Immigration became an issue because of voters who feared for their safety, not because of Trump. George Bush admin. mocked and scorned citizens rightly concerned about dangers of a porous border and lax immigration standards. The Bush Republican Party separated itself from Republican voters. Half the country's electorate was cast off as if it were nothing-June 1, 2007, Peggy Noonan, Wall St. Journal opinion, "Too bad"

"Why would they speak so insultingly, with such hostility, of opponents who are concerned citizens?"
 
June 2, 2007, "Too Bad," Wall St. Journal, Peggy Noonan, opinion 

"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.... 

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. 

President Bush has torn asunder the conservative coalition. 

For almost three years [since 2004], 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.... 

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.... 

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."

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Tom Blumer 6/1/2007 comment on Peggy Noonan article: I can’t help but wonder if this is one of Noonan’s final columns in the Wall Street “There Shall Be Open Borders” Journal.

Speaking of which, I obtained from the ProQuest library database the original July 3, 1984 Wall Street Journal “There Shall Be Open Borders” editorial, and have stored it at my web host for fair use and discussion purposes only. It’s also reproduced below the fold if you’re on the home page.

How inspiring and idealistic it seemed at the time. How naive, simplistic, and dangerous it is and, in retrospect, has always been. Also note how history has proven the Journal oh-so-wrong about Europe’s ultimate failure to control its invading horde.

For 23 years now [as of June 2007], the Journal has refused to recognize the dangers of first a few million, then over 10 million, now 12-20 million, and if they get their way (who knows?) perhaps 40 million more illegal people in our midst — many if not most of whom are, at best, NOT interested in assimilation, and some of whom are, and will continue to be, working day and night on our destruction.

The editorialists at the Journal have, as far as I can recall, never budged an inch from [their July 3, 1984] “There Shall Be Open Borders.” It’s clear that no amount of reality will cause them to get a grip."



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