That’s what I took a stab at last night.  And rest assured, it is everywhere on the right side of the aisle.  Conservative pundits, bloggers, emailers - the “prairie fire” this (not first, but second) attempt at border erasure has ignited isn’t some small, isolated blaze, but a horizon-to-horizon conflagration.

Having said that, there is a part of me that wants to ask why everybody appears to be surprised at the course the White House has taken.  Maybe a lot of us have forgotten, but George W. Bush was never coy about what he believed in.  We knew back in 2000 that he wasn’t a “movement” (i.e. ideological) conservative.  He certainly wasn’t an admirer of the government-shrinking philosophy that inspired Newt and his “revolutionaries.”  He knew well enough to learn from his father’s biggest mistake and push tax cuts rather than leave any doubt that he might raise taxes.  But apart from taxes and judges, he was a big government guy.  No Child Left Behind, the prescription drug entitlement, profligate spending - and, yes, open borders - he set it all out there in the 2000 campaign.  He was a “different kind of conservative”; he was a “compassionate conservative”; he was Clinton with a zipped fly.  And we bought into him anyway because after eight years of Mr. Bill we (does this sound familiar?) wanted to win.  The post-election Florida uprising only reinforced that pragmatic loyalty until we couldn’t distinguish between that sort and the genuine article.  9/11 cast it in cement.

That’s why the President’s war against his only remaining base of support this week seems so jarring.  When you take a sledghammer to a cinder block, it shatters abruptly and violently.  But we willingly stuck our feet in those “overshoes,” and this is, what, the fourth time (Harriet Miers, Dubai Ports World, last year’s immigration bill) he’s declared war on us and still we’ve stuck with him, so how much can we reasonably complain?

Mark Levin captured this estranged bewilderment yesterday:

You expanded the federal role in education, and we held our nose because of the war. You signed McCain-Feingold in the dead of night, and we held our nose because of the war. You expanded Medicare by adding prescription drugs, and we held our nose because of the war. You increased farm subsidies, and we held our nose because of the war.

Today you disparage us for opposing a massive amnesty program that endangers our economy and national security. Today you even embrace the religion of global warming, a stunning shift from prior policy (your Administration even went to the Supreme Court and argued correctly that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant).

What’s a conservative to do?

I think we already have our answer.

As for my take?:

What do I think of George W. Bush? Does it matter? I don’t have to leave the Republican Party when it’s already fragmenting all around me.

And to think that this is the same President whom National Review once referred to worshipfully as “the Conqueror,” and the same party that ruled Congress for a dozen years.

A riven party and a demographically doomed country. Let’s see Bill Clinton top THAT legacy.

UPDATE: Brother Meringoff concurs, and Ed adds the need for a positive conservative agenda for 2008 as the best reaction to the Bush years.

That would, of course, argue for Fred Thompson or Mitt Romney, not Giuliani or McCain.  Something the polls will have to catch up with if we don’t want to end up in the very same pickle a few years from now (if we’re lucky).