People and Politics by Patrick Roberts

Karl Rove says George Bush missed chance for immigration reform

Posted on Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 03:09 PM

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Karl Rove now says he is sorry that immigration reform was not President Bush's top priority at the beginning of his second term rather than social security reform.

Speaking to The New York Times Rove said
" As I said in the book, (Courage and Consequences) I wish we had led the second term with immigration reform.

If we had led with immigration reform at the beginning of the second term we could have had bipartisan cooperation with a Republican majority in the House and the Senate and done something important for the country that was tilted more toward what the Republicans wanted but couldn’t have passed without Democratic votes instead of Social Security which Democrats wouldn’t participate in until they had a taste of victory.

Immigration reform would have given everybody a bipartisan victory and would have cleared the ground for entitlement reform."

Its all a bit late though and when Bush got an immigration bill put together by Senator Ted Kennedy and John McCain he seemed strangely disengaged from it and did little hard lobbying.

Perhaps the Republican right wing backlash warned him off, but there was no certainty that if Bush had embraced immigration reform at the beginning of his second term he would have achieved it

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IrishAndProud | Mar 11, 2010, 10:50 PM EST

(continued) Send the illegals home -- and they can take all that silly espanol of theirs off our store packaging and take it with them, whilst they're at it.

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IrishAndProud | Mar 11, 2010, 10:48 PM EST

MarthaAnne, it is NOT ridiculous to want 12 million-odd illegal aliens to get the hell back out of our country. What is ridiculous is NOT wanting that. And what is even MORE ridiculous is to want to reward their lawbreaking with citizenship -- you think that won't encourage even more waves of them to hop our fences? That's neither decent NOR common-sensical, Martha.

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MarthaAnne | Mar 11, 2010, 12:52 PM EST

Sorry, KansasGirl, I do disagree. It is ridiculous for Americans to wish away the 12 million illegals living in the U.S. What do you expect, that we are going to deport 12 million illegal immigrants? It's not realistic (nor fair, IMO, as many have been here since childhood). No, we need a path to citizenship for these undocumented immigrants. And I am not speaking from a liberal perspective, just common sense and decency.

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KansasGirl | Mar 10, 2010, 04:43 PM EST

Wow, I'm thrilled Bush and the RINO's failed on this reform issue.

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