Posted on 06/28/2006 1:45:44 PM PDT by Dane
WE LOST THE REFERENDUM
It was a landslide.
They had that referendum on illegal immigration yesterday and the answer was clear.
People don’t care.
I’m not saying that as a criticism, or as accusation, but as an observation. If yesterday’s Republican Primary in Utah’s third congressional district was a test of the country’s sentiment on illegal immigration, it is unarguably clear that people aren’t that bothered by it.
At least they’re not in Utah.
Congressman Chris Cannon pounded the living snot out of challenger John Jacob. It wasn’t even close. John Jacob lost in every county, jurisdiction and precinct. At no point did he lead in any category and every new report of results was more bad news. As I sat last night at the computer with his staffers, watching the results post on the Internet, it was clear that by the time 10 percent of the precincts had posted that the race was lost.
So I’ve got egg on my face.
I attacked Chris Cannon ruthlessly. I was John Jacob’s loudest and most passionate defender. His loss is also my loss. His failure to represent the interests of the people is also my failure to read the interests of the people. What I thought was important was clearly unimportant to the voters. And in a republic, the voters are always right.
It turns out that Salt Lake City’s two daily newspapers, and Provo’s newspaper, the state’s other talk-show host, and most of the state’s politicians were all more in touch with the sentiments of the Republicans in the Third District than I was. It is clear that their general liberalism is a better reflection of voter sentiment than my rabid conservatism.
And I should have known that. Instead, I was blinded by my desire to evangelize the world to my view of freedom – a decidedly conservative and Constitution-based view. But Utah is not a politically conservative state. It is dominated by the Republican Party, but not by conservative Republicans. The governor is a moderate to liberal, one senator is a moderate and the other is arguably a liberal. The last two governors were moderate to liberal and the attorney general is moderate to liberal.
Those are not accusatory labels, they are merely demonstrations of the consistently expressed will of the people. When Utahns go to the polls, they often pick moral conservatives, but rarely pick political conservatives. More typically they go for social liberals.
And they rarely go for political challengers from the right.
So, logically, John Jacob’s campaign was doomed from the beginning. And I should have known that. I probably did know that, but chose to ignore it, caught up in the talking-head argument that this was the time and place the people would rise up against government neglect of the border and acceptance of illegal immigration.
That argument made sense. This was the chance. It was the chance for conservatives in the Republican Party to call to account the ruling liberal wing of the party. But that is not what the voters wanted.
And that can’t be ignored.
If this was a referendum on illegal immigration, it seems the people want Senate over House, Kennedy over Tancredo. It seems that Chris Cannon’s 10 years of being the open-borders guy in the House is something the Republicans in Utah’s Third District wanted to reward.
Again, that is not an accusation. It is not bitterness. It is an observation. The landslide re-election of an incumbent is not a call for change – in that incumbent’s conduct or in the direction of his party. It is a ratification and approval of what they both have stood for.
George Bush and Vicente Fox won last night. It was a fair fight, I made the issue as clear as I could, and people chose what I wasn’t selling. Which is their right and the great beauty of our republic.
We tried to make our stand, and we got steamrollered. We can take comfort in knowing that we did our best, and we can seethe in the bitterness of knowing that it didn’t do any good. It was duty done, but pointlessly.
And I apologize for that. For taking up so much of your time with this issue. For being so passionate about something for which there is not a public enthusiasm. For being clearly out of touch with what Republicans want. For misreading the potential of this election.
It is impossible to ignore the fact that Chris Cannon won this primary by a larger margin than he won the primary two years ago. Last time’s $50,000 campaign did better than this time’s $700,000 campaign. And even that second figure is uncertain. It is possible that John Jacob’s campaign ran out of money a month ago, that it was underfunded. It is possible that John Jacob was a poor candidate.
But it is also irrelevant.
In his concession remarks – he bypassed a prepared speech – John Jacob said that the results of the election showed that Chris Cannon has support in Washington.
Actually, that’s not right.
