O.C. Race a Border Skirmish

LA Times ^ | December 4, 2005 | By Jean O. Pasco and Dan Weikel, Times Staff Writers

[Simmy2.5]

# hanks to activist Jim Gilchrist, immigration is the hot issue in a House election, dividing the right and maybe setting the tone for other states.

By Jean O. Pasco and Dan Weikel, Times Staff Writers

Tuesday's special election to fill Rep. Christopher Cox's seat might have been a bland affair with the Republican primary winner preordained — year after year, congressional elections in coastal Orange County usually are.

This year, the politics of immigration have changed that.

Jim Gilchrist, cofounder of the border security group called the Minuteman Project and candidate of the American Independent Party, has run an energetic and increasingly wellfunded campaign against state Sen. John Campbell (R-Irvine). He has forced the lawmaker to renounce votes allowing illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition at state universities and to use Mexican identification cards for official purposes. And he has turned the race into a virtual referendum on immigration policy.

Even if Campbell wins the 48th Congressional District seat Tuesday — and most political insiders think he will — the race underscores the wedge that immigration has driven into conservative ranks across the country.

[geezerwheezer]

It is kinda sad it takes a congressional race like this to wake up Washington as to the immigration policies we have not working. I don't know the answer any more than any one else, but it has not been debated much, and it really needs to be. President Bush is getting bashed on this every day, and he should get his head clear and get it going a lot better than he has, or we will have a dimorat party controlling the congress.

[starbase]

This article is well written and sophisticated. Nevertheless it uses three propaganda techniques that I could detect from a cursory reading:

1. #18 Framing the Debate:
the initial paragraph attempts to establish that discussion of immigration splits conservatives. That is to say that some conservatives support immigration enforcement, and others oppose it. Of course, many Americans from the whole political spectrum oppose illegal immigration and support immigration enforcement (some polls say 82%). To discuss immigration in terms of a split among conservatives is an attempt to Frame the Debate.

2. #11 Subtle Inaccuracies/Dismissive Tone:

The following quote attempts to compare this serious human events issue to small cracks in the ground:
"The issue of illegal immigration is below the surface just about everywhere in California," Pitney said. "It snakes through the political landscape like the San Andreas fault, and you never know when you are going to get a little tremor or a calamitous quake."

Do we really need a long metaphor to understand this nation-wide, crucial emergency?

3. #17 Preemptive Strike
Starting from the quote in point 2, there are only three more quotes in the article, all of them discourage the importance of illegal immigration:

a. "Illegal immigration is just not that big a motivator" for district voters, said Harvey Englander, consultant for former Assemblywoman Marilyn C. Brewer (R-Newport Beach).

b. "People who care about this issue, and it's No. 1 in their lives, they may vote for Gilchrist, but most people have more than one issue they care about," Englander said.

c. "People of this district are sophisticated, and they look at your whole record, not just one vote," Campbell said.

Quotes b and c have the added benefit of establishing that there is something wrong with people who care about illegal immigration and that they are in the minority. Quote b says "people who care about this issue, and it's Number 1 in their lives", not number 1 in their thinking, but in their lives, it also says "most people" care about more than one issue, so anyone who cares about illegal immigration might have something wrong in their lives and "most people" aren't like that.

Quote c. tries to establish that anyone who votes because of the immigration issue is unsophisticated because they are only voting on one issue, not several issues the way the sophisticated people do.

[ForGod'sSake]

Do we really need a long metaphor to understand this nation-wide, crucial emergency?

I think I would give the LAT a pass on this one. For people in Kollifornia especially, earthquakes/faults are of particular interest and can cause a great deal of destruction........in a very short period of time. No harm, no foul?

...tries to establish that anyone who votes because of the immigration issue is unsophisticated because they are only voting on one issue, not several issues the way the sophisticated people do.

Agreed for the most part, and I wonder if Gilchrist was maybe unavailable for comment??? Not likely, eh?

This little gem from Campbell is interesting: Although illegal immigration is definitely a concern, he said, voters are more motivated by lax security along the border than worries about costs and assimilation.

The LAT wishing it were so? In any case, I say he's dead wrong and the statement itself makes little sense in and of itself. "Lax security" yeilds what? Amongst other things, an assault on our culture; our way of life. Claims to the contrary notwithstanding, I submit Americans want to defend themselves against cultural attack just as much as a physical attack.

FGS

[Amerigomag]

Thanks for joining.

Your opinions are your politics but your methodology is a welcome change from the "feelings/loyalty" based approach that so many have brought to this forum recently.

California, like many other states, is burdened by a liberal print/electronic media. Parsing these presentations will help forum members better understand the sophisticated, public pressures aligned against their core beliefs.

Welcome aboard and again; Thank you.

[starbase]

[Do we really need a long metaphor to understand this nation-wide, crucial emergency?
I think I would give the LAT a pass on this one.]

Yes this article, unlike the other one I posted today, is not as clear cut, and so I wanted to take a stab at it. It was difficult.

Maybe only I was annoyed by the earthquake metaphor, but it seemed to me like one more effective device for slowing the article down whenever it was time to say illegal immigration is bad and shouldn't be happening. Filling the air with idle chatter when they could just say "illegal immigration" and get to the point.

