Posted on 01/27/2007 8:55:29 AM PST by spintreebob
Former congressional candidate Vernon Robinson sounds resigned, and more than a little tired, when you ask him to explain his defeat. "The 2006 election was not a referendum on immigration," he says. "I would have liked it to be, but it didn't happen."
That's an understatement. In the tumultuous political year of 2006, Robinson, a former city councilman from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, became one of the country's most notorious voices for a crackdown on illegal immigration. In March, as the Republican-led House of Representatives wrestled with a harsh reform bill that would build a wall on the border and classify crossers as felons, Robinson's campaign launched a TV ad that opened with the theme from The Twilight Zone and Rod Serling-style narration: "If you're a conservative Republican, watching the news these days can make you feel as though you're in the Twilight Zone....The aliens are here, but they didn't come in a spaceship. They came across our unguarded Mexican border by the millions."
The ad was a sensation. For everyone who saw it in North Carolina's 13th District, where Robinson was challenging Democratic Rep. Brad Miller, dozens more saw it on YouTube and on blogs that trafficked the ad across the Web. "This is tough," Hardball host Chris Matthews swooned, re-running the ad on his MSNBC chat fest. "It's strong, it makes fun of the other side viciously, but I remember it. I'm going to remember this ad."
Robinson, who had already alienated Republican allies like Jack Kemp with his approach to immigration, issued more commercials blasting the Democrat for voting against a border wall or a cutoff on benefits for undocumented workers. One radio ad set Miller-bashing lyrics to the Beverly Hillbillies theme ("Come and hear me tell about a politician named Brad. He gave illegal aliens everything we had!"). The Democrats were spooked, even before the influential political magazine Congressional Quarterly pondered the tone of the campaign and increased its odds for a Robinson upset.
"Both myself and my opponent thought it was going to be a photo finish," Robinson remembers. "He wouldn't have stood in rain for two hours on Election Day if he thought it wouldn't be close."
If so, both men were wrong. The Democrat, who had won 59 percent of the vote in 2004, thumped the well-funded Robinson by 28 points. After a year in which the immigration issue inspired reform bills, citizen border patrols, mass marches of undocumented workers, and untold hours of talk show screaming, a candidate who had seemed to strike a hidden chord with voters lost in a rout.
It's not a new thing for the media to misread the mood of the country on a hot issue. But the crumbling of the immigration backlash was almost without precedent. Poll after poll showed voters angry about the influx of Mexican workers and willing to do almost anything to stop it. A much-cited April survey by Rasmussen Reports showed a whopping 30 percent of voters ready to elect a third-party presidential candidate who "promised to build a barrier along the Mexican border and make enforcement of immigration law his top priority." Politicians, who like to pretend they ignore the polls and lead with their guts, were clearly sweating that datum.
In April, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean declared that Republicans would wield the immigration issue the way "they used gay marriage" in 2004-tossing a banana peel on the floor and waiting for Democrats to walk on by. Lo and behold, the GOP did. Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum papered the state with stickers announcing Democrat Bob Casey's support for immigrant amnesty: "13 Million Illegal Aliens Are Counting on Him." He also campaigned with the mayor of Hazelton, who was pushing a town law that would fine landlords or employers who dealt with illegal immigrants.
Casey drubbed Santorum by 18 points. In Luzerne County, where Hazelton is located, he beat him by 21 points. But that result didn't shock like the fate of Arizona's J.D. Hayworth and Randy Graf. Hayworth, who'd opposed a harsh immigration state ballot measure in 2004, entered the campaign with the publication of an anti-immigration book called Whatever It Takes. Readers who flipped past the cover photo of Hayworth hanging tough in front of the border fence got to read the congressman's thoughts on dispatching troops to the country's southern flank and quashing Mexico's secret desire to reconquer the Southwest.
Graf, who was running for the seat of immigration moderate (and fellow Republican) Jim Kolbe, got financial support from the border-patrolling Minuteman project. Both men lost congressional seats in districts that had twice voted for George W. Bush.
