President Bush’s nationally televised address on immigration on Monday night was intended as a grand gesture to revive his collapsing presidency, but instead he has plunged the Republicans into a political centrifuge, breaking the party down into its raw elements, whose collisions are triggering explosions of unexpected and ever greater magnitude.

The nativist Republican base is at the throat of the business community. The Republican House of Representatives, in the grip of the far right, is at war with the Republican Senate. The evangelical religious right is paralysed while the Catholic church is a mobilising force behind demonstrations by Hispanic immigrants. Every effort Bush makes to hold a nonexistent Republican centre generates an opposing effect within his party.
guardian.co.uk

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