Posted on 01/26/2005 7:25:12 PM PST by Aetius
..........There's another reality Mr. Bush is facing up to and it's called the Hispanic vote. Paleocons and nativists may think the key GOP demographic is uneducated whites. But it's hard to imagine a majority Republican future without at least being competitive among Hispanics. In this sense, the guest-worker proposal isn't just an exercise in economic sanity but also in long-term party building on a par with FDR's capture of the black vote..........
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
Reading this, and other editorials from the WSJ, almost convinces me that this "conservative" media organ despises the poeple who actually vote for the GOP without having to be pandered to. Its as if they are embarrassed by the fact that the GOP owes its victories to people (you know, the rubes and rabble who oppose abortion on demand, gay marriage/civil unions, racial preferences, and open borders) who dare project their social and cultural agenda onto the party; or in other words, things that don't go over as well as tax cuts and deregulation in the WSJ circle.
The bit about "uneducated whites" just oozes with contempt. (I considered that they what they meant by this were base Republicans who had not been properly educated, WSJ style, on immigration, but quickly decided it applied to working class whites instead) This disdain is also somewhat puzzling because if we follow their logic, then Bush's guest worker/amnesty plan would do much to win over the the latino vote, which would then presumably mean that the key GOP constituency would be uneducated Hispanics! What, is one uneducated group better than another? Do certain votes have more moral worth than others?
Its also sad to see the WSJ is still apparently unable to address the immigration issue without attacking and demonizing as 'nativists' all those who disagree with them. This is regrettable for at least three reasons; (1) Such name-calling, and attempts to discredit the message by attacking the messengers, are trademark leftwing tactics, designed to stop and poison any debate on any contentious issue, and (2) As I already said, these 'paleocons and nativists' are generally reliable Republicans, who agree with the WSJ on most economic issues, but apparently dissent here is cause for damnation, and finally (3) The ideas and views held by these 'paleocons and nativist' are in fact mainstream, majority views of Americans (thus the reason for the name-calling, see #1), so the WSJ is actually insulting every American who opposes amnesty for illegal aliens, and who supports reductions in legal immigration -- that'd be anywhere from 40-75% of the population depending on the poll.
Its fine that the WSJ favors open borders, but do they really have to engage in such leftwing style rhetoric to attack people who are otherwise allies? Who do they thing they are appealing to?
An immigration bill has been introduced in the House of Reps.
Excellent analysis! Thanks.
The WSJ employees' attacks remind me of the Goldwater v. Rockefeller debates of the 1960s. When Rockefeller sensed that a Goldwater swing in the primaries was possible, "the Rockefeller organization reached to newer and lower depths. As Stu Spencer, Rockefeller's campaign aide put it, 'We had to destroy Barry Goldwater as a member of the human race.'"
http://criterion.uchicago.edu/issues/iii2/hore.html
Liberal Republicans use stupid liberal tricks to promote internationalist views. Sovereignty, Nation of laws mean nothing. There are more important thing$. Nothing has changed.
Very thoughtful and thorough review of the WSJ article.
I guess immigration must be very important to large US business interests. Otherwise, how to explain WSJ, Bush attitudes. I am in business, though not a large one affected by immigration.
As has been written in a couple of editorials lately, immigration is the issue where the Democrats could really hurt the GOP. Bush needs to take note of the views of his constituency on this.
I guess we will be marking you down as one in disagreement with the mainstream social conservatism of the Wall Street Journal. I don't think that the WSJ is attacking people for being pro-life since the WSJ editorially supported Operation Rescue which was quite pro-life.
The WSJ is just not into having a collective nervous breakdown over the Mexican immigration into the US across our southern borders. Opponents are behaving quite similarly to their anti-Irish forebears in the mid-19th century (the Know Nothings, remember them?) and thus, like those forebears are described as nativists. What made the Know Nothings an embarassment in the 19th century makes the neo-Iron Curtain on the Rio Grande crowd embarassing in this century.
Look into the ring leaders of this anti-immigrant hysteria. You will find all sorts of connections between them and such groups as Federation for American Immigration Reform (ironically: FAIR). In turn, you will find the connections to Zero Population Growth and other groups of their ilk who are of the political left while asserting an, ummmm, agenda of eugenics to "breed a better (i.e. more Nordic or, ummmm, Aryan) human race" and suppress the rest, keeping a few around as servants.
I would suspect that the WSJ respectably believes not that Hispanics are THE key GOP constituency group but A key constituency group---fellow humans to be wooed and won. You might consider that Mexicans have spread all over the United States in numbers probably far larger than is feared by those who dislike them and have assimilated rather well into our society and into our nation. That is certainly the case here in NW Illinois (a state with the 4th largest Mexican population in the US).
They are here whether you like it or not and a lot more are coming. Those Hispanics (and I have not a drop of Hispanic blood in my generally Nordic and Irish ancestry) are not coming here for the "freedom" of daughter Lucia to abort their grandchildren or so that son Pablo will be able to get it on with Lance and Bruce or with his pet poodle. They came here for the same reasons that many of our ancestors came here: economic opportunity in a land of personal, political and religious freedom. "I've got mine and to hell with you" is NOT a respectable American credo.
Do you want Dubya to tell the Mexicans: "The GOP would rather render itself permanently politically castrated on all issues than accept the support of Hispanics. After all, we have standards, you know."? I you care about social conservatism, those are OUR reinforcements crossing the border to break the roadblocks to repealing Roe vs. Wade created by the selfish-American subset of our community who have been too lazy or too self-centered (both within their rights) to bear the numbers of children that their parents and grandparents did and thereby caused much economic dislocation.
Worried about American jobs? Repeal GATT and get the US out of WTO. Then destroy WTO (a sort of economic UN created to hamper the US.) Use what is left of American power built by our wiser ancestors to crush the EU as an institution together with all of its similar little political and economic tyrannies. Act against "American" businesses who wish to sell their souls to unemploy American workers for a few bucks on the bottom line or many.
Worried about social program costs eaten up by "illegal" immigrants? Name a politician with such a windtunnel between his ears who will advocate letting them die in the gutter. Not even Tancredo is going to do that. Planned Barrenhood Pete Wilson once tried it with Proposition 87 in California, was struck down by the courts on 14th Amendment Equal Protection grounds specifying the actual language of the Constitution requiring equal treatment of all PERSONS (not all citizens) in American jurisdiction. Thus was Ronaldus Maximus's California turned into the dismal Demonratic ruin that it has becme today. Wilson offended the Mexicans en masse into the Demonratic column. That sure was cutting edge.
It used to be conservative doctrine that the social program budgets should be cut or eliminated. In recent decades, we conservatives have been happy to pass the cost of caring for our own aging parents and grandparents along to federal, state and local governments. If we are going to maintain those programs, the 14th Amendment says that they must be equally provided to all PERSONS ("illegal" immigrants included) not merely to all citizens. Strict construction demands that the actual words of the 14th Amendment be applied. Repeal the 14th Amendment (fat chance!) or choose between abolishing the programs or paying for them. There are no other realistic or legal options.
