It's ironic that Democrats despite President Bush so much when Bush has worked so tirelessly to destroy the Republican party.  The Republican party as we know it is dead. It's still moving around, still animated, but as the midterms are likely to show, the carcas has passed on.

To be fair, it has taken Bush about 6 years to destroy the Republican party and Democrats, who are certainly not the party of rocket scientists (both literally and figuratively) have seemingly been unaware that Bush has been painstakingly gutting the core principles of the Republican party such that as the summer of 2006, few former-Republicans would even consider voting for a Republican let alone Bush.

Where do we start?  Let's start with the spend-a-thon that Bush has been on since 2000.  Republican apologists on TV and in print have made the pithy, if unhelpful, statement of "We're at war, deficit spending is normal in times of war."  Please.

As a % of our GDP, our military spending isn't remotely where it was during the cold war.  The most generous description of our military spending is that Bush halted the decline of the US's military spending as a % of GDP that we saw during the 90s.  I am not arguing that we need massive military spending increases, only that military spending has little to do with why we have deficits now.

The biggest reason we have deficits has to do with the economy slowing down when Bush took office.  That wasn't his fault.  But the wasteful spending in congress -- a Republican congress -- shows that Republicans are no better than Democrats when it comes to spending. 

Here's the thing that many Democrats don't understand about Republicans and it's a very straight forward thing -- most Republicans do not believe that it is the JOB of the federal government to provide a social safety net for its citizens.  It has nothing to do with being "greedy" or "not caring" or "being mean". It's a matter of principle.  I don't expect my cable company to provide me with prescription drug coverage and I don't expect my government to make sure I have health insurance.  When the government does something, the citizenry that benefits from the program, over time, begins to feel entitled to it and it takes away the personal responsibility element that every citizen should have in my opinion.

But thanks to Bush, the Republicans have gotten the federal government into the health care business. Not as bad as it could be but still.  And while he does get points for trying to get the federal government out of the social security business, that ultimately failed.

Besides the unchecked spending, what really opened Republican eyes to the real George W. Bush was him picking his personal lawyer to be on the supreme court.  That choice unraveled the Bush presidency in my opinion.  It permanently took away the benefit of the doubt that many Republicans had given the President.  It set Bush up for what amounts to the most disastrous immigration plan in American history.

Which is what the hot topic is.  Immigration.  Personally, I don't get hot and bothered about illegal immigration.  What I do care about are sudden, significant, demographic changes in my country.  I like my culture. The American culture, and don't kid yourself that there isn't one, travel abroad for a few weeks and you will be left with no doubts that there is an American culture, is worth preserving.  I don't believe in laws forcing people to speak a language, but I am glad that we have a culture that essentially forces people to speak English in order to function (92% of immigrants learn English within 5 years).  Language is what ties a culture together.

Bush's plan would do more to alter the demographics of the United States than any "amnesty" plan in the history of the country.  Besides providing a fast-path to citizenship for 12 million immigrants (an instant 3% population demographic change). It also paves the way for those people to be able to easily bring in their relatives which instantly creates a multiplying effect.  Some estimates say that another 30 million latinos could become part of the population (on top of the 12 million we already have) within 10 years.  You are talking, at that point, a major demographic shift in our country. 

In the early 20th century when Americans were up in arms about immigration due to the Irish, Italians, and others coming in from Europe, you were talking a relatively trivial % difference in the overall demographics of the United States.  What also makes this different is that these immigrants would be coming from a country that they could easily return to "to visit" which slows cultural assimilation.  Moreover, unlike immigrants of the past, latino immigrants are much less interested in assimilating to begin with.  Spend some time in southern Texas or Arizona or southern California and there is not only a vocal (and sizeable) minority of Mexican immigrants who have no interest in becoming part of the American culture, they see those border states as belonging to Mexico and would love nothing else than to use their political power to cede those states back to Mexico in all but name.  I was at a T-shirt store picking up vacation shirts and there was an entire rack of T-shirts with slogans (mostly in Spanish but I could read what they said) that said things like "This land belongs to Mexico".  The attitude is obviously popular enough that someone selling T-shirts sees a demand to sell such shirts.

So what should Bush's plan been if he had...you know, principles?

Let me put forth this:

1. Create a Guest Worker program that only people who are residing outside the United States can apply for. If you're already illegally residing in the United States, then you should go back to your country of origin and sign up.
2. No mass deportations, just common sense -- if you get caught, either doing something illegal or using services then yes, you'd be deported. We wouldn't go out of our way to deport people, no mass raids of businesses or communities, just a common sense - if you get caught shop lifting or applying for welfare or going to the emergency room (yes, that sounds mean and I would support someone going to the emergency room getting full treatment first but they're not supposed to be here -- ask Mexico what THEY do with illegal aliens).
3. If you do get caught here, it would make it harder to get a guest worker program permit and make it much harder to become a future citizen.
4. Significantly tougher border security. Each state's governor would be able to call in up to 3,000 national guardsman. Not for enforcement but to free the border patrol to do more enforcement. The guard would handle logistics and monitoring (similar to what has been proposed but each state would be able to call in different numbers).
5. Funding to build several massive border detention centers to hold captures illegal aliens for up to 90 days before deporting them back to Mexico.

I'd also support a public pounding of any fool that feels the need to say "We are a nation of immigrants".  Yea, and the Germans coming into Poland in 1939 were merely immigrants too.  Immigration is one thing, invasion is another. Every culture has a threshold of when immigration becomes disruptive to a society.  A nation of 300 million people (of which approximately 15 million are already unassimilated latinos according to some of the stats I've seen) is not in any position to throw on another 40 million unassimilated latinos. It's not about their skin color or whatever nonsense libelous charge that pro-amnesty forces like to use to silence their critics. It's about a society's ability to assimilate masses of people.

And George W. Bush clearly doesn't understand that or doesn't care.  It's the end of a long line of dumbass Republican actions.  And the result is that in the next election, citizens that might have been inclined to vote for Republicans are going to be taking a cold hard look at the voting record.  The politican that thinks "the masses" are stupid and don't pay attention to these things is in for a wakeup call.