A Bad Case of Baselash

From 1999 to early 2005 President Bush enjoyed the favor of 51% of Americans. Despite the intense hatred against him from the Far Left, he walked the fine line of placating the base, while taking some strong and very visible stands in the opposite direction, thus helping his standing with moderates. He worked this masterfully for a long while. The base tolerated his occassional jaunts off the conservative trail (such as the prescription drug benefit) because they saw that such moves were taken with an eye to preserving the political success of the movement as a whole. That time has past.

Bush has lost the base.

The dynamics of 43's presidency changed dramatically after his re-election. Events turned against him and there was no longer the constant threat of a Democratic presidency to rally the base to his side. Without that driving motivation, and without wild success in foreign policy, the base was tired. As Halperin and Harris point out in their book The Way to Win, "There is a thin line between rallying the base and being trampled by the horde".

43 has been trampled by the horde. Worse, he does not have the political capital to restore order among the rank-and-file. This happened not long after his second innagural address. The President laid a three-strike whammy on the base and lost them for good.

Strike One: Harriet Miers. The ultimate treasure of one's party winning the presidency is nominating members of the Supreme Court. When Clinton won, who did he choose? None other than the chief counsel of the ACLU. The ACLU for goodness' sake. The ultra liberals. The Far Left incarnate. That was his right. He won, and he got the prize. Conservatives gave her the up-or-down vote she deserved, and that was that. 20-40 years of the ACLU on the Court. It makes my blood boil, but that's how it is. I, like all other conservatives, must get over it. He won. That's his right. But then our guy won. The swing vote on the Court retired. The Chief Justice died. One solid conservative (Roberts) replaced the Chief. And who does 43 choose to create the new conservative majority? Harriet Miers. Harriet Freakin' Miers. Conservative firebrand? No. Solid conservative record? No. Enough to make Ted Kennedy and Chuck Schumer squirm? No. The base took a step back.Strike Two: Dubai. Oh, someone wants to buy our ports? This company (or its owner, the United Arab Emirates) has had ties to terrorism? No big deal. Hey, it's a free market, right? The problem with this move was not even that it was a bad one within itself. Dubai has a solid history of operating ports in Western countries without incident. The problem with this move was that it was so gallactically stupid on a PR level as to make every conservative in America as "where the h--- is Rove and why is he letting his team be so moronic?" And the base took another step back.Strike Three: Immigration. Without question there is a free-market-for-labor crowd within the conservative movement. They are well-reasoned and well-meaning. But on the PR level, they are a lost cause. Safety. Security. Rule of Law. These things are paramount among the base as a whole, and among swing voters. Arguing for any position--no matter how nuanced and intellectually honest--that is soft on people who broke the law will incite backlash among the voters. Especially among the base. And the rallying base becomes a trampling horde.This last strike is rearing its ugly head once again.

Yesterday it came out that the Democrats are planning on passing an immigration reform bill that makes it basically painless for people to break our laws, break our borders, come here illegally, pay a fine, and voila! they can jump right on the path to legal citizenship. The rub of it is that 43 agrees with them.

Congress and the President will dress this bill up nice and pretty as anything but amnesty, but in the end we all know the truth. This is amnesty lite. It doesn't matter that most Americans oppose amnesty. It doesn't matter that the vast majority of the conservative base opposes amnesty. 43 no longer needs the base to win office. He has entered the lame-duck years. This is to our country's peril. There are even rumors that the Dems will cut the funding for the 700-mile double layer fencing to be build along the Mexico border. Frankly, I hope they do. Why? That will create a backlash against them.

Here's the big picture as we gear up for '08. The base is fragmented and disenchanted. Is there anyone who can put this broken picture of a movement back together? Can McCain? Can Guilliani? Can Romney? Can Anyone? It will take a master to rally the base without it becoming the stampeeding horde.

For now there is no master on the horizon. May we fine him/her, and may he/she come to our rescue.