As to the rhetoric, I know that I used a lot worse rhetoric against John F. Kennedy (and anything else named Kennedy with Hyannisport roots), George McGovern, Lowell P. Weicker, Jr., Nelson Rockefeller, The Arkansas Antichrist, Mrs. Antichrist, Baabaa Boxer, Patrick Leahy, Dick "Eddie Haskell" Durbin, and Tiny Tom Daschle. You want bad and misplaced rhetoric? Read some of antiCatholic filth in the online newsletters of the border-obsessed and quite unofficial "border patrols" (the guys with American flag bandanas around their heads, firearms and a steadily consumed two cases of suds at the ready, terrifying any mamacitas and bambinos they happen across on the desert in the middle of the night in the full moon). Look particularly for those who rampage against the pope as though he had something to do with their chronic hysteria against Mexicans.
As to those working class whites you claim to defend, I guess that would be my family, among many others. Dad worked for about forty years as a production worker in a cardboard factory. Mom worked for many years as a seamstress and then as a file clerk at Yale. I was the first to graduate high school, much less college and grad school but my family included postal clerks, railroad workers (I did that too and also with my dad in the cardboard factory), store clerks, printing plant workers, nurses, office workers, etc. I can assure you that none of them lost sleep over Mexican immigration. We are glad our ancestors got here and we are not going to deny the opportunity to anyone else coming here for a better life. Most adult males in my family when I was growing up were union members, some union leaders, and most wound up voting Republican as did my grandmother who, in her day, probably made Eleanor Roosevelt look like a Republican but was voting GOP by the late 1960s.
One task of conservatives should be to create schools for the incoming Hispanics to keep their kids out of the ignorance creating clutches of government schools which serve as the parochial schools of the Demonrats and other leftists. Do that and you will see Hispanics vote about as Republican as blacks have voted Democrat. Create similar schools for blacks and you will see them slowly peeled off the Demonratic carcass as well.
Muffy and Skipper down at the polo club are never again going to be the only sort of folk who run the GOP. In fact, they were not the backbone of the GOP a century ago either when Karl Rove's second favorite President, William McKinley, was campaigning on sensible protective tariff policies, full lunch buckets and an ever improving life for rank and file Ameicans. The GOP was the party that fought the Ku Klux Klan. That is one reason why Robert "Sheets" Byrd is a Demonrat.
Usually the border obsessives are knocking themselves out using the word "illegal" to separate what they imagine to be "bad" immigration from "good" immigration. If you wonder why you are feeling insulted, note that ending "illegal" immigration is apparently not adequate for you and you also want to reduce the "legal" kind as well. We are not going to be governed by polls with variances of 35 pecentage points on whether they agree with thee or me. Here we do it the old-fashioned way---at the ballot box.
Here's the real deal: Do you want Hillary as president or not? Do you want the forty-seven fifth columnist "paleowhatever" pantywaists and the Demonratic leftist mob to be high-fiving each other in triumph over an expansive GOP and over our country? Do you want an abortion-free America? Do you want Lance and Bruce snuggling on the reverses of our coins with a slogan: "In Beelzebub we trust" on both sides? Do you want tax hikes for the rich? Or tax hikes for thee and me, as well, because that is always the Demonratic solution to everything? Demonrats running the Senate and House? The New York Times as newspaper of record of the Beelzebubette (Madame C) presidency???? Barney Frank on the Supreme Court with Pat Leahy and Barack Obama and three more like them????? And all that each of these things portends????????? Is the doomed desire to prevent the further Hispanicization of the US worth all those things?
Only if you think that the Hispanics are incapable of being fellow citizens as able and willing to contribute as any other group that has come to America is futile resistance to this immigration going to have any purpose. It is not a practical purpose. Since the founding of our nation, there have been Americans who have feared changes in American demographics. They have never won and they will not win now. If we can (as we have) assimilate primitive actual Stone Age tribesmen from Vietnam (our very loyal Hmong allies in that war) to the point that the children of usually quite illiterate people have in one generation become valedictorians and salutatorians of their high school classes, we can handle the challenges posed to and by Mexicans coming here for a better life.
Apparently there is going to be a very ugly war among those who call themselves conservative over this old rotgut of nativism and xenophobia. It will cost us on everything worth caring about if the movement does not put a stop to the nativist stuff. The rhetoric is going to get a lot uglier before it settles down. The Wall Street Journal, starting no later than the editorship of Robert Bartlett, has been the premier conservative newspaper in the United States and is likely to remain so under Paul Gigot. Perhaps John Fund will be next. What Bill Buckley and Whittaker Chambers did to Objectivists and Birchers and other folks too far out needs to be done again. WSJ? Jack Kemp? A leader will arise with the authority to smack down the Tancredos. The sooner the better.
Unlike liberal America, the conservative America is not an ongoing moan and groan fest of people cowering in corners fearful of changing demographics but a confident and robust nation up to its challenges and capable of prospering in spite of change. Some rise and some fall economically on talent or diligence which is as it should be. Whatever problems we have are not caused by these maligned folks from south of our border.
Shall we also seal the Canadian borders? If not, why not? Will we shoot the immigrants at the border? Will the shooters be self-proclamed "border patrols" or our all too small military which is already quite overcommitted elsewhere? Will we cut and run from Iraq to order American soldiers to fire on people coming here for a better life. Mexican mamacitas and their kids gunned down near Tombstone trying to escape into the US: Details on Eyewitless ACTION News at 5!
The name Berlin Wall was already taken. What shall we call ours?
Should biblical scholars AND child molestors be allowed to enter the US?
Should the government act on steroid abusers and other baseball players?
Should schools teach English literature and gay "fisting" courses?
Makes about as much sense as joining "illegal" aliens and "potential terrorists."
Ask yourself why CNN (a mortal enemy of conservatism almost as much as SeeBS) is asking such questions in polls. Same reason as why liberals think people should vote their REAL interests (getting paid off by Demonratic programs in exchange for rejecting God and Western Civilization and accepting abortion and anal "marriage" among lavender Demonrats). The GOP is winning elections, controlling the White House, the Congress and the Senate and the Demonrats want their power back and they want it back NOW before babies are protected in the womb and Lance and Bruce are back in the closet where they belong if they really MUST do what they apparently insist on doing.
On another important issue, however, the Rockefellers were a financial mainstay of the despicable Planned Barrenhood operations and Goldwater's wife Peggy served on the National Board of Directors of Planned Barrenhood for about 35 years until her death. Goldwater was NEVER a moral conservative. He publicly bragged about bringing a daughter to abort a grandchild and was a cheerleader for normalizing homosexuality. He also supported Gerald Ford over Reagan and never got over his bitterness toward Reagan for opening the GOP to social conservatives. Barry had his virtues but he was an oddball and a very obsolete oddball in his later years.
Stuart Spencer later worked WITH Goldwater in attacking Reagan in the 1976 primaries with the same "Keep his finger off the nuclear weapons button" advertising stunts that LBJ had used against Goldwater in 1964.
I never said anything to suggest isolationism. On the contrary we were happy to see that Goldwater saw threats from the Soviets' "wars of liberation." The old-style, pre-W.W.II isolationism and today's Buchanan isolationism was NOT Goldwater's bag.
One man's "unilateral interventionism" is another man's recognition that communism was the enemy and not something that needed to be made robust and militarily stronger as is the practice of today's Rockefeller Republican "free traders." That was closer to the debate.
