BUSH TO SNATCH DEFEAT FROM THE JAWS OF VICTORY

Bush might actually have gotten a bump from the NSA story, to judge from the snap ABC/Washington Post poll, which says the public supports phone-data mining -- but I think he's about to lose his base:

President Bush will address the nation on immigration reform Monday night from the Oval Office....

Bush will lay out an immigration proposal on how to deal with the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants currently living in the United States. The president has been a strong advocate of some type of guest-worker program, where immigrants would come to the United States to work for a few years -- with the proper paperwork -- then would have to return to their respective home countries at some point.

Legislation to address the controversial issue has suffered many setbacks in Congress, but lawmakers hope to reach a deal by Memorial Day....

Unless he flip-flops in the speech -- dropping the guest-worker program and rejecting any path to citizenship for undocumented workers, which would mean rejecting what could soon be approved by the Senate -- he's going to infuriate the rage junkies who put him where he is today. They hated Clinton, then he made them hate Saddam; now they hate immigrants and he just doesn't understand that they don't want him telling them not to.

I love it that he's sticking his neck out even further for this (along with his party's collective neck), making it a prime-time media event. I say this all the time, but if this goes all the way -- if a guest-worker/citizenship bill is signed into law -- the rage junkies will not come out in November to vote Republican. Meanwhile, as far as the base is concerned, he has a Harriet Miers/Dubai situation on his hands, except in this case he seems to be acting more determined to get his way, rather than backing off.