Bush: The final betrayal

There's no other way to put it...President George W. Bush has finally performed the final betrayal on the conservatives who elected him.

The president's remarks yesterday, accusing citizens concerned over the proposed illegal alien amnesty legislation of being racist, fear mongering and `not doing right by America' are even more astounding when compared with Bush's even tempered tolerance of the Angry Left, regardless of the most blatant and at times borderline treasonous assaults on the nation's war effort and foreign policy.

Apparently anyone is `not doing right by America' who looks at the this bill and realizes that the enforcement parts of it are non-existent or unworkable, that it guarantees a continuous low paid immigrant underclass and that the security provisions are suspect, particularly in light of this administration's past performance in this matter.

And that category includes longtime conservative voices like Peggy Noonan, Charles Krauthammer, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity,Newt Gingrich, Laura Ingraham, Glenn Beck and a host of others.

Even talkshow host, columnist and author Hugh Hewitt, a long time Bush loyalist has finally hopped off the train with this one.

My own disillusion with this president goes back, perhaps, to the day after 9/11 when he assured the nation that our enemies' creed was peace, that we were in a `war on terror' (as opposed to actually identifying our actual enemies)and that we should all calm down and go shopping while the terrorists were `brought to justice'.

I gave the president a certain amount of leeway then, partly out of innate loyalty and partly because I couldn't imagine any president not taking decisive action when the country was at war. I've always felt actions speak louder than words.

And indeed they did with this president...the empty `axis of evil' rhetoric, the clumsiness, the cronyism, the so-called `Bush Doctrine the president ignored because some terrorists were more palatable than others, the out of control spending, the pass given to our `eternal friends' the Saudis to foment jihad in this country, the farcical Dubai Ports deal the president tried to ram through for his pals in the UAE and the gross mismanagement of the War on Jihad.

And of course, the open borders, the ultimate hypocrisy when we're spending billions overseas to ensure America's security.

President Bush has amply demonstrated that he could care less what any of us think, or for that matter, about what happens to his own party after he's safely out of office.

The Republican National Committee fired its 65 telephone solicitors last week without giving them the slightest notice. Allegedly, this was because of an antiquated phone system, as if the RNC couldn't afford to simply buy and install a new one.

The reality is that contributions are wa-ay down, with the RNC admitting to a 40% drop over last year. I'd say it's even money that the shortfall is even higher, and what with the president accusing the very people that have supported him through thick and thin of `not doing right by America' and having Bush flack Linda Chavez and others playing the race card, the RNC won't be getting much in the way of donations from ordinary citizens.

Not that this bothers the current occupant of the White House in the least. After all, he won't be running for anything.

Peggy Noonan has the right of it: `.....conservatives and Republicans are going to have to win back their party. They are going to have to break from those who have already broken from them. This will require courage, serious thinking and an ability to do what psychologists used to call letting go. This will be painful, but it's time. It's more than time.'

And as far as I'm concerned, that includes the prospective Republican candidates for president in 2008. Sarkozy won the presidency in France by running against Chirac's record and promising a change, even though he was part of Chirac's party. Anyone running for president as a Republican here will have to do the same, if they expect to win...mark my words on that.

As for President Bush, I have a feeling that he's going to find out the hard way that loyalty to principle and to the people that put him in office isn't an abstract concept.

Henry Waxman, Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and John Conyers, head of the House Judiciary committee are in the middle of a plethora of frenzied investigations of the Bush Administration in a number of areas that are likely to bear some fruit. Don't be at all surprised if articles of impeachment are drawn up.

And as the president's poll numbers plummet into the mid 20's, don't be surprised if some of the congressmen he's throwing under the bus now are less than energetic in defending him later.

Res ipsa loqiter.