Bush takes immigration case directly to GOP

But Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said eagerness to tighten border security should lead skeptics to back the bill, which includes funding to do just that.

“I have Border Patrol agents who are working overtime to protect the border,” Chertoff said in an interview on MSNBC. “... This problem at the border has been building for 30 years.”

Chertoff held out hope that senators could reach a compromise that met Bush’s goals while addressing qualms of conservative advocates of even tighter borders.

“I think Republicans are looking at an enforcement enhancement package,” he acknowledged. He predicted that a final bill would include “enhanced penalties, basically making sure the enforcement parts of this bill are as strong as they can be.”

Make-or-break test for Bush?
Political analysts told NBC News that the immigration bill represented a critical test of Bush’s ability to pass any major domestic legislation as he enters the final year and a half of his presidency burdened by dissatisfaction on both sides of the aisle with U.S. progress in Iraq and irritation at his continued support for embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

“The continued failure of Iraq and the cost of Iraq, in lives and money, has spread into his capacity to govern and to push his own agenda domestically,” James Thurber, a presidential scholar at American University in Washington, told NBC’s Andrea Mitchell.

“It used to be Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, but now it’s Iraq, immigration, Gonzales, [I. Lewis “Scooter”] Libby,” former Republican presidential adviser David Gergen said. “The equation has changed, and it’s all bad news for the president.”

For now, Democrats are content to sit on the sidelines and let the Republicans expose their divisions. Reid and other Democratic leaders sent Bush a letter declaring that it was up to him to bring his own party into line.

“It will take stronger leadership by you to ensure the opponents of the bill do not block its path forward,” the letter said. “Simply put, we need many more than seven Republicans” to support the bill.

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