That is the problem with the right, they hear that 80% and they think all those people are like them…wrong…the truth is the right has made the same mistake on this issue that the left made on the war. They assume too much.

You got to remember that when tens of millions of Americans hire, or work with or know or live with or deal with illegals every frigging day, they have no credibility on this issue either.

Right now in the Gulf there are tens of thousands of illegals working to clean up and rebuild after Katrina. The conservatives can blow off all they want about this issue, but even those who are far right are not about to demand the government go in there and round up all those people and ship them out, because they need them.

So spare me the hypocritical grandstanding. The right had years and lots of opportunities to deal with this like grown ups and they did not do that. So all this ranting and raving seems a tad contrived today.

Your quotes, (1) “Far right conservatives *hated* Reagan because he believed (as I do) that social issues shouldn’t be imposed on the entire country by the government from Washington,” is a gross misstatement. I am a conservative, an admitted amnesty hypochondriac for solidly justifiable reasons and it is ridiculous for you to say that I hated President Regan, our greatest president of recent history.

(2) “The hard right and the hard left want to dictate their beliefs on everyone and people don’t want that kind of crap shoved down their throats.” You have this completely backwards in this particular situation. It was the moderate Republicans and liberal Democrats in Washington DC that came up with this stupid clay pigeon idea that would have allowed them to force this amnesty bill down the throats of the majority.

(3) You said that you agreed with FDR when he said, ‘I have no expectations of making a hit every time I come to bat. What I seek is the highest possible batting average.” I agree with FDR but wasn’t it FDR that tried to rig the Supreme Court to his position by adding an extra judge, an unjustified forcing maneuver somewhat similar to what our current crop of leaders in DC tried to do with the clay pigeon amnesty deal?

You folks gotta remember our government has no credibility on this issue, none and I believe Rasmussen when he said about 80% of the people wanted border security first. The final senate Republican vote was also heavily in we hypochondriacs favor, 35-12, and that’s almost 3-1 for us, both before and after this issue was mistakenly forced back on the table this year. This issue should have been left to be decided in the 08 elections.

People really should read Reagan’s autobiography.

“When I began entering into the give and take of legislative bargaining in Sacramento, a lot of the most radical conservatives who had supported me during the election didn’t like it.

“Compromise” was a dirty word to them and they wouldn’t face the fact that we couldn’t get all of what we wanted today. They wanted all or nothing and they wanted it all at once. If you don’t get it all, some said, don’t take anything.

“I’d learned while negotiating union contracts that you seldom got everything you asked for. And I agreed with FDR, who said in 1933: ‘I have no expectations of making a hit every time I come to bat. What I seek is the highest possible batting average.’

“If you got seventy-five or eighty percent of what you were asking for, I say, you take it and fight for the rest later, and that’s what I told these radical conservatives who never got used to it.

Far right conservatives *hated* Reagan because he believed (as I do) that social issues shouldn’t be imposed on the entire country by the government from Washington. He believed that the various places should be free to have their laws reflect their local culture and people can “vote with their feet’. The hard right and the hard left want to dictate their beliefs on everyone and people don’t want that kind of crap shoved down their throats.

Pathology of the Left and Right has been on bigtime display, imho.

Vicious: Bitter; spiteful; malignant

Again, I say that Malkin et al want to sow seeds of mistrust of ALL

If Speaker Newt had been half as interested in border security as he was in Monica we might have avoided a lot of this. But illegal immigration was not a big deal to them in spite of the fact that millions of aliens were here even then.

Now they are going after their own president, and once again they do not care what the costs is to their party or the next president or the country.

I am saying it is time to walk away from the GOP since they are now a fringe party of no solutions and full of bile and hate for those who disagree with them. The GOP is just not worth the effort anymore.

And a few years in the wilderness will remind them to bring humility and respect to the business of politics and to stop being KoS Kopies, and DU-Right.

I mean, if there is no more common ground with the far right, which is what they claim, there is no use for the GOP? LOL! No compromises? Oh well, enjoy yourselves.

If not for the moderates, there would be no Republican party majority. Republicans were not always isolationist right wingers.

Lincoln was not like that. Theodore Roosevelt was not like that. Ronald Reagan was not like that.

The truth is the conservatives have no loyalty to any party other than their own ideology, they would gladly see the Republicans become a minority party forever and be able to control it than see it win elections and gain majority status. The paleoconservatives use the Republican party and it has been necessary from time to time reign them in because when they take over, the party loses.

And what is more there are a lot of moderates out there who have been Republicans all their lives, and they have raised money for the party and made the phone calls and got the vote out and it is disheartening to see them run out of their own party by a bunch of fanatics.

And the federal government did not abandon anything.

This is a complicated problem that has been around for decades and so far the hardliners have not come up with any kind of solutions at all. Believe it or not, the border patrol people work every day, people are deported every day, people are arrested every day, but until and unless we reform the system there will be no long term solutions.

Fred Thompson, the hero of the right, worked with Diane Feinstein back when he was in the Senate, but that is ok. He also voted to increase the number of foreign worker in the US, but that is ok too.

The GOP lost in 2006, largely because these people went stupid over the issue of illegal immigration, after years of doing nothing about it and then suddenly playing the victim while they ignored the fact that millions of every day Americans helped make this happen. It was not the government that did this all by itself.

The result of hardliners using this issue the way they did, is that Democrats won. That means they control the House and Senate, that means that if someone like Kennedy does not support a piece of legislation, it does not come up for a vote at all. They should have thought about that before they decided to split the party on this issue.

And while I might not like Kennedy, he is an elected representative of the American people and he does have a right to be involved in the process and he does put his name on real legislation.

