Pat Buchanan:
Yet the effect of the Republican defeat on Bush appears to have been almost destabilizing. Within 48 hours, all the campaign bluster was gone and Bush was moving to accommodate his critics.
He fired and humiliated his loyal deputy Donald Rumsfeld, told the new Mexican president he would fight for "comprehensive" reform of U.S. immigration law -- i.e., amnesty and open borders -- and had Nancy Pelosi down to the Oval Office, where she was treated as a queen, despite having portrayed the president as an incompetent ignoramus.
Coupled with what appears to be the outsourcing of Iraq policy to James Baker, Bush family consigliore, the questions arise, one after the other. Is there any real core to George W. Bush? Is there any real constancy and constancy of character and purpose?
And do we have another broken presidency on our hands?
For conservatives, the lessons of 2006 seem clear. They failed in their duty to hold the Republican Party to account when it departed from principle and political ethics, and thus failed to rescue it from the rout it has now received. The Right failed in the basic responsibility of true camaraderie: Friends don't let friends drive drunk.
What conservatives should do now is what they should have been doing for six years. Stand behind the president when he fights for low taxes and conservative judges. But when he joins with Pelosi, Vicente Fox, Felipe Calderon and McCain-Kennedy for open borders, or with Dick Durbin for "moderate justices," give him another "thumping" -- like he got from conservatives when he sought to elevate Harrier [sic] Miers to the Supreme Court and just as he got from the nation on Nov. 7.
Having enraged many conservatives with the ham handed manner in which he unnecessarily (he should have done it months ago if it was necessary; tossing Rummy the day after the election was a cheap thing to do) humiliated Don Rumsfeld last Wednesday, going back on that which he said he would not do just one week earlier, it seems that George W. Bush will be experiencing more than a few "thumpings" during his last two years in office.