We Americans won the debate vis-a-vis the Soviets but we're losing it vis-a-vis Red China.
You brought up some stuff that never happened in the 1960s. You sent me a-googling.
A review of a 1990s book by Lee Edwards, "Goldwater: The Man Who Made a Revolution," Regnery Press. The review is by Brian Janiskee.
"In the brief final section, "Paradox," Edwards attempts to give an account of Goldwater’s recent stands favoring abortion and gay rights. Concerning the former, Edwards points out that there might be less to explain: his late wife Peggy had a lifelong association with Planned Parenthood. Edwards, however, does make a strong case that Goldwater has dissembled on the issue over the years, especially at election time; he supported, and then later opposed a Human Life Amendment. As for gay rights, Edwards states that "a major reason for Goldwater’s sudden, outspoken, pro-gay campaign was, as so often in his life, personal"; some relatives are homosexuals. Edwards finds it difficult to reconcile the Goldwater of 1994 with the Goldwater of 1964 who said "it is impossible to maintain freedom and order and justice without religious or moral sanctions." But abortion and homosexual rights were not even on the horizon in 1964. . ."
"In closing, Edwards answers the question 'Who was Barry Goldwater? He was a cradle conservative who opposed the Bigs of America Big Government, Big Business, Big Labor, Big Media.'"
His anticommunism, his opposition to sending all power to government employees in Washington, the attacks on him by the media, and his anti-Big resonated with a lot of us little blue collar critters We'd seen McCarthy, Chambers, et al. destroyed and we were p***ed. We liked what we read in National Review and a few other places. Goldwater was our man.
RE: He also supported Gerald Ford over Reagan and never got over his bitterness toward Reagan for opening the GOP to social conservatives.
I've googled for the claim that Goldwater and Reagan disliked each other. Do you have sources? I found none but then I am not going to read through thousands of hits returned by google for, Goldwater Reagan. I'd appreciate a reference. Sincerely. I was not aware of their dislike for each other except for a couple of Freeper claims that it was true. TIA.
RE: Spencer
Stuart Spencer also worked FOR Reagan on campaigns. Why would Goldwater be paying someone to campaign against Reagan in 1976? Besides, my reference above was to something Spencer said ABOUT how Rockefeller felt and not how Spencer felt.
Something else from the book review is appropriate: "In that time (1960s) of reckless speech and easy slander, Goldwater was assailed as fascist, racist, reactionary, and just plain nuts. Goldwater did not always help his cause."
Absolutely true on both counts. But we liked Goldwater because he was NOT packaged and marketed as a box of cornflakes -- he was real and he was a patriot!
BTW, occasional Freeper Rick Perlstein has an excellent book on Barry Goldwater, "Before the Storm."
Lou Dobbs is cut of a different cloth than most of CNN. Do a google search and you will find what happened with Dobbs about 1999. He was railing against Bill Clinton, the shirts didn't like it, so he walked out, in the middle of a show, and told them to shove it. Their ratings went down and they begged him back...on his terms.
1. I made the comments about the WSJ not caring for social conservatives mainly because of the leftwing style "uneducated whites" attack on GOP voters. If the editorial page takes a pro-life stand then good, but I don't doubt for a second that they would go left on things like racial preferences (after all, corportate America preaches the diversity religion as much as universities these days) and gay marriage.
2. There is a lot of room between an Iron Curtain on the Rio Grande and the rather soft attempts we make today to stop illegal immigration. To present it as a choice between what you want on one end, and such draconian measures on the other is a false choice.
3. Say what you will about the Know-nothings and nativists of the early 20th century, but the fact is that they eventually won, and the nation no doubt benefitted from it. Congress passed laws in the early 1920s that cut immigration from mass levels to more moderate levels. We went from about 1 million immigrants per year, to about 200,000, and that remained the case until about 1970 when the promised-they-wouldn't-happen effects of a 1965 reform law reinstituted mass immigration. But we had 40+ yrs of moderate levels of immigration; do you doubt that helped assimilate all of those Italians, Germans, etc?
4. Your point about the ring-leaders of the 'anti-immigrant' hysteria is, well first of all, good job on once again using leftist tactics and painting those who disagree with you as "anti-immigrant", but anyway your point is not a very good one. First of all, that some of these people are otherwise-leftists is irrelevant when trying to form a single-issue coalition. Secondly, do you thing it only goes one way? Look at who favors the WSJ/Bush ideals of amnesty and increased legal immigration -- the Democratic party, all sorts of radical ethnic interests groups, immigration lawyers, ACLU, and now even groups like the AFL-CIO. Third, and cloesly related to the second; I'm sure you can find radicals on the immigration-reducion (see, that's a more accurate description) front, but so too can you find extremists on the pro-mass immigration front. A University of Texas-Arlington professor, named Jose Angel Gutierrez is a good example, and among his gems is this one, "We have an aging white America. . . . They are dying. . . . They are
And done in a manner that instructs how to express views without sinking into rhetoric that despoils the very purpose of discourse. A tough act to follow but your superb example is there for all to learn. (But will they? Hmmm.)
Come on, fess up. You could not have googled that much knowledge and gained that much insight in so short of time. You're a pro aren't you? :)
I will say to you that, unless the GOP attracts the Hispanic voting majority (which we are verrrry close to doing), the GOP is finished. The Demonrats are busily trying to arrange for the GOP and conservatives to be viewed by Hispanics as racist enemies. The Tancredos and the self-annointed "border patrols" are unwittingly cooperating to the max.
In Bush's first run for governor of Texas, he got 25% of the almost unanimously Mexican Hispanic vote. This probably was attributable to family members like brother Jeb marrying Hispanics. He got 35% of that Mexican vote in Texas in his re-election run in 1998. I forget the national Hispanic number for 2000 but he got 45% (though some claim 40%) of the entire Hispanic vote in 2004. This is very dramatic evidence that the GOP is on the cusp of attaining a majority among ALL Hispanic voters so long as the Tancredos do not succeed in assisting the Demonrats by making the face of the GOP the face of anti-Mexican bigotry. You may disagree with that assessment but can you cite one, even one remark by Tancredo that was flattering to any Mexicans other than some mythical and self-serving claim that those here want the rest to remain in Mexico? Does Tancredo recognize the contributions of Mexicans to Colorado's history, culture and economy?
The Mexican vote is less Republican than the Cuban vote in Florida or elsewhere and less Demonratic than the Puerto Rican vote. The Puerto Rican vote in New York is said to be trending slightly more GOP in the recent presidential race. In the future, the Mexican vote can and will turn to the GOP on social issues and turn the overall Hispanic vote with it.
There has even been an uptick in the support for the GOP by blacks in the latest election. 16% of the black vote in Ohio was an important part of the crucial victory there. Nationally, the improvement was 2 or 3%. We are not going to get the votes of blacks or Hispanics without earning them. We can do that consistently with GOP principles.
