Hallelujah! Excellent! Outstanding!

Now maybe the Republicans can come together and seriously focus on the presidential campaign, and perhaps find some common cause with President Bush again (Supreme Court nominations?) The damage to the President from this is profound and lasting. The trust level with the base has plummeted to unprecedented depths. John McCain's campaign took the final, fatal hit from the bill.

Why the President chose this moment, in the middle of an unpopular war, to go to war with his political base will long remain a mystery. What were his advisors thinking? What was he thinking? It's not a matter of governing by polls. But the President must have all the support he can get now while fighting this war in Iraq. Sen. Richard Lugar's comments a couple of days ago reflect a growing mainstream Republican uneasiness about continuing the current strategy in Iraq, and Mr. Bush's unnecessary fight with his base is likely to - and probably already has - caused critical Republican support to move away from everything he attempts, including continuing the present strategy in Iraq.

The President's failure (or unwillingness) to understand that opponents of the bill had security of the country as their paramount concern, prior to regularization of illegals, was a critical one. It was this key miscalculation that ultimately led to critical mass against the President.

This is a very good day for American that this bill has gone down, and this time there's no chance of it coming back. The President would do well to now move on and try and rekindle relations with the base. That may or may not be possible at this point. The Republican base seems now to have moved on from Mr. Bush. The insults thrown by the President and members of his administration (Chavez, Chertoff, et al) toward those who had a legitimate argument against this bill have done lasting damage to Mr. Bush's credibility. The President's attempt to push this issue at this time has indeed damaged the country. But some of that damage has been mitigated by the destruction of this profoundly misguided bill.