He just can’t bring himself to condemn the right-wing base’s hate of Hispanics (case in point, Michelle Malkin).
President Bush generally favors plans to give millions of illegal immigrants a chance at U.S. citizenship without leaving the country, but does not want to be more publicly supportive because of opposition among conservative House Republicans, according to senators who attended a recent White House meeting.
It is actually rather surprising that the GOP made immigration a major legislative initiative. I had always thought that the president had a pretty progressive position on this issue — one that married his business allies with Hispanics and many liberals — but it was equally clear that his position was vehemently opposed by GOP racists like Tancredo and Sensenbrenner. Those two sides could never find common ground no matter where the Democrats stood. Now they are stuck with trying to resolve intractable differences and can’t make it go away.
It would probably help if there were some people around who hated immigrants for Bush to condemn.
You can’t always get what you want, but if you try some time, you just might find, you get what you need