In 1968, the most Democratic demographic group was Jewish voters who gave a mere 3% of their vote to Richard Nixon, compared to 8% or so of blacks. By carefully driving wedges into the Demonratic coalition, Reagan got a full 45% of the Jewish vote in 1980 because Jewish voters got very tired of Jimmuh Cahtuh and distrustful of his intentions on Israel and dismissive of his reliability, because the Chassidic and very conservative Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Schneerson appeared with Reagan on the Rebbe's doorstep for the cameras (unprecedented support for any presidential candidate of any party), because Reagan asked earnestly for their vote and tendered public respect that had been earned. Reagan lost NEW YORK CITY by a mere 27,000 votes (a better performance than any GOP presidential candidate since Calvin Coolidge).
The Muffy and Skipper reference is to the typical airhead supporter of Planned Barrenhood and its California hero Pete Wilson who singlehandedly destroyed the previously dominant California GOP with his utterly unconstitutional Proposition 187. READ the Fourteenth Amendment. There is, according to well-settled principles of legal interpretation, no room for interpretation where the words of an enactment, law, regulation or constitutional provision is clear and unambiguous. The 14th Amendment was very broadly worded and has proven to be a Pandora's box of judicial mischief. That is what happens when sloppy amendments are added to the constitution. On social issues, the entire leftist enterprise often seems to depend on the provisions of the 14th Amendment. We may hate it but the words of the amendment are the words of the amendment. No court is likely to ever allow a cutoff of equal protection to each and every PERSON (not just each and every citizen) in the US because the 14th Amendment flatly forbids unequal treatment. Disagree with me on anything you like but the law, as written, is the law and the constitution trumps immigration statutes. Our courts deviate to the left when they deviate. They will give you no relief on this. The SCOTUS which trashed Texas laws against sodomy, overturning its relatively recent Hardwick vs. Bowers standard allowing Georgia to criminalize sodomy is not going to say: "Let's ignore the Equal Protection clause since the "border patrols" are very upset with Mexicans."
The Know Nothings and nativists were strongest in the 1840s and 1850s. See the movie Gangs of New York (keeping your kids far, far away from the shenanigans on screen).
The mass immigration of Germans and Irish into this country began long before there were immigration restrictions. Most of my German ancestors had reached Indiana by about 1849 and much of the German immigration was accomplished before 1880. Irish were steadier but there was massive Irish immigration during the potato famine of the 1840s.
The immigration restrictions imposed by a new wave of Know Nothings with the usual agendas were aimed at Italians in part in the sorry age of prohibition and bathtub gin. Far more, those immigration laws were aimed at Jews from Eastern Europe and Eastern European Catholics.
The remark about leftist resistance to immigration for racist reasons has to do with Planned Barrenhood founder Margaret Higgins Sanger, herself ironically the twelfth chld of an Irish family, who wrote of exterminating "human weeds" and of creating a "race of thoroughbreds" and was a pal of felklow Planned Barrenhood leader Lothrop Stoddard, author of Rising Tide of Color in which he posited a group of racial "worlds": White Man's, Brown Man's, Red Man's Yellow Man's, Brown Man's, of which only the Nordic portion of the "White Man's World" and a small number of servants should be allowed to live. She also was a pal of the likes of Madison Grant and other eugenics apostles. There is more than a whiff of Sangerism among those who would close the borders. They also think that people should have to apply to government for permission to conceive each child.
The naked excesses of Sangerism have been suppressed by what you call leftist criticism.
As to being a leftist, I was a hard right member of the YoungRepublican National Executive Committee for a decade and very involved with Young Americans for Freedom (i.e. the New Right) and, as an attorney, I represented 1100 "Operation Rescue" (not the real name) arrestees who sat in at and shut down abortion mills. Thirty of them were convicted. Five even served post-trial jail time of as many as three weeks.
If and when Professor Gutierrez tries to establish Atzlan on Ameican soil, that is what the United States military and National Guard were created for and both should be used extensively to maximize the Atzlan body count.
Lott was served up on a platter as a reflection of his own cowardly and gutless style of leadership. He NEVER fought for anything other than wanting a GOP majority for graft reasons. We are well rid of him as leader. His critics did us a favor.
The Hispanics in Northwest Illinois tend to be Republican already. Many are small business owners of several generations standing. This year's GOP mayoral candidate in Rockford is a religiously conservative former school board chairwoman who is Mexican. There is only one Demonrat state legislator from this substantial county, a black man from Rockford. The Republicans are furiously socially conservative and s are the Mexicans here. We aren't going to be another california because we aren't going to treat Mexicans as pariahs.
I don't want to just win elections for the GOP or even for conservatives. I also want the Marxist machine that is the Demonratic Party as destroyed nationally as it has been in Texas. How about you?
All that the border mania will produce is Demonratic Party survival, Demonratic party victories and abortion forever in the United States. Rethink your position.
I don't know why this would surprise you. There is a vocal segment of the FR community who's posts constantly betray the same kind of distain.
BTW re: #11 - excellent response.
As to the GOP's need to attract a majority of the Hispanic vote: Its sort of a strange situation the GOP has gotten itself inot here. It has gone along for years with mass immigration -- despite promises made by the sponsors of the laws that reinstated it that the laws would not do so, despite clear evidence that it was detrimental to their electoral prospects, and despite public support for a reduction back to moderate levels of immigration -- and now it finds itself struggling to compete on an increasingly pro-Dem playing field that it could have avoided all along. Instead of implementing a policy of lower immigration which would have greatly slowed the demographic shift (and possibly led to an eventual balance) that would have resulted in an electorate much more agreeable to them. And now it still refuses to cut back on immigration while there is still public support for it, while it could still possibly prevent demographic doom for them.
A rather famous book, in political circles anyway, was written in the 1960s called The Emerging Republican Majority (or something like that) was written. The guy was fairly spot on in his analysis except for one thing; he didn't account for the resumption of mass immigration into the United States, that was unleashed by the 1965 reform law, but whose results didn't come to fruition until the 70s. Now everything has changed. Now this is not to say that political effects should be the chief concern of immigration policy, but its undeniable that the 1965 law and following ones (like the absurd Diversity Visa law passed by the first Bush) have helped the Democrats. In other words, w/o those laws, the GOP would be in much better shape.
But what's done is done, and now the concern must be on the present and future. Having said that, however, it shouldn't be forgotten that such laws as the 1965 were passed under false pretenses. It was promised by the likes of Ted Kennedy, that it wouldn't result in any significant increase in immigration, or a shift in the ethnic balance (they said it then, so it shouldn't be ignored). They were of course, wrong.
As to Bush's performance with Hispanics: Its interesting that you go with the 35% figure for Bush's reelection as Texas Governor in 1998, as the most quoted source put it at 49%, which was one of the reasons Bush was thought to be a possible national GOP superhero with minorities. But its true that others disputed that 49% claim, and put it much lower, as you cite. Nationally, Bush got 35% of the Hispanic vote in 2000, which was a significant improvement upon Bob Dole (but really, that's not saying much at all), but less than Reagan's 37% in 1984.
We'll just have to disagree about Bush's 2004 performance. I think the 44% figure has been thoroughly debunked, by both the left and the right. At least two of the sponsors of the exit polls, NBC and the AP, have revised it lower. They even lowered the always suspect report of Bush winning 59% of the latino vote in Texas to 49% in 2004. Nationally, the 38-40% range is the best bet, and it goes along with the tendency of the latino vote to follow the white vote -- from 2000 to 2002 the GOP improved among whites and latinos from 54 to 59 percent, and from 35 to 38 percent respectively. 2004 was pretty much a repeat of 2002 with these two groups, albeit on a much larger scale.