The pundits and talk radio people just bitch and yammer. They do not have to come up with ideas, they do not have to stand behind any legislation, they do not have to do anything but run their mouths.

The amount of lies and misinformation and propaganda put out there by the hardliners on this issue is staggering.

I think if you gave them the choice between coming up with a compromise and a solution to this and working toward the future, or no solution and continued acrimony with them using the issue to make money and gain influence….they would go for the second choice.

I feel like they are hijacking the party and if someone like Ron Paul actually got the nomination I do not see anyway I could vote for him. You might as well ask me to vote for Huey Long, David Duke or Pat Buchanan.

What are they going to do next? Go after Israel?

If it were not for the Religous Right, and the rest of us Conservatives, there wouldn’t be a Republican Party. You can’t ignore us and/or toss us out and still have a Repbulican Party. Just why is it considered OK to compormose with everyone else but the Party Base? Is it because you think that we have no other place to go? I won’t vote Democrat, but damned if I will vote for a wussy ultra liberal copy of one calling himself a Republican.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/06/AR2007070601975.html

Daleinatlanta – You made comment to AJ’s post of 7/2 titled, GOP Trying To Remove Immigration Stain, in which you leveled serious accusations that I have INSULTED AJ and his readers. On 7/3 I advised you that this was NOT TRUE and called upon you to point out to me, and AJ’s readers, precisely where. Thus far you have not and that post was archived early on 7/5. If you are an honorable man, who I assume you are, you will do so. I re-submit my request here in case you missed the original.

My 7/3 comment to-DaleinAtlanta – You sound like your panties are bunched up a little to tight. Relax; take a look at the very first definition of the word traitor at Dictionary.com and I feel confident you will immediately feel a lot better.
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) – Cite This Source
trai·tor – Show Spelled Pronunciation[trey-ter] Pronunciation Key – Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun
1. a person who betrays another, a cause, or any trust.

I have used the term traitor specifically directed at our President only for pushing Harry Reed to mandate the use of a nonexistent never before used version of the “clay pigeon Senate procedure” which was originally designed and historically used only to assure the traditional Senate amendment process could not be blocked. Instead, our President and our Republican Leadership conspired with Democrat Majority Leader Harry Reed, to the detriment of the majority of the Republican Party and encouraged Senator Reed to completely reverse the traditional use of the clay pigeon procedure and use it instead to totally block the amendment process, other than those the conspirators selected behind closed doors, and then ram this security loophole filled disaster through the senate in 5 days before any of the opposition had time to adequately study the bill.

That, DaleinAtlanta, is a perfect fit to the above definition of a traitor. I suspect you and the others that also have bunched up panties have mistakenly perceived the term was used as a legal/criminal accusation. I did not. I reviewed the dictionary definition before I printed my comments.

Your comment “Except for one idiot, who came on this board the other day, and called President Bush a traitor; I have NEVER seen ANYONE of the regular readers on this board, insult AJ, nor the other readers!”

Dale, I have never insulted AJ, you or anyone else and I have very much respect for AJ and thanked him for his excellent work particularly on the war in Iraq. It is you who is using the idiot label. Please show me where I have insulted AJ or any other reader. You can’t.

The only place I have used the term traitor was in my letter to President Bush which also applied to our Senate Republican Leadership and those Senators participating in and supporting the secret clay pigeon deal that would have reversed hundreds of years of Senate history and set a terrible precedent for the future. The purpose of the letter was to get the president to realize the danger he has brought to our party, country and his legacy. My final plea to the president was, “Please, secure our borders, enforce our existing laws, you have the power, protect our families.”

We “Amnesty Hypochondriac’s” acquired this affliction only because our federal government abandoned its constitutional responsibility to keep our borders secure by selling out to the Illegal Immigration Lobby decades ago and the clay pigeon deal was a disaster, not the answer.

I view this defeat as an excellent opportunity for the Republican Party to retake congress in the 2008 elections. The iron will now remain hot on this issue for a long time and if the Republicans layout a common sense plan to solve this comprehensive problem, one issue at a time, one bill at a time, placing border security, enforcement issues first and any talk of a limited amnesty last they can succeed. They may not succeed in passing very much law but a “Contract with America” similar to Newts idea in 1994 would go far towards educating the public and re-taking congress, as well as the presidency. The question is, will our President and our Republican Leadership take advantage of this opportunity?

Take a brake Dale. Loosen up those panties.

AJ-If you took the subject letter as a personal insult directed at you I certainly apologize because it was not.

This is exactly right in my view — it’s the underlying danger I began to fear just before the 06 mid-term elections. A year or more ago, a couple of likeminded friends and I began to notice that many of the hardliners on immigration were also spouting isolationist, anti-free trade, anti-war rhetoric. Think Pat Buchanan and lately the rising volume of Ron Paul supporters… AKA paleocons. Recall that FoxNews viewers rated Ron Paul the winner in the FoxNews presidential debate. I remember thinking: perrrrrfect, just perfect, when that happened.

The thing I can’t quite figure out is whether the immigration extremists realize who they’ve crawled into bed with… from paleos to neo-nazis to union thugs to the likes of radical pro-abortionists & population control freaks like John Tanton & associates. In other words, is this a case of politics making strange bedfellows, or an indication of wider agreement on some pretty frightening bedrock beliefs?

Either way, A.J. is correct that I want nothing to do with these extreme people. If they suddenly realize what they’ve wrought and correct course, I will shut up, hold my nose, and tolerate them. But trust, respect, or ever take them seriously again? Nada.

Those people you mention do not have to do anything but run their mouths {I heard someone else say that and it stuck}.

Those people are not accountable and that makes it easy to pontificate. They do not have to accomplish anything, make ideas work, make government work, risk their lives or careers. In fact rabble rousing is their career.