Great post-speech coverage on the Fox News Channel last night of President Bush's speech on immigration....what? You say that you accidentally heard two seconds of Lou Dobbs lecturing viewers at the Dobbs School of Thinking on Immigration, I mean CNN, and you went into a sort of coma of irritated boredom? Never fear, here's the antidote--some highlights of the intelligent commentary on FNC:
“I’m in the midst of sort of the active zone. The danger zone…. It’s amazing how many people are coming across this border. Will 6,000 [National Guard troops] be an answer? I don’t know, but at least a comprehensive immigration reform may act as a deterrent, so even the people who are trying to come in illegally, maybe that number will decline…. But I tell you, you go just a distance like I did today, and there’s nothing to stop you from walking across from Mexico into this country.”
-Greta Van Susteren, host of “On the Record,” reporting from San Isidro, CA
“We’ve already managed to touch base with about a dozen Senate offices at this point, mostly Republicans, mostly conservatives, and the early soundings are mixed. One senior Republican’s office said that the run up to the speech was actually better than the speech itself because the emphasis today and yesterday and over the weekend was on border security, but that wasn’t the totality of it tonight.”
-Carl Cameron, FNC’s Chief White House correspondent, reporting from the White House
“I still don’t believe that we should be considering any type of legalization… No matter how you slice it, that’s amnesty. If you allow people who came here illegally to stay legally, that is amnesty.”
-Rep. Pete King (R-NY), speaking on “The O’Reilly Factor”
“To say that just because we’re sending 5,000 National Guard troops to the border, now we can find a way to legalize ten or eleven people who are living here, that sends a mixed message, and it keeps the magnet of having more illegals coming across the border.”
-Rep. Pete King (R-NY), speaking on “The O’Reilly Factor”
“I think this is the first time that the president’s laid out-bing, bing, bing- exactly what he’s for, though we had a pretty good idea what he was for, but he really laid it out with these five points. Now, as others have said, if the president just wanted an issue, if he just wanted to win over his base, he would have done just enforcement only. That would have been easy. The problem there is, that wouldn’t have passed the Senate.”
-Fred Barnes, Fox News contributor
