This sort of thing--tougher border enforcement--is like dessert for Republicans; some sort of amnesty program is like broccoli (helps make your bones [business] strong, but who wants it?).  If there was a clear line of succession--if Bush had the equivalent of an Al Gore figure--he could make his party finish dinner before they started the cake.  But with a wide-open field and primaries just two years away, who wants broccoli? And Bush lacks the tools to enforce any discipline, because everyone's too tempted.

It'll be interesting to compare the media treatment of the GOP and Dem primary races in '08.  How will they handle two competitive primaries at once? Primaries are tough for the media to cover anyway, especially the non-elite media (i.e. not the NY Times or the Washington Post--rather, the places where most people get their news) because of: obscure processes, most people still haven't started paying attention to politics yet, held far away from major media markets (seriously, fucking Iowa?).  It's tough to get this stuff across to average viewers.

If there are two of them going on at once--and it's looking like there could be--I'm convinced that at least one of the races will be given short shrift in coverage--potentially both.  This is likely to have a large impact on the Dem primary especially, for one reason--Hillary Clinton.  She has far more name recognition than anyone else in the field; she's likely to have much more money as well.  As such, the news might be more willing to present her as a "front-runner" than they would anyone in the GOP field (nobody there has these same advantages).  If there's no GOP primary, media will draw much more conflict out of the Dem primary.  Hillary should be praying for no front-runner to develop in the GOP primary).