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Media Glee Over Conservative "Rifts"
Rush Limbaugh
March 25, 2005

The Washington Post all excited today, folks because they've detected another conservative split. This not is on Terri Schiavo. This conservative split is in the debate on curbing illegal immigration. "Republican lawmakers are headed for a showdown over illegal immigration, an issue that exposes a deep and bitter rift within the GOP." You know, we do get stories, "What do the poor old Democrats have to do to regain their power?" but we seldom get stories about the "bitter rifts."

They do happen. I mean, we do hear about when MoveOn.org sends a letter to the DNC saying, "You guys are history; we're taking over," but that is presented most of the time by the media as an interesting development and they're casually observing and watching it to see how it plays out. Very seldom is it portrayed as a "bitter rift." You hardly ever see stories in the mainstream press about bitter rifts in the Democratic Party, where some of them are siding with Republicans. It did happen on Sunday in Washington in Congress. There was a bitter rift on the Democrat side. There are stories out there. They're just not too many of them, if any, in the mainstream press, but there are anonymous Democrat sources saying that, "We didn't want to take a stand on this in the Senate, and not too many Democrats wanted to show up and vote in the House on early Monday morning. Yeah, we don't want to take the chance of being wrong on the culture of death or culture of life question, so we sat it out." But you don't hear the story about "rift." You don't hear that this is tearing the party apart. This is the second such story this week.

First the "rift" among conservatives on Schiavo, and now the "rift" among conservatives on illegal immigration, "The immigration debate pits one core GOP constituency, law-and-order conservatives, against another core GOP constituency, business interests that rely on immigrant labor. One camp wants to tighten borders and deport people who are here illegally. The other seeks to bring illegal workers out of the shadows and acknowledge their growing economic importance. Bush does not support giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants but he wants to address the problem of undocumented workers by expanding temporary worker programs for the millions who are already here. Critics of House restrictions such as driver's licenses for illegals, including many Senate Republicans, say that the curbs would trample states' rights and lead to more unlicensed drivers while ignoring what they believe to be the crux of the problem, the millions of undocumented people already entrenched in the workforce."

So it goes on cite a number of Republicans who are breaking away from the traditional conservative wing of the Republican Party. They are John McCain, Chuck Hagel, Larry Craig, and they are aligned with Senator Kennedy on one aspect of immigration legislation. So while the Schiavo case effervesces and rolls on out there, the mainstream media has got the conservative movement Republican Party in its cross-hairs and it senses it's falling apart out there and they cannot hide their glee on the front pages of the Washington Post today. New York Times earlier this week. Although, in fairness, I have to point out their lead editorial in the Washington Post today just excoriates Democrats for having no plan on Social Security.