Bush: Fighting For My Party More Important Than For My Policies

In his weekly radio address, reported here President Bush made a point of blaming Sen. Minority Leader Reid for the breakdown in the Senate deliberations over immigration. The fundamental dispute however, is between those who support the idea of a guest-worker provision (that would be Bush and the Democrats) vs. those who do not (conservative Republicans). Once the issue of whether there should be such a program is resolved, negotiations would proceed over the details. But there is no resolution of this question in large part because of a lack of leadership by Bush himself - an unwillingness to defend and fight for his own policies in the face of opposition from his own base. Now he takes it a further step and tries to lay the blame on the Democrats. It does strike me as gross political incompetence for a president to move an issue onto the front burner that divides his own party, and then to do next to nothing to resolve the dispute within his party that his proposal provokes. Surely he must have understood that merely attacking the other party would leave the proposal with only the partial support that it began with. The bottom line - final vote was 38 dems in favor, 6 dems and all republicans opposed. And Bush blames the dems for its defeat! Immigration Guest Worker Bush Reid