What the Base Thinks [about illegal immigration]

The Bush administration and Republican Senators have badly misjudged both the attitudes of most Republicans (and, of course, most Americans) toward illegal immigration, and the intensity of those views. While we have opposed the Senate plan, we have been pretty mild-mannered about it. So I'm turning the microphone over to my friend Bob Cunningham. No one I know of argues immigration-related issues more cogently. Equally important, no one I know of conveys the white-hot anger and sense of betrayal that millions of Americans feel about this issue more effectively.

We know that this site is widely read in the White House and in Congress. To all Republicans in Washington: please, please read what follows with care, and understand that Bob speaks for most Americans and the overwhelming majority of Republicans:

Here's what they're missing, and it is the principal reason, in my opinion, WHY the anti-ILLEGAL forces are so upset -- and so powerful.

It has to do with the bad faith, calculated deceit, Orwellian propaganda, dishonest sophistry, misdirection, arrogance, presumption, indifference to, and, indeed, contempt for the beliefs of huge numbers of ordinary Americans -- including LEGAL immigrants and Hispanic natives! --- on the part of political/media elites.

Let's recognize that the political process has --- democratically --- designated the illegals AS illegal. Why? Because we, as a nation, decided that their presence -- NOT themselves per se (as the false attribution of racism would have it) --- but their presence in such numbers for such purposes (the phony Jobs Americans Won't Do/Jobs Americans Are Not Doing) is undesirable. There are perfectly reasonable grounds for that judgment. When did we vote for the Mexification of America? ANS.: NEVER....Indeed, going back to the 1965 immigration "reforms", assurances were REPEATEDLY given (Kennedy) that such reforms would NOT lead to an influx or demographic change. And guess what? The burden of proof is NOT on the nation to justify this stance.

Since these elites don't like that decision now they want us to accept a fait accompli..and more! They feel perfectly justified in collaborating in the subversion of our democratically enacted immigration regime --- with crass, narrow, economic special interests and with others having perhaps more sinister designs. Their objectives --- open borders, a free flow of cheap labor --- are plain now for all to see. Some no longer even bother to pretend otherwise.

Given that, there is NO REASON to believe ANY of their promises --- the "wall," enforcement of "tough" conditions for a "path to legalization/citizenship" or limits in a "tough and smart" "temporary" "guest workers" indentured servant-helot program. We also know that the very underlying rationale itself for "temporary" "guest workers" (the economically illiterate JAWD/JAAND) is in DIRECT CONTRADICTION to ANY arbitrary "limits"....Indeed, the very claim itself that deportation is "impossible" renders the enforcement promises self-refuting! We should all ignore the false promises and intentional non-feasance in the past?...and do I even have to mention the Simpson-Mazzoli fraud? "This time it's different"?....we REALLY mean it now?....

The ultimate retort of the immigration celebrationists --- let us call it the "immigrants are good people" argument --- is totally beside the point. It is an assertion that no one would disagree with, but it is also an argument that has NO internal LIMITING PRINCIPLE. There is, on its own terms, no non-arbitrary basis for excluding ANY ONE of the 6 billion non-Americans. Other than criminal disqualification, most of them, are, indeed "good people"....so what?

Well, we already decided the question of numbers and limits...and the political/media elites, in conjunction with the scofflaw employers, do NOT have standing to subvert the democratic decision made, upon deliberation, several times in reliance on what we now can see were plainly false promises.

Well said - here's what I wrote to my Kansas Senator that defected to the Dems on this issue:
Senator Brownback - I am OUTRAGED at your vote on the Senate Immigration
Bill. You broke ranks with a majority of Republican Senators. You broke
ranks with Senators Roberts, Talent and Bond. But more importantly, you
broke ranks with - and are losing the faith of - your constituents.

A SIGNIFCANT PLURALITY of citizens do not want the type of reform the
Senate passed on Thursday. How is it that you found yourself able to
support a bill that a MAJORITY of Republican Senators opposed?

How is it that you supported a bill that the two Senators from Texas did
not support? Do you not think they understand, better than you, the
implications of illegal immigration upon our society?

As a strong Republican, my only regret is that you are NOT up for
reelection until 2010. For I would devote all of my energy into finding
and supporting a GOP candidate that would represent our values, that would
not give away our culture and our country to Mexico and that would care
more about what U.S. citizens wanted than what illegal aliens and the
President of Mexico wanted.

Read more about what I think of this latest Senate bill at:
http://views-from-right.blogspot.com/

I think that conservatives sense that Bush's lunacy on immigration threatens everything that we have worked for over the past 50 years. Visionaries like Wm. F. Buckley, Goldwater and Reagan created and explained a world view that differed drastically with the social welfare state view of the Dims of the day, and also differed significantly with the Republican party that existed pre-FDR, which was isolationist and did not have an economic or governmental philosophy that was as carefully defined as the GOP's became by the time of Reagan. Low taxes, smaller government, less bureaucracy, federalism, individual rights versus group rights, respect for religion in civic life, a whole gamut of ideas and policies that have proven to be far more effective in governing this still great country.

Slowly but steadily, we won people over. By the late 60's, we had an emerging GOP majority in national elections. Nixon's Watergate gave us Carter by a hair, but Reagan corrected that with gusto four years later. We continued to win the intellectual battles, as socialism failed in place after place, and the US economy showed that capitalism works best. Clinton was the exception that proved the rule, a minority president who won only by siphoning off the populist voters with Perot and only because he pretended to be a centrist AND only because the new conservative majority was so pissed at Bush because he clearly was not a conservative.

