WASHINGTON - President Bush generally favors plans to give millions of illegal immigrants a chance at U.S. citizenship without leaving the country, but does not want to be more publicly supportive because of opposition among conservative House Republicans, according to senators who attended a recent White House meeting.
Several officials familiar with the meeting also said Democrats protested radio commercials that blamed them for Republican-written legislation that passed the House and would make illegal immigrants vulnerable to felony charges.
Bush said he was unfamiliar with the ads, which were financed by the
Republican National Committee, according to officials familiar with the discussions.
At another point, Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada and other members of his party pressed the president about their concern that any Senate-passed bill would be made unpalatable in final talks with the House.
Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the second-ranking Democrat, said the lawmaker who would lead House negotiators,
House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, had been "intractable" in negotiations on other high-profile bills in the past. Bush did not directly respond to the remark, officials said.
The Republican and Democratic officials who described the conversation did so Wednesday on condition of anonymity, saying they had not been authorized to disclose details.
This story doesn't make sense. If President Bush is in favor of granting citizenship to illegal immigrants, then why didn't he do more to support a strong bi-partisan bill that would allow such citizenship, rather than hide in the White House? Why didn't he do more for this immigration issue, which would provide him with a major legislative accomplishment that he could use for the midterm elections? Or even better yet, improve his standing in the public opinion polls?
The only reason I can think of as to why President Bush would be so coy about immigration would be to not anger his neoconservative and Religious Right Wing-nut constituents. These are the folks who are supportive of The Minuteman Project--White Anglo Saxon Protestant Republican voters. They are President Bush's base support. To push for an immigration bill that would allow citizenship to long-term illegal immigrants would not just alienate these WASP Republicans, but it could cause an all-out civil war within the Republican Party between the neoconservatives and what is left of the moderates, who could favor some type of bipartisan bill. So President Bush is trying to straddle both sides of the issue. Bush will claim that he supports whatever bipartisan bill that is negotiated through Congress, but will not use White House pressure to force Congress in passing such legislation. If such an immigration bill is passed by Congress, then Bush signs it and claims a White House victory in reforming immigration before the midterm elections. And if Congress fails to pass an immigration bill, then Bush can blame the evil Democrats for not compromising on such an immigration bill--even though it is the Republicans in Congress who would be stalling such a bill. And the neocons would not be able to blame President Bush on immigration reform, since such a bill was never passed by Congress.
In other words, President Bush's position on the immigration bill was nothing more than political spin.
But now we've got this private story coming out saying that Bush was all for citizenship for long-term illegal immigrants. Again, I would say that this more political spin, only it is spin in a different direction. President Bush is claiming he favors citizenship for long-term illegal immigrants, but didn't want to become more publicly supportive of such measures due to "opposition from House conservatives." President Bush is starting to realize that without a legislative victory that the White House can tout during the midterm elections, not only will Bush's public opinion polls continue to drop, but also there could be a change in control of Congress from the Republicans to the Democrats. So far, the Republican campaign strategy has been to push voting for Republicans, for the Republicans are claiming that if the Democrats gain control of Congress, they will impeach the wartime president Bush. The last thing the Bush White House would want is Democratic investigations into the multitude of scandals--with subpoena powers. So this story becomes a subliminal message to the Congressional Republicans--give the White House an immigration bill that the president can sign, and tout a legislative accomplishment before the midterm elections, or face dire consequences by angry Americans at the voting booths.
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