The House GOP has stalled Bush's immigration plan. According to the
NYT, the house GOP is fleeing another of Mr. Bush's "signature" plans for domestic policy.
For the White House, the Congressional picnic last week seemed like the perfect setting to mend strained relations with Republican allies on Capitol Hill: President Bush and his advisers eating taquitos and Mexican confetti rice on the lawn of the White House with Republican Congressional leaders.
But moments before Mr. Bush was to welcome his guests, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert told the president that House Republicans were effectively sidelining -- and in the view of some Congressional aides probably killing -- what had become Mr. Bush's signature domestic initiative of the year: an overhaul of the nation's immigration laws.
Sounds a bit like reforming social security, eh? So what does the NYT think?
That disappointing news for Mr. Bush signaled the apparent collapse of a carefully orchestrated White House strategy to push a compromise immigration bill through Congress this summer -- and in the process invigorate Mr. Bush's second term with a badly needed domestic victory.
The decision by the House leadership to defy the president after he had put so much prestige on the line -- including a rare prime-time Oval Office speech for a domestic initiative -- amounted to a clear rebuke of the president on an issue that he has long held dear.
So Mr. Bush wants a compromise on immigration? For what reason? So Jeb can run and take the Hispanic vote?
Aides say it is still possible to reach a compromise after the November elections, if not before. "We believe by being patient and sticking with it, in time people are going to be pretty happy with what the president proposes," said Tony Snow, the White House spokesman.
But several analysts were skeptical, noting that in just the past week a Republican candidate for governor in Arizona called for building prison camps for illegal immigrants.
The problem for me is I really don't know whether to cheer or cry. How can this republican government talk about amnesty to insurgents in Iraq (in a plan to cut and leave quietly while declaring victory - which, of course, is far different from cut and run) and find millions of hard working, non-threatening workers on US soil some threat to the sanctity of the laws of our nation? You can kill US soldiers in Iraq but you can't pick lettuce in California?
Am I nuts or are they?