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.
You're a bigot.
Bigots aren't popular at FR.
Except they didn't.
Tancredo's immigration caucus lost at a lower percentage than the larger GOP.
And, once again, it's anti-ILLEGAL-immigration conservatives. When a writer leaves out that important detail, it shows he is a dishonest weasel.
Opposition to ILLEGAL immigration is quite rational.
Will they be smuggling a nuclear device across the border on the backs of 100 illegals, or will they put it in a shipping container?
"Opposition to ILLEGAL immigration is quite rational."
...and opposition to a repeat of past failed policies on a larger scale is just plain common sense.
We've had amnesties. We've had (and continue to have) guest worker programs. Both merely encouraged more illegal immigration.
We have one of the most open LEGAL immigration policies on Earth. Why not leave it at that?
"Now let me ask you, are you admitting that there are other higher risks than the mexican border. If so, how much? If so, how many? "
Nothing I'm willing to say here and none are as likely to be a threat, as damaging as they would be.
"Will they be smuggling a nuclear device across the border on the backs of 100 illegals, or will they put it in a shipping container?"
They somehow manage to move tons of various drugs across the border every day.
Canada has a guest worker program which doesn't let the people stay, and works well.
If you ignore the fact that people come work here, you won't get rid of them.
Can you rephrase that second sentence, it doesn't make sense.
Naw. You ignore it.
Why can't you answer the question? Why Mexico? Come on. I know you know.
What in the heck are you talking about. Who is this head "borderbot" you are referring to. There is a huge difference between legal immigrants and ILLEGAL invaders, the first are welcome, the second are uninvited.
"Can you rephrase that second sentence, it doesn't make sense."
What doesn't make sense? That drugs are moved over the border daily by the ton?
If you want the people to agree with you, you have to stop asserting that they already agree with you, stop telling them they are stupid if they don't agree with you, and start actually EDUCATING them as to why they should agree with you.
Tancredo and his band, like so many conservatives, took for granted a "conservative wave" in the country. They figured out how to get out the base, but forgot they have to manufacture a base.
Tancredo needs to explain to the country WHY his solution to the current problem is the best solution. Until he puts the effort into convincing others he is right, he, and his plan, will go nowhere. And remember, "republicans won't win elections because immigrants will vote democrat" is not a winning argument for most people.
I'm willing to accept other plans, if there is a good explanation as to how they will work, and how they will solve the problems. But you have to do the work.
This isn't just about immigration. Tax Cuts, limited government, even the social issues -- we've lost our will to explain and educate others, and are getting to where we are as bad as DU, just dismissing anybody who disagrees with us.
Once more, you're a phony.
What did that get the former GOP House, a 31 seat loss.
Only ignorant people believe that the 2006 elections were primarily about immigration.
I said I think. I didn't assert. I didn't even ask anybody else to agree. I in fact said I was likely wrong, that it was just a perception.
I thought that was all pretty clear. I never claimed he was anti-hispanic. I said I "think" he is anti-hispanic.
I think the Colts will win the superbowl. However, I am certainly not claiming that the colts will win, nor will I bet that they will win. It's just something I think.
Don't ask me to justify why I think he's anti-hispanic, or give you any evidence -- I already said that wasn't the point, and that I wasn't asking you to agree with me.
If tancredo wants to be more than a sad footnote, he needs to explain his position in a way that doesn't make half the country think he is anti-hispanic. He has to educate the 70% of the people in the country that disagree with him. He has to stop the inflamatory rhetoric which riles up his base but turns off the majority of people he needs.
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