Believe me, I want to believe that Bush did do so well with Hispanics, but I'm afraid its almost certainly the case that the 44% number is overstated by 4-6 points, and one of the reasons may have actually been an oversampling of pro-GOP Cubans in the initial data.
3. As to social issues turing the Mexican vote: Well remember, the GOP has only recently begun to win among white Catholics. Now even if it is the case that a larger percentage of white Catholics are the Kennedy/Kerry types (who are really devout, but just can't let that influence their politics in any way!) than are Hispanic ones, it still must be the case that other issues trump social issues with most Mexicans, or otherwise they'd already be voting GOP. Other reasons could include the fact that most Hispanic leaders (at least elected ones) are Democratic, and the fact that as with all groups family is the biggest influence on a person, or in other words most Mexican immigrants and then their American-born children arrive in a heavily pro-Democrat environment. Both of these of course serve to reinforce the Dem hold on Hispanics generally, and Mexicans specifically, and make it harder for the GOP to make inroads.
As to Puerto Ricans: I hope I'm wrong, but I'll bet that Hillary blows out the GOP nominee among them in 2008.
As to the Jewish vote: This is sort of a reverse case of the Hispanic dynamic, in that here social liberalism (and history) leads most Jewish Americans to vote Democratic. Israel is no doubt important, but if treatment of Israel were number one among Jews then the GOP would win their vote. Reagan is a good example; his showing was great, but even against the abyssmal Carter, he couldn't quite get to that 50% mark, and its been downhill ever since, with some small upward ticks. I was unaware of Reagan's showing in NYC, but its hard to imagine that happening again. The city's whites are largely social liberals who apparently hate the idea that Judges shouldn't rule the nation, and who feel the need to impose their values nationwide through them, and the city is also more diverse now. It would be interesting to see how the city's majority-minority population feels about social issues, but it doesn't really matter as they vote overwhelmingly for far-left politicians. I wonder if Jewish Americans will someday regret their traditional support for mass immigration if it leads to a large Muslim population here that exerts enough political pull to change US policy towards Israel.
But anyway, the Jewish vote is tiny, and generally important only in a couple of states, and of those only Florida is in play.
4. As to Pete Wilson: again, remember that the Davis administration refused to carry through on an appeal of the finding of the Democrat district judge, so it never got its full day in court because the Gov and Attorney General didn't do their duty to defend it. And the facts are that the GOP was losing the Hispanic vote in California before, during, and now after Wilson. To say that Prop 187, passed by 60% of Californians, destroyed the GOP is to parrot the rhetoric of an agenda whose sole purpose seems to be to make the Calif GOP into a carbon copy of the Dems on immigration. GOP candidate Dan Lungren did even worse among Hispanics than Davis in 1998 despite saying all the right things. At most it exacerbated the situation with regards to Hispanics, but a combination of things have sunk the GOP there. Have you ever considered why Texas is so Republican now, while Calif is the opposite, despite Texas not being too far behind in demographics? Its not because Mexican-Texans are more conservative than Mexican-Californians (though that is somewhat true), rather its because white Texans are very conservative and white Californians are not. Whites in Texas routinely give the GOP 70+% of their vote, whereas in California whites favor the Dems. So Calif, like Illinois, was destined to be trouble for the GOP, and even if there had never been a 187, it'd still be a good bet that the state would have voted for Davis, Boxer, Feinstein, Clinton, Gore, Kerry, all statewide offices other than governor, a Dem majority in the state legislature, and a majority Dem congressional delegation.
5. As to the 14th Amendment: The Courts have completely ignored limiting language dealing with jurisdiction, and anyway its absurd to say that true Constitutional protections for life, liberty, property, etc somehow demand a granting of a benefit, like public education, to people who have no legal right to be here. Even leftwing activist extraordinaire, Justice Brennan, said that public education is not a right in the Pyler vs Doe decision that created so many of these problems. The 14th was all about former slaves, and it has been abused by leftwing judges who use its somewhat ambiguous language as an excuse to impose all sorts of things never intended by the framers of it, just as Chief Justice Burger said in the dissent.
But of course one of the problems of having Courts usurp power from Congress and the states is that any Court can find or take away such implied rights as free public education. The 5-4 Plyer decision could be just as easily overturned if you get the right judges.
Furthermore, it cant' be stated enough that this notion that the Sup Court has the power to be the ultimate arbiter of Constitutional matters is a false one. Jefferson and Madison didn't think so. Jefferson said such a mindset would lead to a tyranny of an oligarchy. Andrew Jackson is reported to have once said, "Justice Marshall has made his decion, now let him enforce it!" (that it dealt with mistreatment of Indians is irrelevant to the point about judicial power).
Congress and the President should not be afraid to stand up to the Courts. Consider, for example, what would happen if those two branches openly defied the inevitable Sup Court imposition of gay marriage/civil unions? What if they publicly deemed it to be an uncontitutional and outrageous power grap by the Court? That would be great, as it would force a public discussion about the proper role of the Courts, and shatter forever the idea that Judiciary can issue orders to its 'coequal branches.'
6. I saw Gangs of New York. I didn't think too much of it, especially compared to Goodfellas, but it was okay.
As to the Know-Nothings: While I don't doubt that the motives of the successful reduction movement have been distorted and mischaracterized, at the same time I don't really care. It is the result of the immigration reductions that matter. Levels went from a million or so a year to about 200,000. During the following 40 yrs we had times of economic boom and depression. We won a World War. And we successfully assimilated millions of immigrants and their descendants. Also, and I'm sure its not a coincidence, the economic status of black Americans improved greatly in the environment of lesser immigration.
But it is this decades long suspension of mass immigration that I have never heard a proponent of today's mass immigration satisfactorally address, especially considering the use of history to justifiy current policy. In other words, proponents of mass immigration constantly speak in glowing terms about the successful assimilation of past waves of immigrants as proof that there is nothing to worry about today, and that those who do worry are ignorant to history (as well as racists and xenophobes of course). But in saying this, these proponents completely ignore the fact that the last wave was cut off! How can you use a historical example of successful assimilation when that past success was aided by a long lull in mass immigration? How can you say with such certainty that the current wave will be as successfully absorbed and assimilated as the past wave when there is no corresponding time-out in mass immigration in sight?
And that is just one reason, though possibly the biggest, to be skeptical of this historical argument. Others include, but are not limited to the modern day presence of such things as welfare services, racial preferences, and PC-approved ethnic interests groups, and the lack of a giant ocean separating the immigrant from his homeland.
7. As to the Sanger-style extremism: I don't doubt that such people exist and are a small part of the groups who want less immigration. But again, that general sentiment in favor of lower levels of immigration and opposition to amnesty has been proven time and again by polls that it is so widespread as to make the Sanger element infinitesimal, and in no way indicative of the vast majority who feel this way.
