Cal Thomas has a column in today’s Eagle applauding President Bush for his immigration speech last week in Arizona but arguing that Bush didn’t go far enough. Thomas doesn’t like Bush’s guest worker proposal and wants the administration to crack down on businesses that hire illegals.
Immigration is a tough political nut, as the whole system pretty much is a mess and there are competing economic and security demands. But I fear that Bush no longer has enough political capital to guide a bipartisan solution, and that last week’s speech was more aimed at shoring up his conservative base than leading a serious reform effort.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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14 Comments
We can’t have it both ways. Bush as always turned a blind eye to illegal aliens so there would be a resource of cheap labor in this country, so how can he drone on about homeland security and keeping us safe when the borders are so permeable? We haven’t even come close to keeping out the flow of drugs from South of the border, so how do we keep out the terrorists? “Homeland security” must be a big joke to the people making money off of illegal drugs and cheap labor.
YAHOO NEWS ASKS, “IS BUSH WORST PRESIDENT EVER?”
By Richard ReevesFri Dec 2, 8:13 PM ET
. . . .Buchanan was a confused, indecisive president, who may have made the Civil War inevitable by trying to appease or negotiate with the South. His most recent biographer, Jean Clark, writing for the prestigious American Presidents Series, concluded this year that his actions probably constituted treason. It also did not help that his administration was as corrupt as any in history, and he was widely believed to be homosexual.
Whatever his sexual preferences, his real failures were in refusing to move after South Carolina announced secession from the Union and attacked Fort Sumter, and in supporting both the legality of the pro-slavery constitution of Kansas and the Supreme Court ruling in the Dred Scott class declaring that escaped slaves were not people but property.
He was the guy who in 1861 passed on the mess to the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln. Buchanan set the standard, a tough record to beat. But there are serious people who believe that George W. Bush will prove to do that, be worse than Buchanan. I have talked with three significant historians in the past few months who would not say it in public, but who are saying privately that Bush will be remembered as the worst of the presidents.
There are some numbers. The History News Network at George Mason University has just polled historians informally on the Bush record. Four hundred and fifteen, about a third of those contacted, answered making the project as unofficial as it was interesting. These were the results: 338 said they believed Bush was failing, while 77 said he was succeeding. Fifty said they thought he was the worst president ever. Worse than Buchanan.
This is what those historians said — and it should be noted that some of the criticism about deficit spending and misuse of the military came from self-identified conservatives — about the Bush record:
He has taken the country into an unwinnable war and alienated friend and foe alike in the process;
He is bankrupting the country with a combination of aggressive military spending and reduced taxation of the rich;
He has deliberately and dangerously attacked separation of church and state;
He has repeatedly “misled,” to use a kind word, the American people on affairs domestic and foreign;
He has proved to be incompetent in affairs domestic (New Orleans) and foreign ( Iraq and the battle against al-Qaida);
He has sacrificed American employment (including the toleration of pension and benefit elimination) to increase overall productivity;
He is ignorantly hostile to science and technological progress;
He has tolerated or ignored one of the republic’s oldest problems, corporate cheating in supplying the military in wartime.
Quite an indictment. It is, of course, too early to evaluate a president. That, historically, takes decades, and views change over times as results and impact become more obvious. Besides, many of the historians note that however bad Bush seems, they have indeed since worse men around the White House. Some say Buchanan.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucrr/20051203/cm_ucrr/isgeorgebushtheworstpresidentever
After skipping over Galahad’s predictable book, I am returning to the topic at hand, immigration reform. I doubt Bush can accomplish much here for three reasons..
First, it would be decried as ‘racist’. Before anyone screams about that, consider California’s experience with prop 187, which would have banned all free governmental services to anyone in this country illegally. President Vincente Fox of Mexico labelled it as racist..when it did not single out any race or country, but said ANY illegal.
Second, the economy would never support it. Illegals take the jobs that nobody else wants. Proof in point..southern California has thousands of (usually) white people holding signs, “will work for food”, and yet a few blocks away you see illegals in strawberry fields working. The pickers are always hiring…but lots of people will not do that work.
Third is that Bush couldn’t get anything passed right now if his life depended on it. His approval rating is about as low as Jimmy Carters ever was, and we all know how ineffective he was as president (although he is fabulous as a statesman now).
Serious immigration reform? I doubt it could ever happen..and we will continue to give away this country to people who refuse to learn English.
George W. Bush has joined the ranks of Adolph Hitler and Josef Stalin as a psychopathic killer.
With Fallujah under his belt, he has made his place in history.
The American civil war killed 500,000 good young Americans.
Find the “good” that came of that, as opposed to what could have been negotiated.
” He is bankrupting the country with a combination of aggressive military spending and reduced taxation of the rich;”
If you took every dime that the “rich” made, you couldn’t pay for 10 minutes of government bureaucracies.
Knock-off the communist doctrine.
If the Democratic Party takes seats in the congress, which it absolutely must do to save this nation, it will need to lose its communist tagalongs. They need to be bared from the convention. They’re the reason the Republicans are there.—–
You got that last part right, Ed. To a lot of us, the radical shrill extremist left is as bad as the nut-case far right. The Socialists (or Communists if you wish) aren’t doing the Democrats any good. Issues like gun control and abortion on demand turn off a lot of centerist voters. Much as the far left wing demogogues may dislike it, Democrats don’t have the power or the votes to get elected without a lot of help from the center. Immigration is an issue ripe for the picking if Democrats would just grow some cajones. Let’s face it. A lot of average Americans are fed up with the government proclaiming how we need to protect our borders when basically, all you have to do is walk across. Want to protect us from terrorists? control the damn borders!
Falcone
The best way to stop so-called “terrorism” is to stop pissing people off.
That’s the root cause.
You can go to a bar and have a beer or smart-off about somebody’s mother and “bingo” you’ve got what Bush likes to call a “terrorist.”
Bush is some kind of a jerk!
Or Sharon calls a “tarrrarist”
{ He invented them and can’t even pronounce the word }
Back to the subject a second. I think that the “guest worker” concept by Bush is being offered as a compromise to the competing interests in this problem. The problem with the guest worker idea is that we would have to have some sort of infrastructure in place whereby we knew who was coming into the country and who needed to leave if their time/guest status was up. Two things we clearly do not have now.
I think it might cost less to set up efforts to punish businesses that hire illegals — this would not come with no price tag, however. I doubt that there is much political will to do this by this administration.
It may make the most fiscal sense to tolerate the mess we have at this time. Ultimately, though, this might mean for all practical purposes we will be ceding the Southwest U.S. back to Mexico – where he originally got this territory.
It would be nice if Bush could reason as well as you do, Steven.
You’re making sense, why can’t Bush?
Is this one of those subjects where they just leave it to him, without any supervision?
I can see the ad campaign now -
Texico: un conjunto el otro país!
Yup
Cal Thomas supports Bush?! Whoa! Knock me over with a feather . . .
Considering that Cal Thomas was radical right before Rush Limbaugh and has become Bush’s biggest shill, so what else is new?
He’s the main reason I quit subscribing to The Eagle. Molly Ivins once every other month and Cal Thomas every week?
Not on my dime . . .