Posted on 11/26/2006 8:27:15 PM PST by neverdem
Little did voters know it, but last Tuesday they were delivering a mandate for amnesty for illegal immigrants. Most of them probably thought they were voting on the Iraq War or on corruption, but elite opinion-makers have decided that they also were panting for a laxer immigration policy.
There's no doubt that electing a Democratic Congress furthers the cause of an amnesty and guest-worker program by removing the main obstacle to both: the Republican majority in the House. But there is no good evidence that championing strict immigration enforcement was a loser for Republicans, or that voters elected Democrats explicitly to permit illegals already in this country to stay and to invite more of their brethren to come. Any suggestion otherwise comes from advocates of amnesty who interpret anything voters do - now up to and including expressing their discontent with an unpopular war - as a call for more immigration.
The epicenter of their case is in Arizona. Two immigration-restrictionist Republicans lost House races in a state that experiences more illegal border crossings than all the other states bordering Mexico combined. If strict-enforcement conservatives can't make it there, the argument goes, they can't make it anywhere. But Arizona wasn't really a restrictionist rout.
Republican Randy Graf, a Minuteman, lost a race for a Republican seat, but he was never given a chance by anyone because of his fringy obsession with the issue. Meanwhile, Republican incumbent J.D. Hayworth, who wrote a book on border enforcement, also lost. Notably, Hayworth was called a "bully" by the editorial board of The Arizona Republic, which had endorsed him in his prior six elections. The lesson from these House races is that a monomaniacal focus on immigration, or too much heavy-breathing rhetoric, turns off voters.
Arizona's Senate race was a truer test of the political merits of the issue, which is one of the reasons that it is less talked about. Republican Sen. Jon Kyl is an opponent of the "comprehensive bill" - effectively an amnesty - passed by the Senate last year. But he is also a thoughtful policymaker who will never be mistaken for a bomb-thrower. His Democratic opponent forthrightly supported the Senate bill and a guest-worker program. Kyl won.
It's disingenuous to argue that Arizona rejected enforcement when, as Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies points out, it approved ballot measures to deny bail to illegals, bar them from collecting punitive damages, keep them from receiving certain state subsidies and make English the state's official language. If Arizona had recoiled from a get-tough approach to immigration, it would have rejected these measures along with Graf and Hayworth, rather than approving them by 3-1 margins.
The fact is that the slaughter of Republican candidates this year was indiscriminate. It hit restrictionists and advocates of amnesty alike. For every high-profile, tough-on-immigration Republican who lost, like Indiana Rep. John Hostettler, there was also a supporter of amnesty like Rhode Island's Sen. Lincoln Chafee. The immigration issue wasn't killing off Republicans; it was discontent with the war and a general disgust with the GOP brand.
The true acid test on the issue is how Democrats handled it. They ran what everyone acknowledges was a brilliant campaign. Yet, they tried to minimize differences with Republicans on immigration and mentioned it nowhere in their post-election agenda.
Finally, there is the matter of the Hispanic vote. The Republicans' share of it declined to 30 percent this year from 38 percent in the last congressional midterms in 2002. This datum - often characterized as disastrous - has to be put in the context of a decline in the GOP share of the white vote, from 58 percent to 51 percent. Republicans were equal-opportunity losers this year, alienating everyone from new immigrants to descendants from the Mayflower.
For all of this, it seems that President Bush and House Majority Leader-elect Nancy Pelosi might still accept the "immigration enforcement lost" interpretation of election. They both do so at their political peril.
Rich Lowry is editor of The National Review and can be reached via e-mail: comments.lowry@nationalreview.com
I don't understand how anyone can complain about an OBL RNC Chairman. If you voted for Bush in 2004, you're getting exactly what you should expect. What, did you think he's going to appoint someone who will engage in a big public fight against him?
A true Conservative leader firmly backing the mandate of the base will win election, but none is anywhere to be found.
Heaven and Earth would be moved in support of this future leader.
"Unless millions of people come to their senses before it's too late.
We don't need millions to come to their senses, just one with the initials GWB.
(yawn) Rich Lowry is a party-line elitist - - nothing surprising here.
I should have seen your post before I posted #25. I stopped reading when I got to this:
"The lesson from these House races is that a monomaniacal focus on immigration, or too much heavy-breathing rhetoric, turns off voters."
Turns out later that Lowry makes some valid points. My bad.
Regards,
LH
btt for later
Life is filled with inconvenient facts and opinions. Taking statements out of the context to the exclusion of the remainder of an argument doesn't foster having an informed public discussion, IMHO. It reminds me of the left's twisting of the MSM presentations about any subject. The right isn't going to beat the left without command of all the facts, IMHO.
