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.
"anti-immigration conservatives"
The phrase says it all. Anti-immigration will never fly. Anti- ILLEGAL immigration is an easy winner....and easy to paint your Democratic opponent into a corner as refusing to obey the law and abet lawbreakers. However anti-immigration makes the Republican/conservative out as a bigot/racist.....and the media fostered this image...and won. Politics is all sound bites.
Woops!
Sorry, ignore my last post, I thought you said that it was immigration, and not taxes, iraq or guns.
You are right, it was corruption.
You really think 50% of the conservative Republican base support illegal immigration? I think you're crazy.
"Repeat for each state"
Poll-shopping is a minor art form....
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/4/9/224821.shtml?s=ic
Oh BINGO for one of the two major reasons. The other was the one issue voters who stayed home.
I didn't have a problem finding those videos.
President Bush supports rewarding millions of illegal aliens with with legal status and a path to citizenship. This is the approach of S.6211, the Senate immigration reform paln that was overwhelmingly supported by Senate Demcorats (including Hillary Clinton, Ted Knnedy and John Kerry)and rejected by a majority of Senate Republicans.
Rep. Tancredo voted for H.R.4437, the House anti-illegal immigration bill that was supported by an overwhelming majority of House Republicans. You claim that "Tancredo and company ARE anti-Hispanic".
Please list the names that comprise the "and company" portion of your allegation.
What other members of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus do you consider to be anti-Hispanic?
The anti-illegal crowd did not lose the election as you claim. Members of Cong. Tancredo's caucus retained their seats at at higher percentage than Republicans in general in Congress as I pointed out previously in this thread.
In general, Democrats in House races ran as being as tough or tougher than Republicans on border security issues. I'm sure you don't believe that Heath Shuler or Brad Ellsworth are going to support President Bush's plan to reward illegal aliens with legal status and a path to citizenship.
I do not believe that President Bush's immigration plan will be passed. Many of the new Democrats in the House will never support any plan that gives millions of illegal aliens legal status and a path to citizenship.
You found pro-amnesty political ad videos? Please provide a link!
The corruption scandals are not a seperate issue from immigration; the Americans believed that Republicans were just crooked politicians exploiting the issue of immigration for electoral gain.
Did you notice your NewsCrack article stated 47% support deportation and 49% oppose deportation
"Did you notice your NewsCrack article stated 47% support deportation and 49% oppose deportation"
More than 50% thought we would be better off without the illegals.
What's more, that was a general response, not a Republican response. If Republicans no longer stand for law enforcement, what good are they?
"I do not believe that President Bush's immigration plan will be passed. Many of the new Democrats in the House will never support any plan that gives millions of illegal aliens legal status and a path to citizenship."
The Dem leadership would love it, though. They're salivating at all those new voters President Bush wants to give them.
These have been posted many, many times at FR. Yet you act like it is a revelation.
I have nothing but pity and sorrow for the people suffering from the crappy way Mexico is run. But that's not my fault! And I sure as hell don't want 20 million of them here, running around illegally and unmonitored.
You are correct that it is a response from the general population. Like many extremists, you think you can win without the independents.
All elections are won and lost between the 40 yard lines
"If what you say is true, the repblicans would still control Congress. "
If that was the only issue, that might be true.
"You are correct that it is a response from the general population. Like many extremists, you think you can win without the independents."
You "moderates" think you can win without conservatives.
"All elections are won and lost between the 40 yard lines"
So, perhaps the GOP could reconsider only offering "it could be worse" as a reason to vote for them.
What potential candidate or candidates for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination do you believe would make a good president?
What member of the United States House of Representatives best represents your views with regard to immigration issues?
If the GOP continues its lurch to the far right, all is lost.
I will be supporting the republican nominee that can win Florida and the inland west.
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