Posted on 01/15/2004 7:07:05 AM PST by cricket
January 15, 2004 -- PRESIDENT Bush's im- migration/amnesty proposal will probably be remembered in history as the idea that saved a political party. By taking the lead in extending the benefits of legal protections to more than 10 million illegal immigrants now living in the United States, Bush has taken a bold and dramatic step to avert the extinction of his own party.
Until Bush acted, the grinding inevitability of demographic change was likely to doom the GOP to an early death. As America became 1 percent more Hispanic each year, the Republicans could not concede this growing group to the Democrats by 2-1 ratios without risking total annihilation down the road.
The Republicans have got to break the solid demographic phalanx that sustains the Democratic Party: Blacks, Hispanics and single white women. Together, this group cast 25 percent of votes in 1990, 32 percent in 2000 and will account for 40 percent in 2008.
But by embracing the cause of Hispanic immigrants and extending to them elemental civil rights and minimum-wage protections, Bush has struck a blow on their behalf that will resonate in their voting habits for generations to come.
His legislative proposals are akin to the sponsorship of a sweeping civil-rights bill in 1963-65 by Presidents Kennedy and Johnson and will have a similar effect in binding Hispanics to the Republicans as the civil-rights legislation did in linking blacks to the Democrats.
For decades, Republicans systematically alienated Hispanics by insisting on English-only initiatives, opposing benefits for illegal immigrants and demanding an end even to free public schools for the children of those who came here illegally. These measures drove Hispanics into the waiting arms of Democrats. Bush has now acted to reverse the legacy of these initiatives and to welcome Hispanics into the GOP.
As Catholic voters, who take their religion seriously, Hispanics are a natural Republican constituency. Recent data that closely links the frequency of church attendance to party-voting habits supports the theory that this very religious voting group is likely to adhere to the Republican Party once its platform stops repelling them at every turn.
Republican efforts to win black voters have proven largely fruitless. Even the appointment of blacks to the two top jobs in the Bush foreign policy apparatus has failed to generate any significant African-American support for Bush in the polls. But candidates who appeal to the Hispanic vote - Gov. Pataki in New York, Gov. Rick Perry in Texas and the Bushes in Florida and Texas - have shown a real ability to get large shares of Hispanic voters.
As Hispanics follow the traditional paths of upward mobility that immigrant groups have trod before them, they are likely to lean more and more toward the Republicans - just as Irish and Italians do these days, abandoning the Democratic orientation of their ancestors.
Hispanics hold the key to the political outcomes in many major states. California, Texas and Florida are heavily influenced by their participation as are New York, New Jersey and Illinois. These are the key battleground states that hold the balance of power between the parties.
Apart from the politics of the issue, the merits also dictate the Bush initiative. America has 4 percent of the world's population but 25 percent of its wealth. It is incumbent on us to open our doors to those who seek upward mobility.
The only thing standing between subsistence and starvation in Mexico, and much of Central America, is the money sent home to needy families by hard working men and women in the United States who tend our gardens, wash our dishes and clean our floors. It is not American workers who they are putting out of jobs, it is American robots. The alternative to their low wage work is not American labor but machines.
The United States needs the skills, energy, savvy and willingness to work hard of our illegal immigrants. They are illegal only because our laws have been nativist and short-sighted. Now Bush is setting them right.
The language is that of a Democrat operative and a smart one; think what gives rise to the language are larger realities but not those that exclusively drive George Bush.
Facts are facts. I won't you let you redefine Christianity - the bible is the authority for Christians. The bible says Jesus Christ is God and that there is One God expressed in 3 persons (a compound unity). If you don't believe it, you are no Christian. My authority for saying that is the bible, the apostles, and 2000 years of Christian history.
Muslims say Jesus is NOT God and that God is not triune which directly contradicts the Christian view.
Simply put, muslims and Christians disagree on the very nature of God, on who He is. Both cannot be true logically. You lose the argument.
Muslims do not believe in the "Father". The authority is the Koran for them - and their God is not the same God as the God in the bible. They contradict completely. Both can't be true - logic doesn't allow it. And they are speaking to a false God as much as the Philistines were speaking to a false God when they prayed to Dagon. So, yes, they might as well be speaking to a doorknob if they are praying to a non-existent God.
Please. Give me a break.
8 years under the Clintons have burned away most of the positivity Conservatives have in this country.
Agree. . .so better to put some legal parameters around it; more control for us; less sympathy for the uninvited illegals.
Well, I guess 'change' is not the highest ranked word in the Conservative vocabulary; and perhaps that is why this is met with such resistance.
But the realities are 'what they are' and for sure it is a reality that we cannot turn the clock back on millions of illegals currently employed here; nor the economic benefits of said employment.
Will say,however; that I think if they are found guilty of a crime. . .or participating in a gang or somesuch. . ."OUT/HOME THEY GO"; and with no legal interruptions whatsoever.
No, that is where you are wrong, it is spinelessness on the right that is the problem.
But if we show strenght by shuting the (pro-socialist) press in this country, we can start fixing it.
But the problem is that it would take a armed revolution or a military couq to do that.
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