One more time.
The exit polls showed the #1 issue of voters was not immigration, not taxes, not abortion, not guns and NOT IRAQ.
It was corruption scandals, of which the GOP had a ton.
Get rid of them, find explicitly indictable dirt on Dems, and the majority will return.
The GOP (borrow & spend) was tossed out because they alienated their base. The Dems (tax & spend) are true to their base.
A Bloomington co-worker follows Tom Roeser religiously and is very vocal at work. He still remembers Jim Leahy the Sunday before the primary. Jim supported honesty over corruption. But Jim became passionate, as only Jim can, about immigration.
I have previously said that the anti-illegal voices came accross as mean-spirited.
My co-worker's opinion was that Jim and the anti-immigrant voices came accross as dis-honest. My co-worker said "Real people aren't concerned about immigration. To say that we are is dis-honest. So if the Oberweiss people are dishonest and the Topinka people are dishonest, what is the difference?
I had not previously thought of it that way.
We threw out a RINO (Joe Schwarz) in my district and elected anti amnesty Tim Walberg in his place. Walberg was one of very few candidates endorsed by the minuteman PAC.
Ouch, that has got to hurt the Bush hating true conservatives on FR, right in the family jewels.
Approximately 11.5% of all Republican seats in Congress were lost in November 2007. Only approximately 6.7% of the members of Rep. Tom Tancredo's Immigration Reform Caucus lost their seats.
J.D. Hayworth had serious problems because of significant ties to the Jack Abramoff scandal.
In a year dominated by Democrats, it is not surprise that Vernon Robinson was soundly defeated in a district in which Democrats outnumber Republicans. There was not a single incumbent Democrat member of the House of Representatives that was defeated.
Many Democrats that won ran campaigns that made them appear to be as tough or tougher on border security than their Republican opponents.
By the way, the leading anti-illegal immigration conservative, Rep. Tancredo, won his district with 58.8% of the vote against a strong Demcoratic opponent and a Libertarian opponent.
www.teamtancredo.com
GOP leadership still can't figure out why the lost in 06. How the hell do they expect to win in 08, then?
The GOP better buy a clue or they are going to remain in minority status for a few decades --- again.
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.
Utter and complete .. Bullshiite.
The Great Illegal Immigration Myth of '06
And just for fun -- how these 'hard working good people', aka "immigrants" are contributing to American Society.
The Illegal-Alien Crime Wave
By Heather MacDonald, City Journal, January 14, 2004 (FrontPageMag.com)
Round em up and deport them all --- including those so-called anchor babies. Trains, Planes, Semitrailers, I don't give a rat's a$$.
And Federal Prison for enablers and abettors.
Not finding Bush on the ballot, voters instead smote Congressional Republicans. Such was the voters wroth,and the illegal issue could not protect them.
The GOP is twice screwed by Bush, first by authoring the GOP defeat, second by then using the Dems he helped elect to concoct amnesty plans to cement the Dem majority in perpetuity.
Sorry to say this, but President Bush is the reason.
He's good about security when it deals with oil. Or terrorism.
He's not so good about perspective, when things involve Mexico. In fact, just about everything George Bush believes about with regard to Mexico, seems to be exactly the opposite of the positions he should be adhering to, in order to support his base.
(frustrated beyond words)
Sounds like an awful commercial. If you show it during the general election, you have to face the fact that most of your audience probably isn't "conservative Republicans," and will tune you out from the beginning.
But beyond that, a candidate represents a package of different positions. Single out one and you lose most of your audience. Play that one issue up too much and you turn people off, even if they're originally sympathetic to your stand.
The general message is "So-and-so cares. Cares about the things you care about. Cares about you and about how hard you work. Cares about this. Cares about that. And even about the other thing." Putting all your eggs in one basket is usually a mistake.
The American people are 70+% on our side about securing the borders, but even Reason insists on conflating all immigration together -- olegal and illegal. They refuse to see teh difference between the guy who filled out the papers, waited, got a card, and came eagerly to America and the guy who sneaked in.
When posting Reason articles, you might want to also post a link to their blog where you can leave comments letting them know what you think. In this case:
reason.com/blog/show/118330.html
I don't know if he's right or wrong. There is great anti-illegal sentiment among the active political conservatives.
But I can't find it amongst any normal people I talk to. They don't like illegal immigrants, they don't like houses with 12 adults and 7 cars clogging the streets, they don't like schools where their children are minorities and they have to hire spanish-speaking teachers.
But they aren't looking to vote for someone simply because they are against illegals. Meanwhile, the pro-immigrant forces seem much more motivated to vote against what they call "hate".
Except in places where the pro-illegal people have actually won major concessions, like where day labor centers are built -- then the anti-illegal crowd, seeing contrete evidence of how much they are losing, will vote the issue.
I think President Bush did his best to frame the issue in a way that doesn't come across as "anti-hispanic". I think Tancredo and company ARE anti-hispanic; I could be wrong, but if nothing else my belief in that is echoed by millions of voters, and perception drives votes. Bush was going for the middle ground, not supporting amnesty, supporting a really tough guest worker program.
But the anti-illegal crowd mistook his soothing rhetoric for weakness, thought they had a winning issue, destroyed any chance of winning ANYTHING, and lost the election. So now we are stuck with the DEMOCRATS idea of fixing the problem, and none of us are going to like it.
The key to winning is often misleading your opponents. A fake run doesn't work if everybody rejects the play because, thinking it is a real run, argue that you need to pass.
The MSM would not let it become an election issue. They went along with all the politico's that didn't want it to be an issue (mainly dems) The sad thing is Tancredo will try to make it an issue, as he has over the last 8 years, but will get little or no backing from the RINO's...no backing no news, if a reporter doesn't shove a mic in your face for a comment, or doesn't ask an immigration question...guess what...there's no story
Oh BS....what do the real facts show us from the past on this...exactly what happened...
Both those saying that the GOP lost in '06 because it was too conservative or that it was too moderate are wrong. Also, exit polls showed that immigration was highly important to very few voters. I wish people here would get those reasons out of their heads.
A large combination of things contributed to the loss, but the primary reasons were the unpopularity of President Bush, the war in Iraq, and corruption.
"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.
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.