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March 25, 2006
Hot Stories: Iraq & Immigration
Beltway Boys
MORT KONDRACKE, HOST: I'm Mort Kondracke.
FRED BARNES, HOST: And I'm Fred Barnes, and we're "The Beltway Boys."
KONDRACKE: And the hot story of the week is off the dime. That's President Bush on the issue of, of Iraq, and also President Bush's advice to the Iraqis about, about what to do next.
Last November, December, you remember, President Bush looked at his approval ratings out of the 30s and into the 40s by making a bunch of speeches about the, about the Iraq war. Well, he's back in the 30s now, and he's making speeches again. And also, besides speeches, making himself available to the press and also to Q&A on the, on, on the stump. Here's an example of the Q&A at last week's press conference. He's got to do this, and here, here he answers some questions.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just after the 2004 election, you seem to have claimed a really enviable balance of political capital and a strong mandate. Would you make that claim today, that you still have that (INAUDIBLE)...
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'd say I'm spending that capital on the war.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(LAUGHTER)
KONDRACKE: And he needs to spend his capital on, on, on the war, because the White House believes that the Iraq blues are covering, are, are coloring everything else in the administration, the economy, homeland security, whatever it is, the public is down on Bush because, because they're, they're, they're worried about, about the Iraq war.
Now, the, the, the headlines, that, that Bush got out of this press conference was something that he really didn't want. It, and it put the, the, the media into a tizzy. Here, watch this, this Q&A.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Will there come a day -- and I'm not asking you when, not asking for a timetable -- will there come a day when there will be no more American forces in Iraq?
BUSH: Now, that, of course, is an objective, and that'll be decided by future presidents and future governments of Iraq.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KONDRACKE: So the, the interpretation of this was that, ah, U.S. troops are going to be there forever, when it was actually, When will we get to zero? that this would be sometime out beyond his administration.
What Bush's main message was, was, I would not have any American troops in Iraq unless I think we could achieve victory. We are achieving victory, hang in there. And the second message was this to the Iraqi government. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BUSH: The people have spoken. And now it's time for a government to get stood up. There's time for the elected representative or those who represent the voters and the political parties to come together and form a unity government. That's what the people want, otherwise they wouldn't have gone to the polls, would they have?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KONDRACKE: I mean, my theory about all this is the, is that Bush will not get out of the doldrums just on the basis of speeches and statements and stuff like that. It's going to take events. And the main event that we're looking for is a government and Iraq, and a good government.
BARNES: I think speeches help, but you're right about that. The, they better form this government pretty quickly. I mean, the election was December 15. The good news is, there are talks this weekend, formal talks, among the different parties there about forming a unity government, with which is the only kind that'll work.
I want to make two other points, though, about things that Bush could say but hasn't been saying, at least the way I'm going to say it, in, in his speeches about Iraq.
One is simply this, there is no chance whatsoever of a civil war in Iraq. The, the insurgents have been trying to produce one for three years now. They're not doing anything new that they haven't been doing since right after the war, when, for instance, they blew up a major mosque in Najaf, I think. Did it start a civil war? No. And it, and it didn't start a civil war when they grew up, blew up the Golden Mosque, what, a few weeks ago.
So they've done that before. Then they went to beheadings, then they went to trying to eliminate the convoys from Kuwait, you know, American convoys bringing things in. Then, then they started to attack, and still are attacking, young Iraqis signing up to get in the military or the police. Now (INAUDIBLE) and what's happened, an increasing number are signing up. Then they turned to blowing up innocent civilians, women and children. They've tried to stop the elections. There have been three, with increasing turnout in each one.
They've tried everything. Iraqis know that they're trying to do this, and they know they have no mandate. The, the, the insurgents have none.
The second thing, and I'll do this quickly, is casualties, the dead, the war dead. You know, Mort, you've heard this as much as I have, people citing how many Americans have been killed there. But let's compare it, for a moment, to the Americans killed in other wars.