With regards to Left vs Right on immigration, it does not cut cleanly. Yes, on the Right you have people like the President (though he's proven he's no conservative on more than one issue), and the WSJ, and powerful business interests, and apparently most GOP Senators, who favor not only current levels of mass immigration, but also massively increased levels. I dont' pretend they don't exist, but also don't forget who is agitating for the same thing on the Left -- the Democratic party, radical ethnic interests groups, ACLU types, etc. I seriously doubt it if the Dems would be so supportive of amnesty (notice how their rhetoric always focuses on a path to eventual citizenship versus more ambiguous statements about it from Bush), and high levels of legal immigration if they thought it would hurt them electorally. The same could be said about the GOP, but then again, history is on the side of the Dems.
8. I didn't mean to insult you as being a leftists yourself. I only took exception with what I consider to be standard leftist debate tactics -- such as presenting it as either massive immigration or shooting border crossers and erecting a Berlin wall, and reflexively using blanket terms like 'xenophobe' and characterizations of 'not liking Mexicans' to describe people who merely object to mass immigration and amnesty, when that clearly isn't so.
9. My only point about Lott -- who I dont' think was a very good leader -- was that I find it amusing to listen to Limbaugh and Hannity talk about how he was treated so unfairly compared to former KKK member Roberty Byrd, as if it will make one iota of difference in how the media and minority leaders see the GOP. Of course its not fair, but Byrd's caucasing vote with the Dems, and often venomous and absurd criticisms of Bush insulate him from any and all past offences. Its the same as when they point out how it was Democrats who put up the evil and irredeemable Confederate flag across the South. It doesn't matter, and it never will.
10. Illinois is pretty much already another California. By that I mean it is a large, electoral-vote rich state that has trended and continues to trend further towards the Democrats. And again, as I said earlier, Calif Hispanics favored the Dems before the diabolic 187. The growing latino population was alwasy going to be a problem for the GOP there, but at most 187 sped up a process already well under way. And again, it is the poor GOP showing with whites in California that has truly sunk them in the last ten decade or so. In the future, it may be a poor showing with latinos that is decisive there, but now it is the white vote that sinks them. My guess is that Illinois is not too different in this regard. I mean, sure the state must have a reliably conservative base of the usual suspects -- white evangleicals, businessmen and women, etc -- as does Calif, but I'll bet that most Illinois whites vote for the Dems.
11. As for Texas: GOP ascendancy in the state is a welcome thing indeed. But again, it is due to a realignment among white voters, who routinely give the GOP 70+% of their vote. That is why Texas is the opposite of California. However, whites will lose majority status in the state within the next couple of years, if it hasn't already. They will retain majority status in the electorate for some time, but as that percentage shrinks, the prospects for the Dems increase. I know you may not agree with this, but even during the glory years of GWBush, the party continues to lose convincingly among Texas Hispanics. Bush's successor, the victorious Rick Perry, got clobbered among latinos, getting somewhere between 10-35% of the Hispanic vote ( I know the variation is extreme, but its what I found with a limited search), while winning an overall landslide. Now of course his opponent was Hispanic, but you wouldn't think that would matter so much in conservative Texas. I don't doubt that Hispanics in Texas are more conservative than their Californian counterparts, but apparently not by much. It seems the GOP will have to maintain its dominance among whites in Texas if it is to retain its power in the state, and eventually it will have to do better with Hispanics. I think the former is much more likely thatn the latter.
12. As a person whose views are not likely to become policy anytime soon (despite being shared by most Americans), I constantly reevaluate my position, hoping against hope that I'll discover something to make me think the GOP is not approaching demographic doom (and more importantly that unending mass immigration isn't bad for the nation as a whole). I hoped that Bush would be the promised messiah, but his results have merely been good, not great, and really not even that historic since it most likely only barely improved upon Reagan's 1984 showing with latinos; and this is despite genuine outreach and shameless pandering.
Lets just wait and see how the 2008 GOP nominee does with Hispanics against Hillary. They were quite enthusiastic about her husband, so lets hope it doesn't rub off on here.
And this is just taking political consequences of mass immigration into effect. Its says nothing about other things like the overall effects on the economy, price and wage suppression, social services, etc.
13. Finally, the problem with the whole "shut up Tancredo before he ruins it" rationale is, well first of all, its not quite clear what he'd be ruining since the latino preference for Democrats is well documented, but it also sets a dangerous precedent.
It sets the rules by which both the rhetoric and playing field are solely on the Lefts' turf. It gives credence to the idea that to deviate in the slightest from the PC line on hot-button, contentious issues, is to be guilty of racism, xenophobia, anti-immigrant bias, etc. It lets the Left determine what is and is not beyond the pale, of what is and is not fit for discussion by polite society.
This is poison to the idea of free and open debate. It makes rational discussion about matters that deal at all with race/ethnicity almost impossible because Leftist rules of debate allow no such discussion. We can't discuss the disproportionate incidence of the various social pathologies that hit minorities the hardest, because, according the the Left, to do so is to insult and offend minorities.
And don't make the mistake of saying that people just have to be smarter in their criticisms of immigration policy. Just consider Victor Davis Hanson, author of Mexifornia. He took great pains in the book and when talking about it to recite pretty much the whole littany of platitudes meant to insulate a person from charges of xenophobia (like Hannity does, and yes, even Tancredo!), and he even supports amnesty. But that did not stop people on the Left from deeming him a racist. Take Tancredo even; I once saw him debating the slimmy Terry MacAuliffe about border security and amnesty. It was fairly reasonable right up until the end when McAuliffe throws in cheap shot by saying that "he (Tancredo) doesn't want to let anybody in." Tancredo responded with an appropriate, "this guy is an idiot." But anyway, my point is that, despite what you may have heard, Tancredo has not called for ending immigration into this country. He hasn't in Congress, and he didn't that day either, but MacAufliffe, as a good liberal, had to demonize him with an unjustified charge of not wanting to let anyone in.
Another example is that of Samuel Huntington, Harvard professor, and public supporter of Kerry. He wrote a book pointing out the obvious, in how current large-scale immigration from Latin America is fundamentally different than the last great wave of European immigration. I think its titled "Who We Are." Again, he was careful not to denigrate Hispanics in anyway, but not even that or his public support of Kerry saved him from charges of racism.
Yet another example, though of a different kind, is Attorney General nominee Alberto Gonzales. He says all the right things about immigration. He even used the ultimate euphemism for illegal alien in his Senate testimony; citizen! He shares Bush's complete lack of regard for immigration laws, and he helped save racial preferences by watering down Solicitor General Ted Olson's principled objection to them by insisting that the administration endorse the diversity rationale. Yet he has found support from the professional latino activist groups hard to come by, most certainly because he is a Republican.
But anyway, my point is that to surrender the right to dissent because it may offend someone, or be used by the Dems to make sure it offends someone, is to admit defeat, because the Dems/Left will make sure it offends someone. It leads to a loss of principle because of fear. Consider Texas again for a moment -- when the Sup Court endorsed racial preferences two yrs ago, the University of Texas said it would go back to using preferences. Now why would a conservative state with a GOP governor, and GOP controll of the state house allow such a thing? I doubt if most of them actually believes in preferences, like Jack Kemp does, but rather its more likely they are afraid of being portrayed as racists if they take action.
