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March 26, 2006

FNS Roundtable - March 26

Fox News Sunday

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: When we conduct this debate, it must be done in a civil way. It must be done in a way that brings dignity to the process.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

U.S. SENATOR HILLARY CLINTON (D-NY): And it is certainly not in keeping with my understanding of the scriptures, because this bill would literally criminalize the Good Samaritan and probably even Jesus himself.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: That was President Bush and Senator Hillary Clinton talking about what promises to be an explosive debate this week in the Senate over immigration policy.

And it's panel time now for Paul Gigot of the Wall Street Journal and host of "The Journal Editorial Report" on Fox News Channel, and Fox News contributors Mara Liasson of National Public Radio, Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard, and Juan Williams, also from National Public Radio.

Well, as I said, the Senate takes on immigration this week, which not only divides the party but also causes some internal splits, especially among Republicans.

Bill Kristol, what do you think we should look for this week?

BILL KRISTOL, WEEKLY STANDARD: A lively debate in the Senate for the next two weeks in which Republicans will split. And I think they may end up passing a comprehensive immigration reform, mostly with Democratic votes, but about a third of the Republicans voting for the broad immigration reform which includes border security, but also, in effect, a program of legalization for those who are now here illegally.

WALLACE: Juan?

JUAN WILLIAMS, NPR: I think that's right. I think that the president -- what you heard from the president a moment ago, Chris, was a warning to Republicans, because it's the Republicans that are split. You've got the populist base and a lot of populist anger as represented in the Minutemen and the like. But the business community is solidly with the president, so he's got the business community there.

The real question for the Democrats is how they play the unions. The unions clearly want something like the McCain-Kennedy bill which would allow for permanent residency if people can prove that they have a job and are willing to pay a fine and go through a process.

But to get back to the populist anger, the populist anger is all on the right, and the populist anger is at illegal immigration. We've got 12 million immigrants in this country illegally. That's a huge member.

But most of these people are not single men, kind of vagrants hanging around. They're mostly family people who simply want to, you know, create a better life, take advantage of education and economic opportunities in the country.

The far right, though, is all about building walls, which I think is totally impractical. You know, it cost $70 million to build a little wall in San Diego. They want to build a wall along a 2,000- mile border, but that's where the conversation is on the right.

MARA LIASSON, NPR: Well, I think the big fight is going to become probably between the House and the Senate. What Mrs. Clinton was talking about in that clip you played was in the House bill that criminalizes instead of just making it a civil penalty to be an illegal immigrant, and...

WALLACE: Well, not only that, and also anybody who helps...

LIASSON: And anybody who helps them...

WALLACE: ... like a church or a charity.

LIASSON: ... and that's what she was referring to.

WALLACE: And that's what she was talking...

LIASSON: And that's why you have the Catholic Church in some areas saying we're not going to -- we're going to violate this law if it passes.

So I think that if the Senate does get some kind of comprehensive reform like the president wants, which includes border security and a path to legalization, then it goes to conference with the House, which defied the president on this and passed a bill only dealing with border security and not dealing with the problem of what to do with people who are already in this country illegally.

So then you're going to have a big debate, and there's going to be lots of splits in the Republican Party, and it's going to affect 2008 primary politics. And that's, I think, where you're going to have a big battle.

WALLACE: Paul, let me just -- I mean, we had huge demonstrations. There were about a half a million people in the street in Los Angeles yesterday. There were demonstrations in Phoenix, in Denver. I mean, this is a big issue on the street across the country.

What do you see happening in the Senate first, and then what do you see in terms of the ability to reconcile it with a bill already passed by the House, which is enforcement only?

PAUL GIGOT, WALL STREET JOURNAL: I think the question is whether the Republicans in the Senate can save the House Republicans from their worst instincts. I mean, the House Republicans convinced themselves that being restrictionist in immigration is good politics. I'm not so sure it is.

There's a vocal, I think relatively small portion of the Republican base that wants a wall, the Tom Tancredo from Colorado Republican. They want that kind of wall set up. They want border control.

But there are other factions in the party base, including the business community, as Juan said, but also religious conservatives who are worried about, in their Good Samaritan role, being harassed, and then Hispanics.

