Posted on 05/22/2007 7:01:28 PM PDT by Zack Nguyen
Recently, as Congress debated an immigration “reform” proposal, a memorandum on official Democratic National Committee stationary was retrieved from a trash can on South Capitol Street in Washington, D.C. This memo was faxed around the country and in time reached California. Although coffee stains covered most of the salutation, it appeared to read, “From: H. Dean. TO: HRC.” However, the rest of the memo was intact and perfectly clear…
Dear Senator,
Nice to see you the other night at that $25 million coast-to-coast Hollywood-to-Broadway fundraiser. You certainly know how to rake in the bucks! We should have enough to make the opening ante in 2008. I’m glad to hear that Chelsea is doing so well. Please give my regards to Bill next time you see him.
Anyway, I appreciate you keeping us informed about the details of this “new” legislation involving immigration. We see it as a vital step towards keeping the economy running, strengthening border enforcement, clarifying rules for legal immigration, cracking down on illegal immigration, blah, blah, blah. But, off the record: Let's get down to the politics of it.
Can you believe that the Republicans are handing us the future on a silver platter? An analysis of ethnic voting patterns done by Peter Brimelow and Ed Rubenstein projected three Democratic victories for every Republican one if current population trends (i.e., a growing minority vote) maintain themselves or intensify. There are no guarantees in life, of course. But I’ll take three out of four election victories any day of the week. Hey, given our record this decade, we’d be glad to take any wins nationally. The “bi-partisan McCain-Kennedy plan” seemed almost deliberately designed to help Democrats and hurt Republicans. How does it do so? Let us count the ways…
First and foremost, most Hispanics are Democrats. True, George W. Bush tied a record for winning Hispanics in the 37-40 percent range. (Don’t believe the nonsense that he got 44 percent of Hispanics. Those were the same exit polls that gave us “President Kerry.” The figures were revised down in 2005.) W received about the same level of Hispanic support as Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan did in their re-elections. But even if we are generous and grant that he got the 44 percent the Republican National Committee is claiming, that means a solid majority of Hispanics still voted for a lackluster Democrat against an incumbent Republican president who bent over backwards to court them in a time of war and low unemployment. The record shows that since the Second World War, the Hispanic community has supported Democrats for president ranging from a high of nearly 90 percent for their fellow Catholic JFK to a low of 60 percent for Mondale, McGovern, and Kerry, for an average of roughly 2 to 1 Democratic. So any amnesty plan will create more Democratic than Republican voters in the foreseeable future. It took the last wave of Catholic immigrants — from the Irish famine refugees of the 1840s and Southern/Eastern workers of the post-Civil War era — nearly a century to consider voting Republican for Ike in the 1950s. Now a similar scenario is being set up again.
Second, immigration reform has been an item on the liberal agenda ever since the strict limits of the 1924 National Origins Act (which deliberately attempted to maintain the nation’s ethnic balance of the 1920s). The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act was promoted by President John Kennedy, drafted by Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and pushed through the Senate by Senator Edward Kennedy. It’s been called the Kennedys’ greatest gift to the Democratic party. If Teddy serves out his next term, that will mean 50 years in the U.S. Senate. Nice of the Reeps to give him a crowning achievement that will also create more Democrats. What’s next, Dr. Bill Frist supporting a Canadian-style national health-care bill with the Bay State’s Senior Senator?
Third, the Bush/Rove plan divides Republicans. Not just congressional Republicans like Tom Tancredo and Jim Sensenbrenner on one side and McCain and Specter along with the Bushies on the other. But real rank and file Republicans absolutely hate this bill’s amnesty provisions. By a margin of 58 to 10 percent, Republicans think that legal immigration should be reduced (never mind illegal immigration)! Furthermore, by an 87-1 percent (!) margin, Republicans said the federal government was “not doing enough” versus “doing too much” to keep illegal immigrants from crossing the border. And those polls are backed up by real election results: Nearly 90 percent of ordinary Republicans voted for initiatives restricting illegal immigration in California and Arizona. Republicans were already vulnerable due to Iraq, Scooter Libby’s indictment, corruption, Jack Abramoff, high gas-prices, massive deficits, Homeland Security employees arrested on child porn charges, the loss of good jobs, and the generic Second Term Blues faced by most presidents. Did they really need to also fight amongst themselves with this? The more time conservatives spend fighting each other, the less chance they have to do damage to us. Can you say Speaker Pelosi for the next 20 years? Who said Rove wasn’t a genius!
