And now, we await the returns from The Base

Michelle Malkin thinks (or thought) preemptively that the President's six thousand man increase in border control personnel (National Guard, in a support capacity, now; permanent new INS personnel by the end of 2008), combined with a major tech upgrade in border patroling and a carefully regulated guest worker program, is "too little, too late."

I'm going to watch the conservative blogosphere's reaction to that speech with great interest. Preliminary indications from The Hill are that- not unexpectedly- the Right as a whole is dissatisfied. Some even argue- illogically- that the guest worker program the President proposed would be a form of amnesty. No permanent right to stay would be conferred by that program; this argument is not only hysterical, but disingenuous.

Having said that, I would have been much tougher than the President was. I would have done what the original House bill was going to do, and affixed stiff criminal penalties to being here illegally. Simple deportation only results in the same people trying to sneak across the border again and again, night after night, until they finally succeed in getting lost in the American population. But I also have an eye not only on what would be emotionally satisfying for America to do about immigration, but also would be is politically and humanly practical.

We are not going to stop people from coming over the border even if we build a wall across it. Whatever else we do, the President is right: we have to find a way to take away the motivation for people to sneak across by providing a way for them to come legally, in a way we can monitor and control. Even if the President's proposals for securing the border are inadequate and stop-gap, the guest worker program, at least, offers those who be immigrants an incentive to play by the rules in doing so. Stronger disincentives for not playing by the rules will need, I fear, to be a part of the mix before our southern border will be truly secure. But at least the President's speech is a start. His proposal may not be much, but it's more than any other president has done about illegal immigration in my lifetime.

But I fear that instead of constructive suggestions as to what the President should have said from those who are dissatisfied with the President's speech, or suggestions about what else we should do, we're basically going to mostly more aimless griping, combined with crazy talk about his program being some sort of trojan horse for amnesty, and assorted such nonsense.

The President's solution isn't ideal. It isn't even adequate. As I said, I would have been a lot tougher. I am under no illusions that increasing the number of border guards or modernizing the technology used in patroling the border will secure it, guest worker program or no guest worker program. Although I'd hate to have it come to that as much as the President would, it may well be that we will eventually be forced to throw diplomacy to the winds, and stop treating Mexico as a friend. That border must be secured- even if it means militarizing it.

The how is something we need a national debate over. Ok, I agree: the debate has been simmering on the back burner of our national consciousness for a long time. But now it's on the front burner- and the time has come for all of us- regardless of perspective, party, or agenda- to join in thrashing out a permanent solution which will be neither ineffectual nor draconian.

To my fellow conservatives, I'll say this clearly: the time for us to fight out our differences on immigration is the 2008 presidential campaign. Those of us to the right of center need to hash out our differences not only on immigration, but also on the deficit, on the role of government, on foreign policy, and on all the other such divisive issues in the 2008 primaries and caucuses. They are only two years away; the campaign for the 2008 nomination is already underway, and conservatives dissatisfied with the President's stand specifically on immigration should reflect that Tom Tancredo would love to have their support. Other candidates will doubtless be addressing those other issues.

But I'll renew my appeal to common sense: to blow the Bush coalition apart prematurely might make it very difficult indeed to reassemble in back of a candidate whose policies the hard Right likes better. For conservatives to jump ship now would be to sacrifice any possibility of accomplishing anything at all in the last two years of the Bush Administration, all out of a vindictive fit of childish pique. And it would also to raise the question of why the rest of us in the Republican Party should ever trust Movement Conservatives again. In addition, it would raise a wall of resentful resistance to a Tancredo candidacy (or that of any other candidate Movement Conservatives might be inclined to support) from the rest of the coalition which has won the last two presidential elections which would doom it in November even if it takes off in the primaries and caucuses- where the very people who are talking about deserting the Republican Party will, if they stay instead, be in de facto control.

Outside of that coalition, of course, the cause of the Right is doomed to irrelevancy.

Make no mistake: the Republican Party will endure. The Center Right has a strong claim on the nation's ideological conscience; the Far Right has none. It is a far smaller and more marginal movement than it fancies itself, and however influencial it may be in the primaries and caucuses, by itself is will never be able to make even a credible showing in a national election. In coalition with others, however, it can make all the difference.

Which will it choose?

The question is whether the Far Right can deal with working in coalition to accomplish some of its goals, or whether it will choose to go its own way and accomplish none of them.

If it turns out that the ideologically purist Right decides to sabotage the last two years of the Bush Administration, it will be a perfect illustration of the petty silliness of the ideological Right, which has always kept it from exercising any real influence in American politics- and at least until it grows up, always will.

I don't expect the Base to be happy about the President's speech. But perhaps it will surprise me, and at be a tad constructive in its criticism.

For all our sakes, I hope so.

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