The results showed that Chris Cannon has support in the Third District.
His constituents have known him for a decade and they seem overwhelmingly to like him and what he does. The referendum failed. It’s business as usual – business with which the voters seem completely content.
If this primary was an opening battle in the war to bring the Republican Party back to its conservative roots, we got massacred. And that will be noticed and have consequences. We conservatives hoped to show momentum and strength and didn’t. And we may have hurt our cause substantially as a result. Opposition to illegal immigration has been hurt, and so has the attempt to chastise the party. We fell flat on our face, and to the winner go the spoils.
Politics is like baseball. When you lose, you congratulate the winner and walk off the field.
Chris Cannon won because he represented what people want. He won the election. He deserves congratulations.
Brits' panel on Fox news just said that Tancredo is the big loser. They also said that no one they talked to in the House had ever heard of another congressman working to defeat, by forming a pac , a fellow house member from their own party. Tancredo has just placed himself in isolation.
If members of the House are talking openly about it you can be sure that darker forces behind closed doors in the GOP are talking about it.
It couldn't happen to a more deserving guy.
But tancredo will always have joe farah to write crass sales pitches disguised as real news articles to sell tancredo's books languishing in the bargain bin.
Any time---you listening, Dane?---ANY TIME the challenger defines the issue, and forces a runoff with a 3-time incumbent CONSERVATIVE, he has hit a hot button. You can fool yourself all you want to, but the Senate already has started to backtrack. Specter said today "OK, enforcement first."
To every season, spin spin spin
And I think the House will backtrack and endorse Pence's paln, which should make tancredo bust a vein.
I think that happened a long time ago.
I guess I should go easy on bay though, what with Israel not rolling over to die and their huge embarrassment last night, pat's probably on suicide watch and she's rightly concerned.
Its time to call all this nonsense out. Its time to call BS on people who call conservative rinos. Rinos to them is when Malkin, Tancredo, and others shout out on some individual issue and we all don't immediatly roll over and play dead. Yesterday the people of Utah, who don't read Worldnutzdaily, News Max, or hang on every word of Tancredo looked around and said to that crowd,"yall are nuts". They have gone back to their World. Still keeping track of whats going on but getting on with life. Next time if they look up and we are talking about the "NOrth America Union" they will send us conservatives out of power.
I can't even go to the store without being surrounded by pregnant illegals. The streets and parking lots are overflowing with illegals driving around in nice, shiny new cars blasting the most obnoxious excuse for music you ever heard. Our courts are dealing with many illegals who rape children. One nearby small town looks like it has been taken over by Mexican street gangs. And this isn't the big city. It's rural Arkansas.
We're in a downward spiral and the ones who are responsible for protecting us are facilitating the problem. They have much more important business to attend to...like voting themselves raises.
Oh, you mean like the New York Times? < /sarcasm >
Why do you think illegals rape children? Plus I was up in Arkansas a couple of weeks ago, I was up near Springdale. Whenn I went to mass there and there were alot of of people who looked liked were of hispanic or mexican heritage. How do you tell if they are illegal. How can you tell the difference between a illegal, a citizen, and a person on a green card.
thats a good point lol
Moonbats are on the far left.
Why do you want to spoil that word?
If they can't speak a word of English and they work for Tyson, it's a pretty safe bet that they're illegals. I've seen them coming into Springdale piled on to buses. There are Mexican restaurants on practically every corner and you see the Mexican flag as much as the American flag. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out. Oh, I don't blame the illegals for taking advantage of the opportunity. I blame our leadership for pandering to them, despite the will of the majority, and the people who bow down to the god of political correctness, never weighing the cost. I'm starting to think that America has sacrificed its collective gonads on its altar.
Don't think I would call this a REFERENDUM. It was certainly presented that way (on purpose, of course). Remember we have had other examples of incumbents thrown out because of their stance on immigration. Cannon was too strong a candidate from the beginning. It will make lots of fun for the open border types though.
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.