I mean, President Bush won New Mexico in 2004 because he increased his share of the Hispanic vote. He had lost it in 2002. Republican share, presidential share of the vote, 21 percent. Bob dole in '96, 35 percent, I think, in 2000, 44 percent in 2004.

If they want to go in the other direction, they can follow the House Republicans.

WALLACE: Bill, let me ask you about the political side of this, because it certainly is going to factor into not only 2006 and the November elections but also into 2008, and you saw an interesting development this past week where Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, said if the Senate Judiciary Committee can't come up with a comprehensive compromise, I'm going to push an enforcement-only bill.

Where does this fit both in this year and two years from now?

KRISTOL: Well, Frist, who hasn't had a terribly successful pre- presidential campaign so far, is staking a lot on this. He wants to be the representative now of the enforcement-only, close-the-border, no-help-for- those-who-are-here-illegally Republicans. And there is a lot of support for that, or appears to be.

You can't go to a Republican gathering, a conservative gathering, and not hear a lot of complaints about illegal immigration, and Frist playing to that base. McCain is strongly identified with a more liberal approach, very much like Bush's, and I think it will be a huge issue in the 2008 Republican primary.

McCain and Giuliani probably will be the only candidates who are willing to take on this sort of apparent populist upsurge of concern.

WALLACE: You're talking about in the Republican Party.

KRISTOL: In the Republican primary -- its apparent populist upsurge of concern about illegal immigration.

I'm a doubter that this is -- but I'm biased on this. And Paul and I are both for the more liberal immigration policy. We're out of touch in some respect, or out of sync with a lot of conservatives and Republicans on the base.

And I personally am doubtful that this is such a good political issue, that restrictionism ever works politically. It hasn't in the past. It hasn't in the -- it didn't in the Virginia gubernatorial race last year when the Republican candidate made a big fuss about you're helping illegal immigrants. It didn't work at all.

But you know, these things don't work until they do work. I think religious conservatives are a key swing constituency on this. You have a certain kind of Perotista, populist conservative who wants to shut the border. You have the business community which wants workers coming in.

The swing constituency in the Republican Party is the religious conservatives. I think they will end up being more generous, let's put it this way, on immigration than restrictionist. And all these liberals who spend all their time denouncing religious conservatives are going to suddenly discover that if you want a generous immigration policy, it's religious conservatives who are going to save it.

WALLACE: Mara?

LIASSON: Yes, I also think that when you talk to key Republicans in states like South Carolina, which is what we're talking about when we talk about 2008 right now, among the base, there are a lot of small business owners, and they need this system rationalized for them. They don't want to be criminalized for hiring illegal workers.

So I actually think that Bill is probably onto something. The illegal immigrant population is surging in places like South Carolina, like Iowa, not just in the south and southwest. So I think that this is going to take a while to play out, but I do think the president was onto something in 2000. This was the way he showed he was a compassionate conservative, and I think in the end he'll...

WALLACE: Let me just ask you all, because we're starting to run out of time, bottom line -- and we'll start with you, Juan -- is Congress -- I mean, because you've got to not only get it through the Senate, then you've got to reconcile it with the House. Is Congress going to pass immigration reform this year and, if so. what will it look like?

WILLIAMS: Well, I think that they will pass some form of immigration reform if you can get out of the Senate tomorrow. This coming week is so critical. The negotiations -- and it has to do with politics. The negotiations, I think, are going to go away from the Frist side.

Frist is trying to endear himself to the far right with this, separate himself from the president. I just don't think that tactic's going to work. I just don't think the support is there because the business community is with the president. And Senator McCain, you know, his competitor for the nomination, is with the president.

So I think it goes away. So if you get this Specter-titled bill that says you can apply for residency and then get the Democrats in support of that, then I think the pressure comes down to the House.

The question in my mind is whether or not a lot of these House Republicans will respond to what is pragmatic as opposed to what is the populist spirit.

WALLACE: All right. I want everybody else to take a much shorter time in answering the question.

WILLIAMS: Sorry.

WALLACE: Bill, is there going to be a bill and, if so, what?