I mean, look at the Civil War, for instance, over 600,000 in World War I, where we were only it for about a year. More than 100,000 in World War II. That's, that's a huge number. I'm not surprised by it. The Korean War, the Vietnam War. And then look at Iraq. That, it is, look, I'm sorry for every American who has died there. But it is, for what's trying to be achieved there, creating a democracy that will be infectious and spread all over the Middle East, that's not (INAUDIBLE) an out-of-control number.
KONDRACKE: Look, I, look, I completely accept all of that. The enemy strategy is the old, you know, Sun Tzu Chinese strategist argument that what you do is, you don't defeat the enemy (INAUDIBLE) his troops, you defeat the enemy's will. And that's especially the case in a (INAUDIBLE), in guerrilla war like this, and that's clearly what, what the enemy is up to. I mean, they, what they want to do is convince the American public and the American elites that this is an unwinnable war.
And every, and, and they, and they know how to play the, the media. I mean, there's been a lot of criticism this week of the U.S. media. And the media claims, Well, we're overstretched and they're all that, we can't report the good news. Well, they ought, it seems to me they, they ought to try harder.
What the enemy's tried to do is, every catastrophe that takes place or every massacre and every beheading and all of that kind of stuff gets reported in the United States, as, Oh, well, this is a mess. Oh, well, we can't win, and so on. The, the one piece of good news is that President Bush doesn't read the papers, or at least he's not influenced by the papers...
BARNES: Yes, he (INAUDIBLE).
KONDRACKE: ... and he is going to, he is going to hang in there, and we're not getting out as long as he's president, and he thinks we can win.
BARNES: I agree with that. On the other hand, he needs to keep doing for a longer period of time, speaking out on Iraq. It is the paramount issue of our time. Democracy in Iraq depends on this. Freedom in Iraq, the war, the crusade for democracy around the world depends on this success in Iraq. And so does the verdict on Bush's presidency itself. This is the ballgame, and he's got to not just give a couple of weeks of speeches but a year or more of speeches.
Ready or not, Congress is poised to act on immigration reform. And we'll take a closer look at the policies and the politics of it. Hot story number two is straight ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BUSH: 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. It must be done in a way that doesn't pit one group of people against another. It must be done in a way that recognizes our history.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BARNES: Hot story number two, border skirmish.
Mort, you know, this immigration debate that's going to dominate the Senate for the next two weeks is going to pit one group against another. Sorry, Mr. President. And the truth is, it's going to pit the pro- immigrant forces against the anti-immigrant forces. Now, the antis are going to say, We're only against illegal immigration. But I (INAUDIBLE) -- and, and, and publicly, that may be. But I think many of them would like to see a moratorium on legal immigration or, or at least stop legal immigration.
Now, the pro-immigration forces want this. They want increased border enforcement. They would like, they would like to have a steady flow of legal immigrants still coming in the country, perhaps with some sort of a guest worker program. And they also want to do, and this is the big thing, is, we've been talking about before, do something about the 12 million illegal immigrants already in the country so that they can earn their way to becoming American citizens.
And there are many hard ways that they have to do it, you know, like learning English and paying back taxes and so on.
The antis really only favor border enforcement. That's about it. And I think right now, in the Senate, the pro-immigration forces have the majority, and they may pass some bill that's border enforcement plus some other way to (INAUDIBLE) where illegal immigrants can come in the United States or those here become citizens.
But that's very different from the bill that has already passed the House of Representatives that is enforcement only. So what is likely to happen, I think, is (INAUDIBLE) and I suspect you agree with this, that it'll be an enforcement-only bill that has the best chance of passing.
But a more sweeping bill that could do really come to grips with the whole problem of illegal immigration and those in the United States still is quite possible. And that would not be, if you have to earn your way to citizenship, that is not amnesty, and yet we're going to hear that over and over again from the critics of this bill. And (INAUDIBLE) the president himself touched on this subject. Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BUSH: First of all, the, whatever's passed should not say amnesty. And it's in my judgment, amnesty would be the wrong course of action. We have a way toward legality in terms of citizenship. Now, there's a difference between someone who's here legally working and someone who's a citizen. And that's part of the (INAUDIBLE) -- may, maybe it didn't make that distinction perfectly clear.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(LAUGHTER)
BARNES: It is pretty clear.
