Can the House Republicans hold out against calls to pass the Senate’s version of immigration reform? Will Speaker Dennis Hastert keep his pledge never to bring legislation to the floor that doesn’t have support of a majority of the House Republican caucus? Will the White House pull out all the stops in pressuring House members to support the Senate version? Will real conservatives draw a line in the sand and say “stop?” These are all questions whose answers will determine whether the Republicans maintain control of one or both houses of Congress this fall; Whether or not Nancy Pelosi becomes the next Speaker of the House; Whether or not Charlie Rangel and Jack Murtha get to initiate impeachment hearings against George Bush; Whether or not we have a Senate majority that will continue to make some progress on judicial appointments or perhaps confirm another conservative Justice to the Supreme Court.
More importantly, the answers to those questions will have much to do with determining the future of the Republican Party.
If the House of Representatives approves anything resembling the Senate immigration bill — or anything that smacks of amnesty — then that will mean one of two things: either Dennis Hastert will have broken his pledge and the bill will pass with overwhelming support from Democrats and a minority of Republicans, at which point the conservative base will have been abandoned by the entire GOP leadership, or the White House, the press, and key “moderates” will have twisted the arms of half of the GOP House caucus, at which point conservatives will have been abandoned by their own.
The end result of either scenario will be the wholesale revolt of conservatives which will manifest itself at the ballot box, either in primaries against traitorous incumbents, or by sitting on their hands in the general election.
This is to say nothing of the energy that will be wasted that could be spent attacking liberals instead. But some in the moderate camp seem to want it that way, or at least don’t mind such a conflict. They seem bent on attempting to take control the Party’s ideological steering wheel, and want a confrontation to bring it about. Many almost seem to smugly revel in provoking the conservative base.
Article comments
1 - DrPat
It isn't only the conservative base that is infuriated by the tone-deaf response of the Senators(R). A majority of neocons are also repulsed (in the sense of being turned away) by the Senate plan for amnesty over security. Many Democrat voters are also incensed -- just take a look at the polls.
I listened to Senator Graham last night explain that it will "take too long" to end illegal immigration, but that we that we need to solve the problem of undocumentation right away by legalizing those here illegally. This is a solid case of the best being the enemy of the good. We can't perfect our border enforcement; therefore we should not try (except to throw a sop at it to try to placate the base.)
But the Senate can sure act swiftly to forgive the willful employers of illegals, and to waive the payment of taxes for folks who've been living under the table for years. We'll grease the path to redemption for those who've been guilty of identity theft, as long as their surnames are Gomez or Rodriguez or Guerrero.
2 - Lumpy
And here I thought the impractical fascistic house version of the bill was a knife driven into the heart of the GOP.
3 - Bliffle
Good riddance to the neocons, who always were faithless turncoats, once liberals. They would put a knife in the back of conservatives whenever it suited their (personal) interests.
Good riddance to the fire-eyed evangelicals, who only came to care at all because their religious extremism would momentarily give them a moment in the sun, an opportunity to throw obscene curses and threats of Divine Retribution at the homosexuals and sectarians.
Good riddance to the Royalists, who only saw this as an opportunty to secure their power over their personal families by enriching the inheritances they hold over their family like a sword of threat and promise.
Good riddance to all these narrow, small in number interests who have momentarily occupied a pivotal spot with power far outweighing their numbers and value as political operatives.
They have NO place to go. The worst they can do is sit on their hands. They WILL NOT join the democrats. There is NO libertarian and/or fascist party to absorb their energy. They are stuck. No place to go. Their bluff is called.
In time, they will not be missed. Now, the conservative movement, and hopefully the Republican party, can turn to the central ideas that motivate the broad mainstream of conservatism: government restraint, preservation of proven values, fiscal restraint, personal responsibility, etc.
It is only a temporary aberration that has convinced some conservatives that the important work was to hurl curses at liberals, embrace christian extremism, threaten foreigners, destroy historicle alliances, and embrace selfish economics and pejorative politics.
Conservatives will return to the values that had them embrace conservatism originally because they saw the value therein, NOT because they saw a convenient place to throw damnations at people they hated (it never being a conservative position to hate people), NOT because it was a place to enrich themselves, NOT beause they saw a chance to wreak vengeance on thir enemies, NOT because they had no place else to go.
Those fair-weather conservatives will find themselves alone and forgotten, their temporary position of importance revoked because of their extremism , the enemy of conservative moderation.
Goodbye to any who see themselves in that extremist faction, no matter how much you struggle to identify yoursellves vain-gloriously as "THE BASE". You are not. Nothing but a noisy faction, which temporarily got disproportionate attention.
4 - Dave Nalle
Damn, Bliffle, you've got me all teary eyed and applauding here.
I don't see it happening as easily as you suggest, but it sure is an attractive idea.
Dave
5 - RJ Elliott
It's quite simple, to me at least.
The GOP will hold the highly-gerrymandered House if (and only if) they can get their base to come to the polls in droves in November. And the only way they can get the base to turn out in large numbers is if they make the Democrats look like a truly scary alternative.
So. If Republicans in the House can somehow make the Senate immigration bill look like some sort of Democrat plot to give amnesty to disloyal, criminal illegal aliens, and then they can thwart the Senate bill from becoming law, then they will satisfy their base and hold the House.
But doing that will be difficult.
First of all, President Bush generally supports the Senate bill, so it will be difficult to claim it is some sort of leftist plot against average American citizens. Second, John McCain (who happens to be one of the most popular politicians in the country, and a likely GOP Presidential nominee in 2008) is a strong supporter of the Senate bill. So, attacking this bill (and the Democrats who strongly support it) also means attacking a Republican President and a potential future Republican Presidential nominee.
So...good luck, House GOP. You'll need it!
6 - Dave Nalle
You left out the likely possibility that the Democrats will do something so abhorent between now and November that they'll alienate mass numbers of voters and cut their own legs out from under themselves.
Dave