KRISTOL: The conventional wisdom is there can't be a bill. The House will never agree to a broader version of immigration reform that the Senate may well pass. I'm not so sure that there won't be a lot of pressure to pass the bill at the end.

The president would need to show real leadership and take on a lot of his own party...

WALLACE: And it would be comprehensive, in your view.

KRISTOL: I think so.

WALLACE: Mara?

LIASSON: Yes, I think when you've got Ted Kennedy, and John McCain, and the business community, and then Democrats and moderate Republicans, that's a pretty good place to start. But this will be an important test of the president's leadership and clout, which has been diminished.

WALLACE: Paul?

GIGOT: A couple of weeks ago, I would have said it's going to blow up, nothing gets done. But I think there's enough pressure now for Republicans to do something this year that maybe we can get something good out of the Senate and then a bill.

WALLACE: All right, panel. We have to take a break here. But when we come back, the international storm over this man, who was on trial for his life for converting to Christianity. Our panel takes up that issue right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WALLACE: On this day in 1979, Egypt's Anwar Sadat and Israel's Menachem Begin signed a Camp David treaty ending 31 years of war between their nations. President Jimmy Carter brokered the deal during 12 days of talks.

Stay tuned for more panel and our Power Player of the Week.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUSH: It's deeply troubling that a country we helped liberate would hold a person to account because they chose a particular religion over another.

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WALLACE: That was President Bush talking about the Afghan man who faced the death penalty because he converted to Christianity.

And we're back now with Paul, Mara, Bill and Juan. Well, as if the president didn't have enough on his plate, he had to deal this week with the case of Abdul Rahman, the Afghan Christian. And as we've been reporting this morning, it appears that an Afghan court has dismissed the case against him.

Paul Gigot, what do you make of all this?

GIGOT: Well, I think they're very happy at the White House about this. It's a good outcome, if it's true. It's a credit to Hamid Karzai, who would, I assume, have gotten this done. And it's a credit to the outside pressure, I think, that was put on him.

I mean, the State Department's first reaction was what the State Department's first reaction always is, let's not offend any foreign country, let's be mealy-mouths about it. But President Bush found his voice later. John Howard of Australia was very forceful on this.

And I think that you have to -- I mean, when we're engaged in liberating a country like this, and we helped to put the pressure on that government to form and write the constitution -- it's still one of the most liberal constitutions in all of the Muslim world.

So I think we have to speak up, and speak our mind, and speak with authority and build deep belief in our values, and that's what we did.

WALLACE: So was this a pure success?

LIASSON: I don't know if it's a pure success. I think it is really an interesting warning about what problems might come up in Iraq. Assuming they get a government established and sectarian violence under control, and those are a lot of assumptions, they're going to face some of these same problems.

In the constitution it says Sharia law is one of the sources for Iraqi jurisprudence, and you're going to have an independent judiciary, just like you did in Afghanistan, interpreting this law, deciding well, gee, is it a crime to convert to another religion other than Islam, punishable by death.

These questions are going to come up again and again. And the Bush administration is engaged in a very complicated project of trying to create democracies that are also Islamic. And these are the kinds of things that are going to come up. And I think that this was a really interesting example of all the contradictions that you're going to meet along the way.

WALLACE: Bill, I mean, that is the really interesting question, what some people would call the inherent tensions between the president's policy of trying to create democracy, which is, after all, really just a process, and also, on the other hand, the spread of democratic values in countries that don't necessarily embrace them, values like freedom of speech and freedom to exercise religion.

KRISTOL: Right. And Afghanistan is a democracy, and they've actually let this guy off. The only reason this charge came up was there was this bizarre divorce case and custody case, basically, in which the family used this against him. To be fair to the Afghan government, it's not like they're going out trying to find people who have converted to Christianity and trying to prosecute them and execute them.

WALLACE: But when they found him, the Afghan clerics embraced it.

KRISTOL: They did. But let's talk about Saudi Arabia. That's not a democracy. Is there freedom of religion there? Where are the odds for freedom of religion better, in Afghanistan and Iraq, which are moving toward democracy, or in Saudi Arabia, where all the realists -- they love the Saudi regime. It's very stable.