But the pain of a Clinton victory was softened because it helped the American people decide it was finally time to jettison the Dem congress that had prevented Republicans from doing much in office to actually change the leftist/socialist mixed economy that was erected unconstitutionally in the 30s under FDR. Now, we had the Congress, and with W's election in 2000, we might actually be able to accomplish things.

Well, Bush has done very little to advance the conservative agenda. His best efforts in that regard are his Supreme Court picks, which (other than the Miers fiasco) were fantastic. But on government spending, bureaucracy, immigration and a host of other things, Bush is indistinguishable from Clinton. Name one executive order of Clinton's that Bush reversed on his own, from the Utah land grab to the "wall" between justice and the FBI. He left Clinton's people in State, CIA, Justice, the Pentagon.

The war on terror has been listless at best. He should have gone into Iraq one year earlier, as Steyn has written, and as I was saying at the time, not just with hindsight. He should have been more forceful with Syria, instead of letting them attack us from the rear. He should have been actively arming Iranian freedom fighters in the hills of the north since 2002, and fomenting rebellion there, which even if unsuccessful, would tie up those mullahs so they couldn't be causing trouble in Iraq. He should be more active in Waziristan, and if it means venturing into Pakistan once in a while in hot pursuit of AQ, so be it. Stuff it Mushareff. And as a security issue, the border is a joke.

But is is as a cultural and political issue that the border is most threatening to Americans. Suppose that the numbers are right, that there are 12 million illegals in the US right now. If legalized, those people are going to be Democrat voters for at least 3 generations, based on simple demographics. There are enough of them now to sway elections in states that are getting closer, such as Arizona, Nevada, Colorado. They will swell Rat voter rolls in Rat states like California, New Mexico, and as far away as Pennsylvania, Ohio and Louisiana. Even in GOP states, like Texas, they will cause loss of house seats in Districts that are close.

However, what is far worse is that those 12 million will be 30 million within a scant 10 or 20 years, as relatives of legal citizens and the children of legal citizens come pouring across the border. That, my friends, will swamp the GOP and send it to minority status for 70 years, if not forever, because once the Dems are back in control for good, with modern technology and there own personal propaganda mills, they may never let go of the levers of power again. That GOP (I should say conservative, because the two are not synonomous) century will be cut off at its inception, before it ever got a chance to get off the ground and show what it could do for this country.

To maintain the majority that we have worked so hard for, to restore constitutional government, and reduce the size and scope of government, we have to build on the current slim majority, which is approximately 51/49, into a permanent 55/45 or higher majority. Demographic trends, excluding Mexicans, are with us--a wealthier nation, growing suburbs, more educated populace. The FDR socialists are dying off, and the battle is now between the hippie/baby boom/marxist radicals and the free marketeers who revere Reagan. The radicals are not able to sustain the intellectual argument--among Americans. But they can convince 90 percent of the Mexicans to vote with them. And that will change the equation completely.

Bush thinks that he can coopt their votes by being nice to them. But he can't, no more than the fact that the GOP supported civil rights more than the Dems in the 60s led to black support of the GOP. Dems pushed welfare, and blacks voted for Dems, and that is what poor uneducated laborers from Central America will do.

Maybe Bush thinks he needs to be nice to keep the support of current hispanic citizens, but it's not true. About 47 percent of hispanics voted for Prop 187 in California. They are threatened by a new wave of immigration from even poorer hispanics, and so long as our policies are anti-immigrant, not anti-hispanic, the hispanic citizens will not decrease their support substantially from the 40 percent or so that currently vote GOP. Most of those are Cuban anyway.

I get so angry about this because Bush is pissing away the efforts of millions of conservatives over many years, including Jim Robinson right here, to convince Americans that conservatism is the best philosophy of government, if he lets this happen. We can't let him do it--it will take another Harriet Miers times 10.

I have been saying for weeks now that the GOP leadership has and will continue, to only respond to the mob in the street.

We need a delay of action in the house and a date certain for a citizens march in D.C., organized and led by every conservative grass roots organization in the country.

But even our "conservatives" here are not listening.

Because mass demonstrations go against the psychological pre-disposition of conservatives (this is a republic not a democracy), conservatives are self-limiting our options to making our voice heard with the force it deserves and needs at this moment.

Believing we will not "take to the streets" or even organize to do so, the GOP elites are counting on that fact and thus counting on the media's lack of a need to focus on such an event, and focus on our actual numbers as one of their means of ignoring and muting the voice of the grass roots of the GOP.

They fully intend to work a fait accompli BEFORE November; as if to say - "Now we got the bastard law we wanted and you will look like the bad guys, even if in 2 to four years you could have the votes in Congress to repeal it; we [they] can keep spinning the deceitful platitudes about what the "reforms" do (not) and make you look like ogers".

But, if the we can stop them from achieving that, then the November elections will be a referendum on their non-reforms, and contrary to what the GOP leadership is spinning, the chances for their bill will be less after November not greater (most of the Democrat Senators who voted AGAINST the bill are up for re-election). They are at least honest about what the people really want.

But, even here, few are prepared to work to give national focus, in public, to our true concerns and true numbers?

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