×
BREAKING UP. It is hard to do, and the Republican party is trying to find the best way to end that long love affair with George Bush publicly. Peggy Noonan wrote her "Dear George" letter last Friday in the Wall Street Journal:
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."The president has taken to suggesting that opponents of his immigration bill are unpatriotic--they "don't want to do what's right for America." His ally Sen. Lindsey Graham has said, "We're gonna tell the bigots to shut up." On Fox last weekend he vowed to "push back." Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff suggested opponents would prefer illegal immigrants be killed; Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said those who oppose the bill want "mass deportation." Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson said those who oppose the bill are "anti-immigrant" and suggested they suffer from "rage" and "national chauvinism."Why would they speak so insultingly, with such hostility, of opponents who are concerned citizens? And often, though not exclusively, concerned conservatives? It is odd, but it is of a piece with, or a variation on, the "Too bad" governing style. And it is one that has, day by day for at least the past three years, been tearing apart the conservative movement.Peggy is done with George. And so is Andrew Sullivan. The moment to select for this public breakup is an interesting one. It is not the Iraq war or the growing power of the government that made Noonan take her pen out but the immigration debate. Immigration is the point where the odd marriage that makes up the Republican base falls apart, the marriage between social conservatives (who are mostly not wealthy) and wealthy business interests. The social conservatives want a big fence around America (as they define it), whereas the business interests want cheap labor to successfully cross that fence. There was no way that Bush could have satisfied both of these desires at the same time.Now the Republican party is back to dating, looking for a new hero to worship. Fred Thompson is the most recent candidate courting the social conservative base. He has the advantage of being yet another actor, just like Ronald Reagan, and he is going to build that fence around America, too.Isn't it odd how the Republicans keep turning to actors while deploring those Hollywood values?--J. Goodrich