They never veer off on colorful tangents when it's time to say that illegal immigration should be accepted, they get right to the point.

[I wonder if Gilchrist was maybe unavailable for comment??? Not likely, eh?]

As you point out, and as I thought later I should have mentioned, Gilchrist got 15% of the vote, but they couldn't find anyone (Gilchrist or anyone else) to say that they really hate illegal immigration and are going to vote just because of that. No one?

But they found at least three people in succession who not only don't seem to mind illegal immigration, but also all three agree that voting for one issue is definitely not the thing to do!

And Gilchrist just happens to be associated with one issue! Such a specialized opinion found in three people and applying only to the candidate the LA Times is likely to not support. But no one (Gilchrist or otherwise) to say they will vote on the single issue of illegal immigration.
And this county launched prop 187, but no one feels strongly enough about illegal immigration to tell the newspaper how they feel. I don't believe that.

It's in the vacuum of that silence that the silly earthquake metaphor bothered me, using up valuable time to not talk about the issues. But maybe I'm completely overreacting to it (I did have a couple beers before I wrote this up, breaking my "no beer with posting" rule). Or maybe I was just offended at the most predictable cliche on earth, California and earthquakes! :-)

[Claims to the contrary notwithstanding, I submit Americans want to defend themselves against cultural attack just as much as a physical attack]

Very good point. Subtle and right on.

How do you feel about my first claim, that they are Framing the Debate by saying it's between, and divides, conservatives?

[gubamyster]

ping

[jackbenimble]

Framing the Debate

If you think that we are seeing propaganda now, wait until after Gilcrest loses (and he almost surely will). His loss will be blamed on his focus on illegal immigration and we will be told:

1)a hard-line on illegal immigration turns off voters
2)Republicans who are tough on illegal immigration can't win
3)A majority of voters support the President's guestworker shamnesty
4)Everybody who voted for Gilcrest is a racist/xenophobe
5)If Republicans take a hard-line on illegal immigration we will alienate Hispanics for decades to come and relegate the Republican party to irrelevance.

Never mind that as an independent, Gilcrest has almost no possibility of winning no matter how his message resonates. You can't win without the political machine. The truth is that if he gets even 10% of the vote it ought to scare the heck out of a lot of Open Borders Republicans because that is enough angry voters to cause them to lose many close races.

[lewislynn]

For people in Kollifornia especially, earthquakes/faults are of particular interest and can cause a great deal of destruction........in a very short period of time. No harm, no foul?

Was that sentence supposed to make any sense?

[starbase]

[Welcome aboard]

Thank you very much. That's very kind of you to say.

Yes, it's my mission in life to make the complex accessible (at least I often find myself trying to do that!)

You say it well when you say "the sophisticated, public pressures aligned against their core beliefs". There is, however, a large skill range within this phenomena. Just today I parsed another article that was abject, template driven propaganda. Talentless. You can see that thread here:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1533565/posts

Misleading writers range from that low skill level, all the way up to being some very intelligent, talented and capable individuals, unfortunately seemingly dedicated to a bitter agenda.

It's these more intelligent writers that are the most difficult to catch, and articles like this one are more difficult to decode. Not the 100% smash hit I'm used to, but the more intelligent the writer gets, the more finely they can contour their piece to the arena of opinion, while still engaging in propaganda.

The only way to catch the more advanced ones is the strictest kind of parsing combined with a dry layout of what was parsed, holding it all up to the light, as it were.

But it isn't easy, as you can see on this posting I made a little error, duly taken to task by FGS, by including that maddening earthquake metaphor (I still think it was a device for using up conservative's debate time, as per #11 Dismissive Tone in my humble list of techniques, but no one agrees with me on that! I may be wrong on that one.).

I actually strain like heck to keep my opinions out of my analysis so as to further the discussion, but sometimes a few drops must seep in.

I will try to warrant your warm invitation as time goes by.

Regards,

starbase

[ForGod'sSake]

How do you feel about my first claim, that they are Framing the Debate by saying it's between, and divides, conservatives?

Spot on. Hence, my lack of comment. I'm a Texan after all, (supposedly a man of few words) ;^)

[ForGod'sSake]

Was that sentence supposed to make any sense?

Well, yeah. Maybe if you put it in the context of the "replied to" post?

[Amerigomag]

Take a moment to brush up on some basic HTML tags and enjoy the ride.

[Landru]

Post #8 nails the whole magilla, perfectly.

"Framing", you want "framing"?

Wait'll after this election.

...you ain't seen nothing yet.

[blackie]

Protect our borders and coastlines from all foreign invaders!

Support our Minutemen Patriots!

Be Ever Vigilant ~ Bump!

[montag813]

Not much of a "race". Gilchrist has no chance.

[starbase]

Yes, unfortunately you make great points here. You also point out how even a 10% garnering of the vote should frighten Open Border Republicans. I guess all of us should be ready to flay the predictably biased, upcoming pieces here in this excellent forum.

In addition, perhaps we should be ready to forward the election results in a very clear layout to any of those OBR we can positively identify. Perhaps there are groups that already specialize in that, like Numbers USA.

[Criminal Number 18F]

Yeah, what Amerigomag said. You saved me the post!

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[Gelato]

Ping

[Gelato]

This is shaping up to a mighty interesting race. Go Gilchrist!