"The social conservatives want a big fence around America (as they define it)"

Well, some of them do. But many religious social conservatives don't want this at all; instead, they're supporting comprehensive immigration reform and rallying around the Hebrew Bible injunction to "welcome the stranger." So the issue reveals a fault line within the social conservative movement, too--one that, like several other issues, demonstrates new faith-based energy to give some real substance to old claims of "compassionate conservatism."

Noonan and Sullivan don't lump together very well on this, if you're going to zero in on the timing. Sullivan could hardly care less about immigration. For him it's been very much about the war (and especially torture) and he's been making his disdain for Bush clear for some time now. In that irritating, superior, 'I-relish-this-opportunity-to-distance-myself' way of his, but still.

And Steve Thorngate, who and where are these 'welcome the stranger' conservatives?

Noonan and Sullivan don't lump together very well on this

No. I meant Noonan's letter of regrets and I was also thinking of Instapundit's similar feelings. In some ways it looks like the immigration debate is the excuse for the last group of faithfuls (such as Noonan) to come out publicly as a non-Bushite.

Fred Thompson has it right. Seal the border then make policy. There is a big question no one is asking. Folks can't get crops picked at $10.00 an hour. No workers. Believe it. We are absorbing millions of workers and they are still scarce? How can that be? Mexico is beautiful. Lets make another Lousiana Purchase.

Read what Uncle Sam has to say. MyManFred.com It is non bias and you will love it.

Right on about the actors! Conservatism is less a political position than a way of performing a certain masculine stereotype. No way does it have a chance of coming to grips with real-world problems. It was all dreamt up by people who had spent too much time watching Wild West movies.

I agree with Steve - the politics of this don't break down neatly - there are country club Republicans who've long been xenophobes (the whole "dirty brown people" route, which is probably the same for these Very Old Families as how Grandfather felt about the Irish), and conservative christians who are relaists and what to help the downtrodden... but also the conservatives who are arguing for closed borders are not, necessarily that far from working class liberals - these are their livelihoods, like construction, that have been interfered with.

I think the point is that immigration does not break down neatly, and despite some notion that liberals and progressives are more united, I'd point out on immigration we're mostly united against Bush. But Illegal Immigration and the issues of border crossings play well with border Democrats too, and that's one reason why getting anything done has been so hard - there's an audience for what a Tom Tancredo is selling, and it's not just wingnutters.

Further, i'd point out that conservatives have been disillusioned with Bush and the White House for some time, probably going back to Harriet Miers, and the prospect of Gonzales being appointed to The Court. They haven't trusted his conservatism, and were it not for the war - where many are simply scared witless - this reckoning would have come sooner. As it is, Bush and his people have known for some time that immigration would play havoc with the base. That they've chosen to do it anyway - and chosen to do it in a way that calls the base hateful and undemocratic - speaks volumes about just how arrogant they'll be right to the bitter end. They really don't care who they piss off when convinced of their fundamental rightness.

Finally, as any conservative can tell you, Andrew Sullivan has been on his own quixotic path for some time. Hi sproblems with Bush have to do with Iraq, followed by the same realization as liberals that he is a terrible President. Immigration, I think, is the least of it to him. Noonan, I'd add, has been surprisingly critical of Bush all along, too; I'd say that's likely more a product of her being an old school Reaganite and not really a Bushie. GW is no Reagan and she never ceases to point it out. And Reagan, one should recall, helped enact Amnesty in 1986.

What the split in the religious conservatives demonstrates is that most of them wouldn't know the basic tenets of Christianity if Jesus himself clubbed them over the head with a copy of the Sermon on the Mount. Banning abortion and hating gay folks is about as far as their religion goes. Oh, and the ever popular "No to brown folks!" admonition.

Noonan - The president has taken to suggesting that opponents of his immigration bill are unpatriotic--they "don't want to do what's right for America." ... Why would they speak so insultingly, with such hostility, of opponents who are concerned citizens?

Poor conservatives, bless their tender hearts - having to bear the shock of being scolded & called unpatriotic by the Bush Administration.

But do they take from this experience any hint of self-reflection, any sense that maybe they're guilty of poisoning the body politic themselves these past years? No - instead, they say that the condemnation they're receiving is outrageous because they're the good guys - "concerned citizens," don't you know? Whereas the rest of us deserve the opprobrium because we really are traitors who hate America.

Elitist, red-state snobs, if you ask me.

Break up? Sorry, not allowed. Conservatives and conservatism, and Republicans and their party, are inextricably wedded to George W. Bush.

After six years of the like of Noonan telling us how George W. Bush is the living embodiment of all things conservative and the standard bearer for Republican ideals, she cannot now blithely disavow him. And as for Sullivan, his remarks about liberals forming a "fifth column" against American permanently disqualify him from the public discourse. (We also note that he, too, spent a few years extolling Bush as the embodiment of conservatism.)

No, left what they wrote before stand true: George W. Bush is the Republican standard bearer; he is the living exemplar of conservative governance. And let every voting citizen remember that.

Derelict - I'd suggest, gently, that you go back and look at Noonan's essays for the WSJ (www.opinionjournal.com); "living embodiment" is simply not her take, and never has been. She's admired some of his response to terrorism, not all of it, and she's been critical (for instance, of his 2004 inaugural address) in fairly sharp terms when he's gotten the big picture wrong. Lumping Noonan in with an "ilk" only makes sense when grounded in specifics, and Noonan, in many ways, is an anomaly in Republican circles - not least of which because she is a New Yorker and more cosmopolitan than a lot of other commentators, and also because, for her flaws, she remains a very talented essayist. The marriage between Bush and conservatives may indeed be a death grip; Noonan is just not a prime example of such a case.

This is what passes for analysis at TAP? The whole thing doesn't even break down very well, but let's try. Social conservatives, most of them religious, actually aren't the ones screaming and yelling for a fence. The ones that want the fence are actually bashing the religious social conservatives for advocating for comprehensive reform (liberal and conservative Christian churches alike have come under fire for supporting sheltering immigrants, supporting comprehensive reform, etc.).

If I had to categorize the wall-advocates, I'd put them more in the paleo-con camp, at least on this issue. It doesn't make them paleo-cons, though.

I love the liberal simplification that the WSJ is read by just a lot of rich, white CEOs. Get on any commuter train going into New York on a given morning, and count the number of people reading WSJ. And many of them are social conservatives as well. Now, I can tell you the number that are also rich, white executives: 0. Rich executives don't take NJ Transit.

For the longest time, the story from the left was that there's no dissension in GOP ranks, no internal debate, Rove cracks his whip and keeps everyone in line. The left, on the other hand, was supposedly the party of real internal debate. Now the Republicans have disagreed on an issue, you saw it coming all along? That's pretty weak.

PS: Andrew Sullivan disowned Bush at least 3 years ago (remember when he voted for Kerry?). And (ostensibly) it was on the war, not immigration. And he did so only after he could use the war as an excuse when his problem was really gay marriage.

Or you can pretend his criticism of Bush is at all noteworthy now, 3-4 years on. Your choice.

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