Demagogue

WaPo's Weisman and VandeHei recount the successful attempt of Senator Hagel and others to get the Bush White House to scuttle conservatives' attempt to amend the immigration bill to stipulate that the 200,000 low-skilled immigrants allowed to enter the country under a new temporary-worker visa would have to leave when the visa expired.

According to WaPo, the conservative senators argued, ineffectively, that

Bush has always said he backs a "temporary worker program," not a permanent funnel of immigrants to the United States.

Actually, it's worse than that. In Bush's big May 15 speech, he said flatly:

And temporary workers must return to their home country at the conclusion of their stay.

Now it's been made clear that -- according to the White House -- temporary workers need not return to their home countries after all. Was Bush's speech statement just a lie?

... But if Bush didn't mean what he said, maybe he shouldn't have said it. Or does he have so much contempt for his own base -- what Sen. Hagel, in a revealingly snotty outburst, called "the political lowest common denominator" -- that he thinks he can con them with impunity?