Those losses, lined up next to each other like evidence at a trial, look like they debunk the immigration hype. But it's no use getting a Republican to admit that the issue didn't go the hard-liners' way. It wasn't that voters didn't want to close the border, the hard-liners assert, it was that voters who wanted to do that were distracted by anger over the war in Iraq and other issues, and voted for Democrats anyway.
"Immigration was a winning issue," says National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Ed Petru. "You wouldn't have seen so many ads on it if our candidates weren't on the winning side of the immigration issue. It helped stress the contrast between our candidates and the Democrats who favored amnesty. But having a winning issue is not the same as having an issue that can compensate for all the disadvantages our candidates had this cycle."
You'll hear the same tune from the candidates themselves. "The Democrats did a good job of nationalizing the war in Iraq and national sentiment against Congress," says Graf. "The sixth year of a presidency is historically not a good year for the party in the majority. We had a late primary and an eight-week general election. Between that and the party unity I didn't have on my side, it was just not going to go our way."
In other words, the hard-liners have a bucket of red herrings. Epochal issues can change an electorate's mood or historical patterns; eight years ago, anger over the drawn-out impeachment of Bill Clinton inspired voters to add more Democrats to Congress, despite the "rule" of the sixth-year slump. If a serious border crackdown and a Mexican Wall were really burning up American passions, they would have moved voters to action.
Some hard-liners argue they were moved. "The same voters who opposed Graf and Hayworth overwhelmingly approved four get-tough ballot measures," says Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies and a border hawk.
But those referenda didn't comport with the hard-line approach. One made English the official language of Arizona, a measure beloved not just by the anti-immigration crowd but by many pro-immigration pundits who think it will encourage assimilation. The other three initiatives cut off free social services for noncitizens, more in line with the harshness hard-liners expected from voters but a far cry from the "kick 'em out, build a wall" attitude they claimed to be riding to victory.
The idea that Americans might be more compassionate about immigrants than they let on is a tough one for hard-liners to comprehend. Most Americans, though eager to exercise some control over the border, don't see their would-be fellow citizens as a menace. Immigration hawks who look at those huddled masses and choose to see an ugly threat will keep getting the same results they got this year. They'll lose.
Bump to that. If you don't like what they've done to their own country, what do you think they'll do to ours?
The memo clearly states that a vast number of americans AND republicans did not see that plan as "amnesty". But what they all agreed on is ACTION.
So a democrat could run on exactly the same immigration plan as a republican, and BEAT him, because the republican was TALKING the talk but didn't GET THE JOB DONE, so they gave the job to the democrats.
We were in the majority. NOT passing a plan that we talked about put us out of the running on immigration no matter WHAT position we took. Those who wanted the border sealed saw through the bill they passed in october, those who wanted comprehensive reform credited nobody in the Senate for passing a bad bill, they simply said the republicans couldn't get the job done. The anti-illegal people took it out on the "amnesty" folks, but everybody else took it out on ALL the republicans.
It wasn't the only thing, but it was one of MANY things.
BTW, in the end, we didn't lose THAT badly, although in raw vote counts we got trounced. The democrats won't make the mistake we made on immigration, they will pass a bill, and most people will be happy even if it does NOTHING to fix the problem, because most people don't pay attention.
It was agreed that the House would write an enforcement bill and the Senate would write an immigration reform bill and that the two would be merged. To that end, the House wrote HR4437 and sent it to the Senate. The Senate wrote their bill that slightly modified HR4437 and contained immigration reform.
The reality is that some House republicans supported a strong enforcement only bill and some House Republicans supported a strong enforcement bill to be accompanied by reform.
This is proven by the fact that Hastert refused to do anything except go on tour.
Here are your words: "I think Tancredo and company ARE anti-hispanic".
You didn't just say that he comes off that way. You said he is anti-Hispanic. After claiming that "Tancredo and company ARE anti-Hispanic", you can't name any other member of Congress that is anti-Hispanic.
President Bush supports allowing millions of illegal aliens that have deliberately violated this nation's federal criminal immigration laws being able to apply for legal status while they remain in the United States. he does support allowing those illegal aliens that would gain legal status to later enter into a path to citizenship.
Rep. Tancredo supported H.R.4437, the plan that was supported by an overwhelming majority of House Republicans.
