What is Bush thinking of?

John O’Sullivan in Sun-Times has a credible pre-speech analysis of what Bush has been saying and will continue to say to “smuggle” ill-advised ideas into the immigration debate, such as promising to beef up border security with 6,000 natl guard people: a bad idea, says O’S:

You cannot control the borders, however many patrols you hire or fences you build, if you grant an effective pardon to anyone who gets 100 miles inland.

Oh my.  How alarmingly reasonable.  He also makes hash of the denials of amnesty and cites expected #s of immigrants coming in thanks to a “compromise bill”: 

 [I]t doubles the number of legal immigrants -- and [and] would admit 103 million new people over the next 20 years. It's estimated that 19 million people would otherwise enter America over the same period.

And

the long-term cost of government benefits could be $30 billion per year or more: ''In the long run, the Hagel/Martinez bill, if enacted, would be the largest expansion of the welfare state in 35 years'' [says Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation]. It was very sensible of the president not to bore the listeners with such details.

Sounds awful.  This is not Bush’s finest hour.

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Later: 

Here’s an angry response from a non-lib source, as quoted in Taranto’s WSJ Best of the Web:

Steve Sailer on VDare.com writes: "The Bush Administration has seemed never to notice that Mexico is not the 51st state, but a foreign country--one that is engaged in a slow-motion invasion of America. . . . Why is Bush doing this? I have suggested that his motives are dynastic--that he is selfishly sacrificing the GOP to build a family vehicle, much like Brian Mulroney sacrificed the Canadian Progressive Conservative party in a vain effort to build a personal fief in the French-speaking province of Quebec. Brenda Walker speculates he is a 'MexiChurian Candidate.' What he is not is an American patriot."

Not B’s finest hour at all, no.