WSJ wants 'Blood and Soil' wing of America to get lost. Long before G. Bush's 2007 amnesty push he made clear concerned Americans were bad people. Bush #1 did the same in his time-Peggy Noonan

.
7/3/13, "WSJ Attacks 'Blood-and-Soil' Republicans over Opposition to Immigration Bill," Joel B. Pollak, Breitbart

"The Wall Street Journal editorial page has attacked opposition to the immigration bill that passed in the Senate last week, urging the Republican-led House to "improve" the bill, "not kill it." The bill's border security provisions, the Journal argued, were not weak, as conservatives had charged, but were "wretched excess," the result of "the Republican party letting its blood-and-soil wing trump its supposedly free-market principles."

It might seem odd to attack "blood-and-soil" conservatives (a phrase of Nazi provenance, evidently) on the eve of July 4th. But one need not wave the American flag or protest the obviously offensive connotations of the insult to defeat the Journal's arguments for the Senate bill. By arguing that economic growth should drive immigration reform, the Journal actually undermines the "Gang of Eight" legislation it attempts to defend.

The editorial states, up front, that its "preferred" option for immigration reform "would focus entirely on easing the way for more people to come legally." Border security plays no role whatsoever in the Journal's considerations. That is an astonishing position for a newspaper that has taken a strong stance in favor of the war on terror, including, recently, a strident defense of the National Security Agency's surveillance powers.

Furthermore, border security is not just about stopping terrorism. It is also about the rule of law. And the rule of law, in turn, is fundamental to economic growth. The Journal well understands that fact. It co-publishes an annual "Index of Economic Freedom" with the Heritage Foundation, in which "rule of law" is not just one of the criteria, but the first criterion for economic freedom, before limited government and open markets.

The rule of law is what sets the U.S. apart from many of the societies whence immigrants come. The stifling welfare socialism of Europe; the maddening corruption of the developing world; the brutal repression of the world's lingering tyrannies--all drive ambitious, talented people to our shores in the hope that the rule of law that Americans enjoy will allow them to enjoy the rewards of their hard work. If not, they will go elsewhere.

The fundamental problem with the Senate immigration bill--indeed, with any immigration bill--is that there is no longer any reason to trust the Obama administration to enforce even the mildest of border security provisions. The president has not only refused to enforce the nation's immigration laws, but has brought legal action against Arizona for trying to do so, and ignored Congress in imposing a "Dream Act" by executive fiat.

If any immigration bill passes, it should focus solely on border security and law enforcement--not just because of the importance of the rule of law to economic growth, but because that is the preference of the American public, given the failure of past rounds of immigration reform. A bill that links a so-called "path to citizenship" to ineffective border security provisions will lack democratic legitimacy, much as Obamacare still does today.

The thornier issues of guest-workers, skilled immigrants, and illegal aliens already in the country should be handled piecemeal--separate from, and subsequent to, border security legislation. That is the "alternative" the Journal demands from opponents of the Senate bill: not deportation, but delay--hardly a fatal flaw, given that the Senate bill itself allows most illegal immigration to continue, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The Journal is right to criticize the Senate bill's law enforcement provisions: many of them are mere sound and fury, signifying nothing, mistaking expensive inputs for security outcomes. But the greater weakness of the bill is its failure to restore the rule of law, which did not begin with Obama but has accelerated under his administration. That will, in turn, hurt economic growth. The so-called "blood-and-soil" patriots are right." via Mark Levin show

============================

In 1984, the Wall St. Journal advocated a 5 word constitutional amendment: 

July 3, 1984: "In praise of huddled masses," WSJ editorial

"If Washington still wants to “do something” about immigration, we propose a five-word constitutional amendment: There shall be open borders."...(scroll down) via Mark Levin show

=============================

In June 2007, at the time of the George Bush big amnesty push, Peggy Noonan said it was "more than time" for the grassroots to break from the GOP, that 'battered wife syndrome" had ensued since at least 2004. In 2013 the GOP barely exists. Ms. Noonan says her own separation from the Bush admin. began in Jan. 2005:
 
6/2/2007, "Too bad," Wall St. Journal column by Peggy Noonan:

"What political conservatives and on-the-ground Republicans must understand at this point is that they are not breaking with the White House on immigration. They are not resisting, fighting and thereby setting down a historical marker -- "At this point the break became final." That's not what's happening. What conservatives and Republicans must recognize is that the White House has broken with them. What President Bush is doing, and has been doing for some time, is sundering a great political coalition. This is sad, and it holds implications not only for one political party but for the American future.

The White House doesn't need its traditional supporters anymore, because its problems are way beyond being solved by the base. And the people in the administration don't even much like the base. Desperate straits have left them liberated, and they are acting out their disdain. Leading Democrats often think their base is slightly mad but at least their heart is in the right place. This White House thinks its base is stupid and that its heart is in the wrong place.

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. 

They are trying to lay down markers for history. Having lost the support of most of the country, they are looking to another horizon. The story they would like written in the future is this: Faced with the gathering forces of ethnocentric darkness, a hardy and heroic crew stood firm and held high a candle in the wind. It will make a good chapter. Would that it were true!

If they'd really wanted to help, as opposed to braying about their own wonderfulness, they would have created not one big bill but a series of smaller bills, each of which would do one big clear thing, the first being to close the border. Once that was done -- actually and believably done -- the country could relax in the knowledge that the situation was finally not day by day getting worse. They could feel some confidence. And in that confidence real progress could begin.

The beginning of my own sense of separation from the Bush administration came in January 2005, when the president declared that it is now the policy of the United States to eradicate tyranny in the world, and that the survival of American liberty is dependent on the liberty of every other nation. This was at once so utopian and so aggressive that it shocked me. For others the beginning of distance might have been Katrina and the incompetence it revealed, or the depth of the mishandling and misjudgments of Iraq.

What I came in time to believe is that the great shortcoming of this White House, the great thing it is missing, is simple wisdom. Just wisdom -- a sense that they did not invent history, that this moment is not all there is, that man has lived a long time and there are things that are true of him, that maturity is not the same thing as cowardice, that personal loyalty is not a good enough reason to put anyone in charge of anything, that the way it works in politics is a friend becomes a loyalist becomes a hack, and actually at this point in history we don't need hacks.

One of the things I have come to think the past few years is that the Bushes, father and son, though different in many ways, are great wasters of political inheritance. 

They throw it away as if they'd earned it and could do with it what they liked. Bush senior inherited a vibrant country and a party at peace with itself. He won the leadership of a party that had finally, at great cost, by 1980, fought itself through to unity and come together on shared principles. Mr. Bush won in 1988 by saying he would govern as Reagan had. Yet he did not understand he'd been elected to Reagan's third term. He thought he'd been elected because they liked him. And so he raised taxes, sundered a hard-won coalition, and found himself shocked to lose the presidency, and for eight long and consequential years. He had many virtues, but he wasted his inheritance.

Bush the younger came forward, presented himself as a conservative, garnered all the frustrated hopes of his party, turned them into victory, and not nine months later was handed a historical trauma that left his country rallied around him, lifting him, and his party bonded to him. He was disciplined and often daring, but in time he sundered the party that rallied to him, and broke his coalition into pieces. He threw away his inheritance. I do not understand such squandering.

Now conservatives and Republicans are going to have to win back their party. They are going to have to break from those who have already broken from them. This will require courage, serious thinking and an ability to do what psychologists used to call letting go. This will be painful, but it's time. It's more than time." via bizzyblog




.