It is better to try and take a stand, and fight this sort of tactic head on. If the GOP would be more aggressive in championing some policies that has public approval, but which are deemed controversial, if it were to aggressively meet and counter the inevitable yet bogus charges of bigotry, and attack those leveling the charges as being guilty of a shameful and cyncial attempt to sabotage debate, then I think most Americans would respond well to it. If conservatives continue to allow, and continue to take part in, a debate defined and contrained by the Left's PC principles, then the Left has already won, because the Right will always find itself fighting a battle of constant retreat, giving up one principle after another because the Left has deemed it to be improper because it offends diverstiy. This is probably just wishful thinking on my part, but better to draw a line, fight and possibly lose, than to constantly retreat.
If Tancredo and all like him in Congress were to retire, do you really think that would make a difference? I mean, must all who agree with him unconditionally surrender on this issue? Are we to be silent, yet continue voting GOP of course, because Ted Kennedy and the media would take our comments out of context and slander us as bigots?
And lets say we do unconditionally surrender, and accept amnesty and much-increased levels in already large scale legal immigration, w/o a peep of protest. Again, do you think that will matter? Again, Hispanics tell pollsters that immigration is in fact not a decisive vote-deciding issue for most of them. This whole theory rests on the premise that if the GOP goes all Bush on immigration, and completely anti-Tancredo, then that will be enough to win over Hispanics. This in turn depends on the belief that it is only this issue of immigration policy that makes most latinos vote Democratic. As I stated above, there isn't much evidence for this theory.
If we acquiesce on this and go away silently into the night, then its most likely that it would have no effect on latino voting. The Dems would find someother way to play the race card, and in the end the GOP would most likely not only continue losing Hispanics, but also lose support from its disillusioned base.
Of course, I hope I'm wrong, as it is your vision that is most likely to become, or remain as it were the case.
One final thing on Tancredo: He has been an ardent supporter of the President on pretty much every thing else. He's been with him on taxes. He's been with him on the war on terror. Etc etc etc. Does that not count for anything? Should this one issue be the litmust test from now on, by which we toss over board all those who don't tow the new 'compassionate' line?
14. Finally, let me say this about my Prof Gutierrez point; I don't think that his mindset and extremism is ubiquitous in the Hispanic community specifically, or the Open Borders advocates generally, but I do think that there is more of him on that side than there is of the Sanger/racist element on the Tancredo side. And one should not forget the attitude and beliefs of many Mexicans -- a Zogby international poll in 2002 found that 58% of Mexicans believe that the United States Southwest rightfully belongs to Mexico, and 57% said that Mexicans should have the right to enter the US w/o US permission. So I don't think its unreasonable to imagine a worst case scenario where our PC-derived, anti-assimilation message to immigrants combined with some Aztlan style extremism may some day combine for serious trouble. It unlikely to be sure, but who knows?
I am pinging this now so as to spend an appropriate amunt of time honoring your substantial efforts with a more comprehensive answer than is possible at this moment. I will try to answer tonight or tomorrow morning.
Let me begin by making two observations. First, my motive is to change American policy toward abortion by changing demographics. Immigrants from Mexico, legal or otherwise, will much more resemble in social conservative issues like abortion and homosexuality, the views of the Roman Catholic Church to which I belong or to the "religious Right" generally. Thirty-three years of wanton slaughter of the unborn (45+ million babies killed since Roe vs. Wade) continue unabated. We need a substantial number of socially conservative newcomers. Any financial costs that result are minor compared to the economic damage done by thirty-three years of slaughter, that have deprived our society of 45 million people, most of whom would have been working taxpayers.
Next, I want to congratulate you for taking your issue seriously enough to make such a comprehensive argument in its favor. That you have NOT responded with the usual cliches as to the border issues marks you as a more persuasive participant than many others in the contest over this issue. You have not posted hit and run. You have not ignored much that would be troublesome to your position. You are entitled to a response in kind coupled with the respect you have earned.
Your first paragraph expresses what I believe to be an unwarranted pessimism. If the GOP and conservatives are willing to work the barrio, then the Junior League types will continue to be the problem while the Hispanics will grow as a strength. Many Republicans want a GOP that looks like it looked in 1936. Very white. Very mainline Protestant. Very well-off compared to the rest of society. Very homogenized old school manners and tastes. I am afraid that those folks are rather obsolete politically because they have not reproduced themselves, find real world politcs distasteful and think that making out a check to Emily's List is as respectable as contributing to the late Mother Teresa's efforts. They have not been willing to play the real game of politics, of which "Mr. Dooley" said in the newspaper columns of one hundred years ago: "Politics ain't beanbag." Were we really surprised when John Vliet Lindsay became a Demonrat thirty some odd years ago? Jim Jeffords a few years ago??? Lincoln Chaffee in a few short months or years? Meanwhile, Richard Shelby, Trent Lott, Norm Coleman, Bill Bennett, and scads of other leaders have crossed over to us. At the grassroots, our advantage is even greater. For every Muffy or Skipper attracted from us to the party of Howard Dean's primal scream, a substantial multiple of ethnics of modest means come our way. This is the chief complaint of the Demonrats since Dubya's re-election: "Why DO people of modest means in Red State America NOT vote their interests (accept economic payoffs in lieu of morality)? Ummmmm, probably because the Demonrats are an increasingly alien group of eccentric lunatics who admire Howard Dean, abortion, homosexuality, public skewels as academically incompetent leftist indoctrination centers, contempt for the freedom of ordinary folks, confiscation of privately owned and carried firearms, higher taxes, and an always driving desire to keep folks of modest means on the old Demonrat plantation. Did I mention the Demonrats worship of abortion?????
As to The Emerging Republican Majority, several observations are in order. It was written by Kevin Phillips, then a junior associate in the law firm of Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie and Alexander, at the request of senior partner and future president Richard Nixon. The book is simply briklliant and it has stood the test of time. It was never intended as a permanent political diagnosis, however. Phillips wrote that there were political cycles punctuated by realignments. On the one hand, he did a splendid job of predicting a solidly Republican South, hemorrhaging of Republican support in liberal areas of the country which had long ago been GOP strongholds. The irony is that Phillips himself identifies as a High Episcopalian (See his The Cousins' War) and is now an economic populist who has trended over to the left politically in many books subsequent to the famous one. It is true that Phillips did not foresee the substantial inflow of Mexicans to the US, but the principles of his famous book are applicable to the Mexican-Americans just as they were to Polish-Americans, Italian-Americans and Irish-Americans.
If you think that Republicans are facing substantial obstacles now from the immigration, wait until you see how challenged the Demonrats are going to be when they have reaped the results of suggesting to rural Mexican campesinos that they really must control their population through abortion and encouraging their kids to contract homosexual 'marriages'."
Third paragraph: Ted Kennedy is and was a liar. What else is new? Fortunately, he is also a Chivas Regal-addicted incompetent. Your point seems to be that he promised no significant ethnic shifts and no substantial increases in immigration. He threw that slider past himself in the batter's box. The immigration will not help the Demonrats and they are beginning to understand their blunder forty years later as Hillary suggests that she will arm the borders. Mrs. Antichrist is smarter than Teddy Bare by far.
