A letter to David Frum sums it up well:
I voted twice for this man and his abdication of the most fundamental executive responsibility, to protect our country from foreign invasion, is cause for regret.
Talk is cheap. The most responsible course of action that this president can take on immigration is to do nothing. Leave it for the next president. Focus on Iraq and then go home.
Signing this bill would render what little good he has done meaningless by comparison.
I wish he were already gone.
The bottom line for the many, many conservatives who've become estranged is this: They just plain don't trust the government to do any enforcement of any immigration restrictions. End of story. The Feds have had 6-1/2 years to seal the border but haven't. The White House has no chance to regain their trust -- it's just too late for that. They can't build fences or hire border agents in the time President Bush has left. But the Republican senators and Representatives can salvage their connection to the conservatives by simply breaking the immigration bill down into a logical progression.
- Close the border. AFTER that's done and only after that's done,
- Comprehensive immigration reform that does not include amnesty.
Overwhelming majorities of Americans don't want amnesty for illegal aliens. We want them to go home and get to the back of the line. (Personally, I'd put a moratorium on Mexicans -- Mexico has been a bad neighbor.) We do NOT want them to stay here and wait at the back of an imaginary line while they renew their shiny new Z-visas for life. The obvious way to get those folks to self-deport is through proper identification and strict work place enforcement.
I strongly doubt the Senate will get the garbage out of the bill, and if they don't I expect it will die in the house. And that's a shame because the status quo stinks.