The House of Saud has kept the oil going for 60 years. Is there religious freedom in Saudi Arabia? So I would bet on democracy over propping up dictators.

WILLIAMS: You know, the problem here -- I mean, I think the State Department is happy. I think the White House is happy. The pope is happy. The pope had pleaded on this man's behalf.

But what you've got is an internal situation where we had an army lieutenant general, Mike Maples, say recently there is more of a threat to Hamid Karzai's government from the Taliban, from Al Qaida, inside Afghanistan than at any point since 2001. So the situation there is deteriorating.

And so now you have people on the ground who are saying wait a second, you mean to say that the British and the Americans are now telling us, and the pope is now telling us, what to do. And so it could, in fact, weaken Hamid Karzai internally in Afghanistan, which is not in our best interest.

If you get into the southern region of Afghanistan, where the Al Qaida is still, you know, working -- now they're doing less of really threats of direct war, more fire bombings, taking over villages, that kind of thing -- that's a threat to the U.S.

So what's striking to me about this story is we're still involved in a war in Afghanistan that we seem to have forgotten.

GIGOT: Juan, are you saying that we shouldn't have spoken up about this?

WILLIAMS: Of course we should speak up, Paul, but you have to play it -- you have to realize it has come at a cost.

GIGOT: Well, I'd rather put pressure on Hamid Karzai and that government to do the right thing -- and he's a pretty skillful politician. And I think the chances under him are a lot better for freedom for women, freedom of religion in Afghanistan, than they were before, certainly, and are pretty much anywhere else in the Islamic world.

WILLIAMS: These are things I believe in deeply. I mean, I'm not saying that we shouldn't speak up for them. But I'm saying if you're talking about a geopolitical dynamic the way that Bill was just talking about what's going on in Saudi Arabia, what we tolerate in Saudi Arabia, we are holding Hamid Karzai and the Afghan government to an interesting standard at a time when we would like their help in the bigger struggle to get Osama bin Laden.

WALLACE: Well, I want to just go back to what Bill said in sort of raising the bigger issue. And I have a feeling that you were going to react to this, which is that you heard from some of the real politic experts this week, Mara, who were saying I told you so, that this shows that trying to spread democracy without understanding the realities of what goes on inside these countries is naive. What do you make of that?

LIASSON: Look, it's difficult. To say that it's impossible because you can't -- I don't think that there is a big chorus that says Islamic countries and democracy can never be merged. I disagree. I just think there's a lot of difficulty along the way. And a commitment to the building blocks of civil society and democratic values, as you said, is a precursor to a successful democracy. Democracy is not just one election.

But I don't think this event has caused some kind of growing support for the view that you cannot have democracies in the Islamic world. I don't see that.

WALLACE: But I think you'd agree, Bill -- I mean, Madeleine Albright had a big piece in the Los -- Madeleine Albright, the secretary of state under Bill Clinton, had a big piece in the Los Angeles Times where she was, in effect, saying I told you so, and this idea of dividing the world into good and evil, and talking about democracy, and not understanding the culture of these countries creates more problems.

KRISTOL: I love Madeleine Albright lecturing the Bush administration on power politics. Madeleine Albright, who actually did compare Saddam to Hitler, who used extremely moralistic rhetoric when she was secretary of state, which I don't entirely disapprove of, who justified the war against Milosevic entirely on humanitarian and moralistic terms -- now she's suddenly a great advocate of real politic.

But it's a stupid real politic. Again, what's her suggestion? Would religious freedom be stronger in Afghanistan if it were not democratic? Is that the argument? No. It's ludicrous. We saw what a non-democratic Afghanistan was like in the late 1990s -- the Taliban. I don't think that was a lot of religious freedom there. That was her Afghanistan.

So when Madeleine Albright was doing such a wonderful job as a real politic secretary of state, Osama bin Laden was running training camps in Afghanistan. Period.

WALLACE: And what about the Palestinian Authority, where you end up with a Hamas in a democratic election?

KRISTOL: We've ended up with Hamas, I think in large part, because we tolerated a corrupt dictatorship in the Palestinian Authority.

WALLACE: All right. We're going to have to leave it there. Thank you, panel. That's it for today. See you all next week.

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