Fourth, fifth and sixth paragraphs: I make no claim to either comprehensive knowledge nor infallibility on the percentages of GOP vote or Bush vote among Hispanics over the last ten years. Your figures may well be right. I did use numbers as I remember them from posted articles here but that guarantees nothing. Whether my numbers are right or yours are (except for the 2004 result), my case is still valid. There are a few things to remember. One is that the Hispanic vote is not homogeneous. Cubans are quite Republican (slighly declining but still true). Puerto Ricans are quite Demonratic (reportedly slightly declining in 2004 but I have seen no numbers from the Northeast which I know best). Mexicans are more Republican by far than Puerto Ricans and less so than Cubans. Other Hispanics fall between Mexicans and Puerto Ricans but closer to Mexicans. These are my speculations based partially on news reports. I might be wrong at the moment. I have no doubt whatever that these groups are our allies in the medium and long run (exception: Puerto Ricans locked into welfare systems and urban pathologies in the Northeast as a multigenerational way of life more so than any other Hispanic group.
Remember that regular attendance at church is a better indicator of Republican voting than is ethnicity as such. Demonrats view those black Christians who voted for Bush on the moral questions as traitors to the Demonrat Party for even considering morality as trumping welfare politics.
I am Catholic. I don't know if you are. I can tell you reliably that Kerry/Kennedy "Catholic" voters are not very Catholic. As long ago as Reagan's challenge to Ford in 1976, many of Reagan's Catholic supporters in Connecticut were anti-war, pro civil rights, pro-welfare state, anti-military (rowing boats into the path of nuclear submarine launches), registered Democrat until changing for Reagan. They were a smidgeon to the political left of Archbishop John Whealon of Hartford but like him, they campaigned with Reagan whenever he ran. Abortion was the issue. There is no such thing as a Catholic pro-abort. There may be people born and baptized into the Faith who later apostasized and serve as "useful idiots" like Kerry, Kennedy, Mikulski, Patty Murray, Tom Harkin, Susan Collins, Durbin, Daschle, Stabenow, Leahy, Salazar, Landrieu, Nancy Pelosi, Rosa DeLauro and many others.
As to the Catholic vote trend, bear in mind that since the infamous Rum, Romanism and Rebellion crack of the 1880s, Catholics as a group voted majority Republican ONLY in landslides (Eisenhower1956, Nixon1972, Reagan1980, Reagan1984). There is a very strong tradition of charity toward the poor (Sermon on the Mount and the Final Judgment in Revelations) among rank and file Catholics that has normally kept many in the Demonrat Party. Abortion and gay "marriage" are the straws breaking that camel's back. In 2004, a majority of Catholics, for the first time, voted Republican for prsident in a NON-LANDSLIDE election. They voted for United Methodist George W. Bush over allegedly Roman Catholic John F. Kerry. If you miss these details, you miss very significant trendlines in American politics in 2004. I would dare suggest that, if the GOP does not re-establish its former identity as the party of the factory superintendent fighting the party of the modest worker, if the GOP does not become identified as the anti-Hispanic party (fairly or not), the movement toward the GOP among Catholics promises to be permanent. The Demonrats will ALWAYS be (again fairly or not) as the pacifist wimp party, the anti-baby party, the lavender queen party, the tax them til they bleed party and now, Kerry or not, the anti-Catholic party. That means GOP victory even before we get to improvement in GOP performance among minority groups, most importantly for now, among Hispanics. There is plenty of upside potential among Hispanics, and even greater eventual upside among blacks. We will have to woo them to win them. We can do so without violating the essential credo of the GOP. We have to go to their neighborhoods and be polite enough to ask for their votes and to cultivate centers of support in their communities. We aren't going to keep Hispanics out and we will pay a very big price if we try and, therefore, America will pay the price of our throwing the Hispanics to the Demonrats.
What would Ronald Reagan say? WWRR do? Thirty years ago and more, California Governor Reagan was controversial in California for advocating that Mexican citizens be allowed to work the California agricultural fields as "braceros." He never lost California in any election. Hispanics, in RR's time, were more Republican in California than in the nation as a whole. Reagan never erred in favor of exclusion. He was open. He was warm. He was welcoming. He never tired of telling of his journey to the GOP as: "I did not leave the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party left me." His bottom line was conservative political action and not ethnicity. Americans loved him for it.
I am NOT accusing you of any improper motives. I am satisfied that your motives are sincere and well-intended in the interests of the US. Nonetheless, why should we care a whit about any "shift in ethnic balance" as such? I care because I want to change the mix to end social issue atrocities like abortion and homosexuality. What is worth preserving about defending an "ethnic balance" that has tolerated the atrocities for decades? I am and always have been a New York Yankees fan. With Steinbrenner, I believe that we should play our cards effectively and bring in the Reggie Jacksons, the Catfish Hunters, the Jimmy Keys, the Gary Sheffields, the Hideki Matsuis, the Alex Rodriguezes and the Randy Johnsons because the purpose of politics like the purpose of baseball is willing. The difference is that our failures have produced 45+ million dead babies. It is long past time to play the ethnic shift card. I am English, Irish, Scots-Irish, Scottish and German and not at all Hispanic but I welcome the Hispanics with open arms and unbridled enthusiasm.
As to Puerto Ricans, if a Demonrat does NOT blow out the Puerto Rican vote over a GOP opponent, we have a name for that Demonrat: Road kill. The question is: can we improve our percentage iof the Puerto Rican vote via aggressive social issue campaigning among them? Yes, we can. Which votes count more in any competitive election: 1000 Puerto Rican converts to the GOP, 1000 Mexican converts to the GOP, 1000 Polish or Italian or Irish converts to the GOP, 1000 Jewish converts to the GOP, or 1000 main line Protestant converts to the GOP? Obvious answer: each group counts equally but some can really shock the Demonrats into depression.
Jewish vote: We have earned more Jewish votes than we get. We should strive to reap what we have sewn. There is a useful saying in the Northeast that Jews live like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans. Adhering to the Demonrats because of abortion is juvenile behavior. Most Jews are not juvenile but they have a bad habit of voting Demonrat. We will never get all the Jewish votes but we can get a lot more by reminding them, as Scoop Jackson might have said: The weapon that is not built by US funds will not be available for the defense of Israel. On that basis, we can capture SOME liberal Jewish vote. On moral values, we can obtain even more since the big birthrate among Jews is among the Orthodox and the Chassidic Orthodox, neither of whom have been successfully accused of ANY kind of liberalism. Again, we have to ask. Reagan, unlike most Republicans, really asked.
If we add some substantial number of Hispanic votes in New York, we can actually win the city. Our problem in NYC is the drain of Old European ethnic Catholics out of the outer boroughs.
Texas vs. California: Texas Republicans were never bashful about seeking Hispanic votes on social issues. The snobs from La Jolla and the yacht clubs and the polo clubs in California (Pete Wilson's base) don't mind despising Mexicans in public. Also coastal California whites and Inland Empire whites are verrrrry different people. If the latter act like Texas Republicans, the California GOP will be back in business. Public ritual burning of Pete Wilson portraits by he California GOP would help too. As a human being, I cannot help regarding Planned Barrenhood Wilson as Jews regard neonazis.
Gotta break now. If you can hold off on this dormant thread until my next post to you, I would appreciate it. Thanks in advance.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.