Cue the death march….

Peggy Noonan:

“For almost three years, arguably longer, conservative Bush supporters have felt like sufferers of battered wife syndrome. You don’t like endless gushing spending, the kind that assumes a high and unstoppable affluence will always exist, and the tax receipts will always flow in? Too bad! You don’t like expanding governmental authority and power? Too bad. You think the war was wrong or is wrong? Too bad.

But on immigration it has changed from “Too bad” to “You’re bad.”

The president has taken to suggesting that opponents of his immigration bill are unpatriotic–they “don’t want to do what’s right for America.” His ally Sen. Lindsey Graham has said, “We’re gonna tell the bigots to shut up.” On Fox last weekend he vowed to “push back.” Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff suggested opponents would prefer illegal immigrants be killed; Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said those who oppose the bill want “mass deportation.” Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson said those who oppose the bill are “anti-immigrant” and suggested they suffer from “rage” and “national chauvinism.”

Why would they speak so insultingly, with such hostility, of opponents who are concerned citizens? And often, though not exclusively, concerned conservatives? It is odd, but it is of a piece with, or a variation on, the “Too bad” governing style. And it is one that has, day by day for at least the past three years, been tearing apart the conservative movement.

I suspect the White House and its allies have turned to name calling because they’re defensive, and they’re defensive because they know they have produced a big and indecipherable mess of a bill–one that is literally bigger than the Bible, though as someone noted last week, at least we actually had a few years to read the Bible. The White House and its supporters seem to be marshalling not facts but only sentiments, and self-aggrandizing ones at that. They make a call to emotions–this is, always and on every issue, the administration’s default position–but not, I think, to seriously influence the debate.”

Haven’t felt this bad since Star Trek (the original) went off the air.

Those who know my writing on this at Macsmind know that at first I was for the “let’s debate the thing” crowd, but quite frankly I’m really starting to get the case of the ass at Bush.

After actually reading a great portion of the bill I’m moving more for the “can it” idea. This bill is bad folks. To use the over-used cliche, “It’s bad for America”.

For the better part of six years we - bloggers/pundits - and workers for the GOP have slugged it out with the left over their attacks on the President. This even though the White House offered nary a defense of it’s own, leaving us feeling as though we were left out to dry many times.

But no more George - I’m filing for a divorce along with the majority of the GOP. On the war on terror I will still stand with the ideas you foster, but with a bit of suspicion that I never had before.

Could it be that we have been had? Could it be that GW Bush is simply just a bad example of his father - who was ulimately a RINO coverted to pure conservatism in 1980 to ride into history with Ronald Reagan?

Perhaps. But I’ve got this real sick feeling in my stomach and it’s something Pepto can’t help.