KONDRACKE: Yes, well, there, look, there, nobody is in favor of blanket amnesty in the sense that, you know, you're here, you're legal. As you pointed out, and others (INAUDIBLE) what John McCain and Ted Kennedy and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the president, if he, if he's in favor of, of this kind of thing, wanted...
BARNES: He is (INAUDIBLE), he is.
KONDRACKE: Well, well, he talks...
BARNES: (INAUDIBLE), of course he is (INAUDIBLE)...
KONDRACKE: ... sometimes he talks about...
BARNES: ... (INAUDIBLE).
KONDRACKE: ... temporary worker...
BARNES: Hey, Mort...
KONDRACKE: ... permits...
BARNES: ... Mort, Mort...
KONDRACKE: ... you know...
BARNES: ... Mort, trust me.
KONDRACKE: All right, (INAUDIBLE)...
BARNES: He's for this.
KONDRACKE: Oh, OK, good. What, what, what it is, is earned legalization. And the, the, now, this is a fight, largely, that is, that exists within the Republican Party. The Democrats are largely in favor of this, of this earned legalization work permits and, and that kind of thing, a comprehensive bill.
This is a fight within the, within the Republican Party between the forces led by Tom Tancredo of, of Colorado and the House, and versus John McCain in the, in the, in the Senate, with a lot of other people in, in the middle.
And, and the fact is, that what Bush should have done is to have seized control of this debate from the beginning, a long time ago. What he did in 2005 was to spend his political capital on Social Security reform, a, another divisive issue that that didn't get anywhere. He should have concentrated on immigration, and he might have actually gotten something done.
And because what's happening right now is that the, the, the Republican Party is in danger of losing all the progress that it's made in the Hispanic community by allowing these, these restrictionists, the Tancredo forces, to dominate the debate and, you know, and turn off Hispanic voters.
BARNES: Well, I'm grinning, because there you are again, blame Bush first.
(LAUGHTER)
BARNES: All Bush's, all Bush's fault. The truth is, I mean, that your hindsight is, is always perfect, you know, (INAUDIBLE) what he should have done in 2005. Now, if Social Security reform had gotten further, you wouldn't have said that.
But (INAUDIBLE), but in any case, I want to say one other thing about immigrants coming into the United States. We need them. They do many great things. They, they spur the economy, they refreshen society. They're going to be around. They're going to be younger, and they're going to pay for our retirement and keep Social Security solvent, and Medicare solvent after some reforms. But we need them.
(INAUDIBLE) look at these stagnant societies like Japan, where they have no immigrants. They're in decline, and we're not. And the vast majority, look, I know a lot of Hispanics, as you do. All the ones I know want to assimilate. They want to be Americans. That's why they came here. Hispanics in the United States create businesses at three times the national average. They are not a drag on society, they want to be Americans, and I want them to be Americans.
KONDRACKE: Yes. Well, look, right now, the state of play is that 203 out of the 231 Republicans in the House of Representatives have put the stamp of, of, of restrictionism on the Republican Party. That, that bill, that that James Sensenbrenner bill, Peter King bill, provides that every illegal who's the United States has (INAUDIBLE), is automatically committed a felony. If you help an illegal, you give them a meal, you give them a ride, you give them social services, you're guilty of, of a felony.
They want to build a 700-mile wall around the country. They want to enlist every cop in the street to be, to be (INAUDIBLE) immigration agent. I mean, that, what is that, what, if you're a Hispanic voter, what does that tell you? That the Republican Party is not friendly to you. That's the danger.
BARNES: (INAUDIBLE), but don't blame Bush.
KONDRACKE: He, he should have seized control of the situation.
BARNES: Oh, come on.
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