Just got a lovely evening fundraising call on my cell from the National Republican Congressional Committee. They asked who I supported in the primary — Fred Thompson, of course! — and then when I said I was holding off on my contribution until I saw how the immigration thing played out, the telemarketer (reading his talking points, of course) moved into an extended spiel about how “I hope you’ve been paying attention sir, because today the bill’s already been voted out of the House and is in the Senate, so holding your money back won’t affect the House vote, yada yada.”
Which is, of course, a complete lie. The bill’s been introduced in the Senate and is still there, as anyone paying attention to the news should know. Presuming it passes next week, it will then go to the House where I expect it may die a quick procedural death by blue slip.
…
Now, that aside, I’m not quite so exercised as Phil is about imminent passage of the President’s bill. In short, I wouldn’t actually have withheld my contribution even if the bill were passed and signed into law. But I get really pissed off when Our Inside-the-Beltway GOP Masters start yanking my chain with obvious falsehoods.
Somebody in the upper echelons of the NRCC approved that telemarketer’s script. Well Fuck You, buddy. Not one thin dime from me this year.
I got a survey from the RNC claiming I was one of the few who were chosen. It asked a lot of “push poll” type questions and then asked for my credit card number for my donation. I simply wrote on the survey with a very large black sharpie that if the amnesty bill passes they will never see another penny from me.
In the last election cycle I helped run the local Republican Victory Headquarters. I don’t think I can give that kind of support anymore, if I give any.
Is this the first real fubar by Rove? With all the REAL poll data showing the “base” of the GOP completely turned off by the POTUS’ immigration stance, why does Rove, reputed to be the most savvy guy in the party, follow Bush off this cliff?
The only thing I’ve heard is that Rove is in the act of switching allegiance from Bush to one of the more conservative candidates, and decided that he had to let Bush and his wing of the party go over the cliff on this one, just to get rid of them.
If that’s correct, Rove isn’t doing the party any favors, because there a lot of “blue dog” (“Harry Truman”) Democrats who are fed up with the immigration stance as well (including most of the craft unions, whose members are watching with horror as their unions are destroyed by the work-at-any-wage Latins), so his delay in abandoning the Pres loses a huge opportunity to pick up some votes next year. For the Blue Dogs, when you take the issues of immigration, national security and the Second Amendment, with which they could agree with the GOP on, it leaves damn few issues with which to disagree with the right on.
So, Rove is maybe going to switch to Fred’s side, and that idea might have been given more credibility by Guliani’s Portland visit yestereday, during which he said that the recent large ICE raid on Del Monte was good, and praised it to the skies WITHOUT doing the lock-step about how much we need the little brown workers.
I dunno, if and when a Rovian move to dump the Prez’s immigration stance comes, it WILL be a lulu, and one for the record books.
I’d like to think that Fred would have enough sense to tell Karl – if he comes callin’ – to go piss up a rope.