Find The Boots

I've had several strong Republican supporters tell me that if Shamnesty passes, they're done with being Republicans. The trust will have been broken. The problem is, where do they go?

Not the Democrats. Vote for the Democrats and you get Shamnest, gun control, higher taxes...the list is huge. So I don't see disaffected Republicans switching to the other side.

Not the Libertarians. Their 2000 platform said

We welcome all refugees to our country. Furthermore, immigration must not be restricted for reasons of race, religion, political creed, age, or sexual preference. We therefore call for the elimination of all restrictions on immigration, the abolition of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Border Patrol, and a declaration of full amnesty for all people who have entered the country illegally.

Resurrect Ross Perot? Unfortunately, that mantle seems to be ready to be filled by Bloomberg. And Bloomberg doesn't exactly have a clean record on gun control.

The Conservative Party? The Constitution Party? They don't even make it on to the ballot.

What will happen is what always happens when conservatives are angry at their Republican candidates. They'll stay home, unable to vote for the lesser of two evils. Unfortunately, the moonbats are always willing to vote for the greater of two evils and they don't stay home. High liberal turnout and low conservative turnout is enough to tip the balance. Bill Clinton's strategy was to move enough to the center to keep the conservatives at home, while winking to the liberals. The conservatives taught Bush Senior a lesson over breaking the no new taxes pledge. That's the only strategy that has worked for Democrats since Truman. Carter wouldn't have been elected if not for disgust over Watergate. Kennedy got elected as a moderate.

I think many conservatives are missing the point. They stayed home during 2006 to teach Bush a lesson and gave him a Democrat controlled Congress. Shamnesty would never have gotten off the ground if the remaining Republicans didn't feel they had to play ball. They don't know how to lead when they're in control, and they don't know how to obstruct when they're out.

I don't think this is a Republican vs Democrat issue. It's a struggle between long time incumbents and the will of the people. Shamnesty is getting its support from Senators that have been in the Senate forever. They're out of touch. They're trying to work deals with their friends. They took our call to "Do something about illegal aliens" and got it backwards. They're not the new breed of conservatives that are clued in to what people are thinking. They've been inside the beltline so long they can't hear us. The blogosphere rages about this, and they don't even realize that their supporters have turned.

We've got a lot of RINOs in Congress right now. Boot them out as they come up for election and replace them with real conservatives. We need to send John McCain home from the Republican nomination, and everybody needs to understand that it was his support for Shamnesty that did him in.

There's one bright spot in this entire debate. Fred Thompson came out against Shamnesty early on:

We should scrap this “comprehensive” immigration bill and the whole debate until the government can show the American people that we have secured the borders — or at least made great headway. That would give proponents of the bill a chance to explain why putting illegals in a more favorable position than those who play by the rules is not really amnesty.

The solution isn't to stay home. The solution is to boot every Republican candidate that goes along with Shamnesty.

I'm with Fred.