Bush redefining “The American Dream” for a group of conservative Irvine businessmen and women
Irvine, CA (APE) – President Bush on Monday spoke to a largely conservative Republican group of 450 members of the Orange County business Council and in a “lemonade out of lemons” fashion seemed to back away from the hard stances on immigration put forth by some in his own party and link immigration to “The American Dream”. He urged Congress to pass a comprehensive immigration bill that would put illegal immigrants “in the back of the bus” as they worked through a daunting process to become a citizen of the United States.
Bush, insisting that illegal immigrants deserve the right to “sit at the back of the bus”
Bush stated that many illegal immigrants simply came across the border to “put food on their families”, one of the major tenets of today’s “American Dream”. In so doing, many had been victimized and even killed by smugglers. Bush argued that the compassionate thing to do would be to “incorporate this smuggling industry and turn it into a rational policy.”
“We cannot lose sight of the fact that we’re talking about decent, cheap working human beings,” he said. “A massive deportation is unrealistic. We haven’t got the manpower to secure the borders enough to stop them coming in, so how would we ever be able to do the process in reverse?”
Bush, pledging to fight for the “American Dream” of victory in Iraq
The crowd applauded when Bush further advocated stiffening the requirements for citizenship, stating that “a person should never be granted automatic citizenship” and that all citizens ought to be required to undergo frequent retesting and recertification, or “go to the back of the bus” if they’re not willing to serve their country in the war on terror. “We’re a nation at war, a welcoming nation, a nation that honors people’s traditions, no matter where they are from, so long as they are willing to fight for them.”
Bush initially attempted to briefly touch on the Iraq war. He seemed to reverse an earlier position this year in which he held that it would be a future American president that would be considering the final withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, stating, “I believe that were going to win a victory in Iraq, no matter how many buses Bin Laden and his lieutenants blow up.”
I don’t mean to go all paranoid and Chicken Little alarmist, but after a couple of years worth of Rove watching, I get the feeling that this “American Dream” thing is the basket that Herr Karl is going to try to have the Republicans put all of their eggs into. The window of opportunity is closing pretty quickly, but I don’t think that it’s too late for Democrats to make a concerted effort to push back and widen the frame that Rove and “The Three Marketeers” Ethos, Poorthos, and Demonos will be increasingly trying to foist off on the American public.
Admittedly, this is slightly tinfoil hat-ish, but this weekend, in my little corner of the world, I saw no less than three or four references and articles about “The American Dream” put forth “independently” in three or four different “independent” mainstream media outlets. One specifically was a front-page story in the Parade Sunday morning insert, which I have long felt is nothing more than a Republican propaganda outlet.
This predated Bush’s speech in Irvine, California yesterday, and seemed to provide fertile ground for his sowing of the seeds of: “The Republicans, defenders of oppressed peoples and defenders of the American dream”.
In my humble opinion over the next few weeks and months leading up to the election, unless they’re called on it aggressively, they will continue to weave into this nebulous and tattered and worn tapestry of “The American Dream” all of their dirty and rotten little threads of graft, corruption, death, and destruction and make it into something akin to a flag that should be fought for. Democrats will be subtly and efficiently marginalized as the party that is against “The American Dream”.
It’s not too late.
Dood
