Can We Erect A Fence That Will Protect Us From The Far-Right Too?

Like the President, the Senate attempts to work out some middle ground to appeal to all sides on the immigration issue (I'm sorry, I mean CRISIS!!!), but will likely also make both sides more angry. In President Bush's post-9/11 'with us or against us' political climate, introducing the concept of 'compromise' to his dutiful supporters seems to be evoking a similar reaction to when cavemen first encountered fire- fear and confusion.

AP: Senate OKs Border Fence, Backs Citizenship

The Senate endorsed a chance at citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants Wednesday but also voted to build 370 miles of triple-layered fencing along the Mexican border in increasingly emotional debate over election-year immigration legislation...

Sounds like a fair compromise; we all understand that it's important to have secure borders.

Say, what's our plan for securing the Canadian border... I... Hello? Hello?

I'm sorry, I forgot that border security is an afterthought to many on the right who are simply glad to have found a new scapegoat to distract the base from the GOP's miserable political failures in a volatible election year. Ohhh they're still going to work on that gay marriage ban and complain that Democrats will surrender to Al Qaeda, but they're having so much fun on the Mexican issue that those can wait until June or July. Railing against gay marriage will be much funner for them to do during Gay Pride Week anyway.

In my previous entry about the politics of these immigration debate (if it's even civilized enough to be called a debate), I posted some comments to Glenn Greenwald's blog which reiterated my belief that all this out-of-nowhere conservative anger at the President and his immigration policies is a thinly veiled election year stunt allowing them to throw him under the bus without admitting he (and they) have been wrong on most of the issues, particularly the war. As one commenter noted, "I'm beginning to think the whole immigration thing was ginned up to give the base an excuse to desert Bush while pretending it has nothing to do with losing the war in Iraq, corruption, incompetence, and the utter failure of conservative theory to transplant in the real world." It appears many more people are figuring this same thing out... here are some of the better worded examples I've found.

Andrew Sullivan receives a very perceptive email-

"This may or may not be an obvious point, but don't you find the right-wing hyperventilation about such a dated issue as immigration a bit too contrived and convenient? Put another way, many of us have suspected a day would come I which even the most adamant Bush loyalists/apologists would have to acknowledge that his entire presidency, aside from being a manifest case study in incompetence, was also a repudiation of nearly all things that Republicans once held dear.

That said, for several years running, I’ve often wondered how exactly this would happen. Riddle me this, riddle me that: as polls have revealed that their audiences had become hip to this President’s considerable shortcomings, under what pretense could Hugh Hewitt, the boys at Powerline, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and company (to say nothing of Republican congressmen running for reelection) possibly turn their back on this President without completely invalidating nearly every word they’d spoken or written in the previous 6 years blindly defending him?

The answer, it turns out, has been to use the age-old debate about immigration to set the President up and then, as he rejects the ridiculous proposal of erecting walls around the nation and conducting mass deportations, use the occasion to throw him under the bus. In fact, were I more cynical, I would think it a near ideally orchestrated political strategy which would provide cover for the Republican machine to distance itself from a President who must know his fortunes are irreversibly sunk at this point anyway."

Digby looks at it as a result of the President inflaming nativism and militantism after 9/11

Isn't the "war" as constructed by the Bush administration over? World War IV seems to have shriveled overnight into a smallbore police action without a bang a whimper or even a muttered grunt. We've just spent the last four and a half years in a frenzy of nationalistic passion, going so far as to burn The Dixie Chicks in effigy and change the name of french fries in the congressional cafeteria (a direct homage to the World War I era change of the word saurkraut to "liberty cabbage.") Now it looks like we are settling down into an acceptance of the fact that we need to do everything we can to stop terrorist attacks, but if one happens the country will survive and life will go on. We have, after all, just proved that.

So where are the fevered 101st keyboarders and their yellow elephant buddies going to put all that frustrated, video game-fueled testosterone and hatred for "the enemy?" They're going to put it where it's easiest, where they can enjoy it and where they don't have to put their own miserable lives on the line: against illegal immigrants, including women and children.

Finally, John at AmericaBlog makes the comparison to the gay bashing in 2004.

This isn't to say that immigration isn't an important issue that needs to be addressed politically. Or that we should have an open border policy. Or that we shouldn't enforce our immigration and labor laws. Almost no one is arguing that.

It says that the issue itself comes second to partisan Republicans who will do anything to retain their endangered power.

[PS- For proof of that, see Michelle Malkin in action, hilariously outrageous as always.]

[PPS- Some familiar faces- Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman - will help build a virtual fence. What, no Halliburton?]