The right isn't going to beat the left if we are always on the defensive, either. Time can be spent constantly responding to the lies of the left, or time can be spent attacking and spinning faster than they can keep up. A nice balance is what is needed. IMHO.
"Republican Randy Graf, a Minuteman, lost a race for a Republican seat, but he was never given a chance by anyone because of his fringy obsession with the issue."
As I understood it, he got no support from the national Republican groups, but there was no reason given. He was campaigning for Jim Kolbe's Republican seat. The GOP just left him to twist in the wind.
"Meanwhile, Republican incumbent J.D. Hayworth, who wrote a book on border enforcement, also lost. Notably, Hayworth was called a "bully" by the editorial board of The Arizona Republic, which had endorsed him in his prior six elections."
J.D. ran a decent campaign and pretty much stuck to the issues. His opponent, a popular former Mayor (of Tempe, I think), ran campaign ads calling J.D. one of the most corrupt Republicans in Congress. Our leftie newspaper saw their chance and trashed him after supporting him for all those years.
Neither one of these losses was firmly based on immigration issues. Graf lost due to lack of national support, and Hayworth lost because he ran against a celebrity with name recognition, while the fence-sitters believed all the airheaded content-free nonsense spewed by the Democrats and the MSM.
You should send your thanks to the LIBnuts at the RNC. You can spread that out by offering thanks to the gaggle of harping monkey two-bit party hacks here, almost as good. They are to blame. Blackbird.
"They punished Bush by not voting for Congressional Republicans. Brilliant move there, huh?"
And history may repeat itself in a couple years.
A circus animal trainer was making his audience `ooh & ahh'. He told him he was going to ask a bull elephant chained to telephone pole if he wanted a handful of peanuts, then if he would ask him if he wanted a banana.
The trainer whispered in the elephant's ear and the elephant nodded his head up-and-down.
Then he whispered something else and the elephant shook his head side-to-side.
After the show an impressed boy found the trainer and asked him if he was really `talking' to the elephant, and also asked him why he held two bricks in his hands while he did the act.
The trainer replied, "Just between you and me, kid, when this elephant got here, the first thing I did was slam his balls between these two bricks. The next day--as I just did during the act--all I did was ask him if he remembered me.
Then I asked him if he wanted me to do it again."
That's all there is to elections, and the `trick' works with donkeys, too.
It is to late...
We'll have this "guest worker" "amnesty" deal before the next hot summer months...
I'm hoping we can DeLay (pardon the pun, I'm a bit partial) this enough to allow this to be quelled somewhat...
But I don't see us being able to stop the pardoning of millions of people who broke our laws, and which will be a considerable boost in the democrat party voting base...
What we see now in the make up of the congress is what we'll have for a long time, if we don't lose a few more seats...
The lines I feel will be drawn at this demographic:
Large to Medium Urban enclaves = liberal voting blocks
Rural America = conservative America
I hope I am wrong...
Cha-ching.
Az. may have ousted a couple Rs but it passed some very tough anti-Illegal Alien initiatives. It's the 'Dem-Lite' GOP that turns people off. Those that stand true win, like Tancredo did.
And what did they learn from the election results? I'll tell you what they learned. The same district that gave pro-amnesty Bush a majority just turned JD Hayworth out of office.
Bush's pro-amnesty position did not depress base turnout in 2004, but the Tancredo caucus immigration agenda failed to turn out white voters the way JD, Graf, Santorum, John Hostettler and others hoped it would. It's not that their stance killed them -- it just didn't matter.
Politicians like the opponents of all of the above, can allay public fears about immigration just by lying and saying tough-sounding things about illegal immigration.
The issue is a dud. Like it or not, that's the lesson of this election.
Well, maybe I'm just dense, but I'm not sure I understand the point of your little story. Whatever it is, I think *you* are missing the point. When you "punish" Respublicans, you reward Democrats. When you reward Democrats, you punish conservatives -- and everyone else, for that matter, in the long run. So conservatives are only shooting themselves in the rear end when they try to "punish" Republicans. In other words, those conservatives who abandon the Republicans are only smashing their own balls. Get it now? If they don't learn that soon, we are all in deep trouble.
That is totally bogus. They all have safe seats -- the few that don't went down.
How many Democrats that defeated incumbent Republicans that supported H.R.4437 actually ran on a platform of support for both legalization of millions of illegal aliens, as well a path to citizenship for those illegal aliens? Not many.
Yeah, now just watch them all vote for amnesty, deny that it's amnesty, and get away with it.
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