With regard to "Hayward", you don't suppose that J.D. Hayworth's ties to the Abramoff scandal had anything to do with him losing do you?
As far as Bonilla, he was running in a district whose lines were redrawn in such a way that it became a Democratic district.
The Congress did not change to being controlled by the Democrats because the House would not buy into the Senate amnesty plan. The Congress changed hands for many reasons other than that including the public's dissatisfaction with President Bush, the public's dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq, the public's dissatisfaction with the out-of-control spending by the last Congress and the Foley scandal.
Who made such an agreement?
The reason why is because white people aren't single issue voters on immigration. Hispanics are.
Law enforcement is the perogative of the House. Immigration is the perogative of the Senate.
You will recall that in 2003 and 2004 all the Senate immigration bills were immigration related and had no enforcement. It was understood that the House, somewhere down the road, would deal with enforcement.
In 2005, as the debate heated up, the Borderbots wanted enforcement included in the bill. The first attempt(july 05) was Kyl Cornyn with Kyl using his committee chair as authority to write enforcement. That didn't please the House.
So, the House and Senate reached the agreement to each write their respective parts and merge the two. But it didn't work.
"If the GOP continues its lurch to the far right, all is lost."
Is that what you call what this party is doing?
"What is agreed in the beltway is all that will count."
No taxation without representation!
"It wasn't a tancredo-style immigration bill."
Keeping stating the opposite of that and, as Lenin stated, it might be accepted as truth.
What members of the House and Senate made such an agreement?
Leadership
I hate saying it. Most normal Americans are opposed to illegal immigration. Doesn't matter, the beltway politics determine our future. Remember how they were trying to sell us before the 2006 elections that if we didn't pass a comprehensive immigration bill we were screwed? Didn't matter did it? We were still screwed. I would like to believe we had a choice. But... we don't. It is going to get shoved up our gullet no matter what we think. The Rats and Republican elites are together on this one. People will give me a hard time on this. Those that do are blind and still believe we have a choice. I wish we did. I really do! These people that push this do not care what the local American thinks. We are scruff. I would love to think a candidate could turn this around. If he has the guts to try, they will destroy him.
The Twilight Zone commercial was hilarious.
I think Vernon destroyed himself when he questioned Brad Miller's sexuality. Up ontil that point he was almost playful in his jabs on Miller and the issues and those jabs were pretty powerful. When he went personal with the attack on Miller and his wife, he went too far and it turned people off. My mother thought he crossed the line and became nasty about something which should not be an issue. Her sense of decorum was breached when Vernon questioned why Miller and his wife never had children. She didn't think that had any bearing on the election. That said, she voted for Vernon because he was the Republican, but she said she hadn't any choice.
President Bush is CiC.
If you voted for him, then he still deserves your support.
If you didn't vote for him, then show some respect for the office.
President Bush is not running for office.
Some Bay Buchanan puppets are running for office.
Support them if you wish; they're bigots too.
The party is abandoning the fiscal conservatives for the cultural conservatives.
If they want to deal with abortion, homos, and Schiavo and ignore problems like immigration reform or endangered species reform, they are going to lose.
Rep. Sensenbrenner made it very clear that he would not support any legislation that came from a conference committee that included an award of legal status to illegal aliens, as well as a path to citizenship for illegal aliens. Has was chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
Was this agreement made without his knowledge? Was it made without his consent?
In light of the opinions he expressed about a conference bill not including any path to citizenship, why did leadership appoint him to the conference committee?
It is entirely possible(or maybe even likely) that the GOP thought that they could get around the dems/water down the bill by stacking the conference committee.
If so, that was a foolish assumption because the dems had fallen for that one to many times already. In fact, we see that Reid killed the Senate bill the first time around and refused to let it come up again until Frist named who would be representing the Senate in the Conference committee.
BTW, now that the dems are in charge, it is likely that they will be doing some retaliating and stacking a few conference committees.
"These people that push this do not care what the local American thinks. We are scruff. I would love to think a candidate could turn this around. If he has the guts to try, they will destroy him."
I hate agreeing with you, but we are clearly no longer a representative republic. We are becoming a democracy. From there, well... I think you know.
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