Bush unites senators, but not how he wanted

12:00 AM CDT on Sunday, July 1, 2007
TODD J. GILLMAN / The Dallas Morning News
tgillman@dallasnews.com

WASHINGTON – President Bush promised to be a uniter when he was elected, and last week he pulled it off. Republicans and Democrats stood shoulder to shoulder and killed the immigration plan he badly wanted.

"I continue to like the president. I respect the president. I just think that he was not in tune with the people, either in the Senate or across the country," said Texas Sen. John Cornyn.

The president has wanted to overhaul immigration law for years. It's a legacy item, something worthy of an entire exhibit at the library he's planning in Dallas. But he's got no coattails and precious little leverage. Democrats are happy to see him flounder, and Republicans have faced intense pressure from conservatives who've hollered about anything that might smack of amnesty.

It was less than two weeks ago that Mr. Bush made a rare appearance at the Capitol, joining Senate Republicans for only the second time at their weekly closed-door lunch. He cajoled them to help him pass the immigration plan, pretty much the only big item he hadn't abandoned from his second-term domestic agenda.

When Mr. Bush emerged from lunch, Mr. Cornyn and fellow Texan Kay Bailey Hutchison, both top members of the GOP leadership, made themselves scarce. Both ended up helping to kill the package.

"You should come into my office. I've got a lot of pictures with the president," Mr. Cornyn said after the bill died Thursday, trying to soften the snub.

House Republicans bluntly accused Mr. Bush of being out of touch with the public and his party's base in pushing legal status, albeit with strings, for the nation's 12 million illegal immigrants. Mr. Cornyn agreed.

Tight security and other factors, Mr. Cornyn said, leave the president "somewhat isolated."

"I count the president as one of my 23 million constituents. And I have a lot of respect for him," he said. "I appreciate what's in his heart, his desire to want to do the right thing. But on the other hand, he wasn't getting the angry phone calls and faxes and e-mails or the direct confrontation that I got."

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