Bush scolds balking GOP

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President Bush yesterday renewed his attack on Republicans who oppose his immigration bill, again charging that they are trying to "frighten people" and calling on supporters to rally around the compromise.

The president pleaded with senators to "show courage and resolve" to withstand outrage from voters in their districts.

"It is right to argue for what you believe and recognize that compromise might be necessary to move the bill along. And it is right to take political risk for members of the United States Congress," Mr. Bush said in his second impassioned plea this week on the issue and the second time that he has accused Republicans of trying to scare voters by labeling provisions in the bill an "amnesty."

But many Republican senators say the bill is both an amnesty and unworkable and argue that Mr. Bush's barbs are off the mark.

"I'm not going around frightening people. People are frightened, and they're trying to scare the politicians into voting the way they want them to," said Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican, whose opposition to the bill has earned him standing ovations at speeches and events back home during the past week.

Mr. Bush's challenge followed a speech in Georgia on Tuesday that infuriated Republican opponents of his bill. And the renewed challenge came just a day after White House press secretary Tony Snow said the administration was trying to "lower the temperature and get people to talk about basic principles."

The fight is taking a serious toll on Republicans. The Washington Times reported yesterday that small donations to the Republican National Committee have dropped by an estimated 40 percent and that a grass-roots rebellion over immigration is part of the problem.

The immigration "grand bargain" was the product of closed-door negotiations by a small bipartisan group of senators and the Bush administration. It offers a multistep path to citizenship to illegal aliens, creates a new guest-worker program for some future workers and rewrites the definitions for future immigration to cut out extended-family immigration and give an advantage to those with needed skills.

Senators will try to finish up the bill next week.

Briefing reporters yesterday, two of Mr. Bush's Cabinet secretaries also took shots at critics.