessment sadly accurate.
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.
. . . 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."
On priorities regarding immigration, Noonan says:
If they'd really wanted to help, as opposed to braying about their own wonderfulness, they would have created not one big bill but a series of smaller bills, each of which would do one big clear thing, the first being to close the border. Once that was done--actually and believably done--the country could relax in the knowledge that the situation was finally not day by day getting worse. They could feel some confidence. And in that confidence real progress could begin. (more)
Update: 6/2/07 Mark Steyn says Bush has been consistent with his campaign rhetoric, but people weren't paying attention.
Just to clarify my own position, I disagree with the President on illegal immigration but I can't honestly say that he "betrayed" me. Most of the stuff the base is mad about are things he openly championed in the 2000 race. He ran the most pro-Mexican, pro-federalization-of-education, pro-prescription-drugs-for-seniors campaign of any Republican Presidential candidate ever. The convention in Philadelphia was a non-stop riot of mariachi bands playing the Cucaracha alternating with cucaracha bands playing the Mariachi. . .
President Bush has, broadly speaking, governed as he said he would seven years ago. Unfortunately, a big bunch of sophisticated types in the Republican base told themselves, "Hey, don't worry. This 'compassionate conservative' mumbo-jumbo is just a cunning feint to sucker the media and the swing voters." Au contraire, he meant it.
There's a lesson there for Republicans.
Investor's Business Daily is doing a six-part series on putting the Bush presidency in perspective. Here is part four of the series, "The Singular Vision of George W. Bush." The other articles can be accessed through this entry point.