Fourth, besides dividing grass roots Republicans, it will likely lead to more business contributions to Democrats. The late Lee Atwater used to say that there is always a shortage of time and money in politics. We could always use a few more dollars and this next wave of immigration from the third world also will put time on our side.
Lastly, a reform package may be a feather in W’s cap, but that’s all. Sure President Bush will get credit from Hispanics for helping them, but he’s not eligible to run for another term. In all likelihood, he’ll get some marginal kudos while editorialists will beat the brains out of the “racist, nativist Republicans” who always screw over minorities. The likely end result of this will be a nasty fight in the Republican primaries of 2008, an alienated business community, very few Hispanic Republicans, more Democrats, and a depressed GOP base. The textbook definition of a disaster is getting the worst of all worlds.
In hockey, three goals in a game is called a “hat trick.” In baseball, four runs scored on a single home run is a “grand slam.” Ben Wattenberg, who once worked for President Johnson and Vice President Humphrey, called going five-for-five a “hat slam.” For putting through this “hat slam,” Karl Rove may go into the Democratic Hall of Fame!
And I just love the talk about “bringing immigrants out of the shadows and putting them on the legal path to citizenship.” It’s enough to make any DNC member drool at the thought of new voters. Even if Rove’s vision of middle class Hispanics eventually turning Republican is true, at best, they’ll be a swing vote replacing older whites in the Sun Belt who have voted 2-1 Republican in the last generation.
People got on my case last year for saying that “Republicans were a bunch of white Christians.” It may have been impolite, but it was true: Protestants made up 62 percent of Bush voters in 2004 and Catholics were 28 percent. Both of these Republican groups were overwhelmingly white, meaning nearly 90 percent of Bush voters were, well, white Christians. How nice of Republicans to change the ethnic mix of the country and threaten their bloc voting among, er, white Christians by adding millions of working class Mexicans, Salvadorans, Brazilians, and Filipinos while possibly turning off their base! Of course, Joel Kotkin and the Wall Street Journal could be right that these new immigrants are entrepreneurs in waiting who will be magically transformed into captains of industry and affluent suburban Republicans by assimilation. That’s certainly been true of many Asian immigrants and the anti-Castro Cuban refugees. On the other hand, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, whose mother is from Mexico and came to prominence as a union organizer, sees them as the next generation of union members. So who do we think knows more about life in east Los Angeles, Mayor Villaraigosa or a professor who teaches in Malibu and a bunch of rich guys on Wall Street? Somehow, Mayor V. sees an immigrant carpenter from Central America as more likely to join a union than to start a business that eventually displaces Microsoft, and I agree.
When did white conservative intellectuals become such experts on Latin culture? Don’t they know that every Spanish-speaking country in the world has a strong labor party abounding in machine politics? (Of course, the same neocons so enthusiastic about immigration reform are also the geniuses who gave us the “cakewalk” in Iraq!) Mexicans in Chicago are hooked into the Daley Machine, and it’s only a matter of time before the newly replenished barrios of the cities of the southwest send forth their own versions of Richard Daley (or “Ricardo Diaz” perhaps?). The past is prologue, so more immigrants probably means more future Democrats. Happy Days are here again!
Actually, in fairness to Rove, the post-1965 wave of immigrants (over 20 million legally and at least 12 million illegally) has put Republicans on the horns of a dilemma: if they give the party’s conservative base and talk radio what they want by bashing immigrants, they mobilize the Hispanics against them and also turn off independent suburban women. On the other hand, doing nothing or passing a guest worker bill may lead conservatives to stay home in 2008. I feel their pain. Hey, they say adversity builds character, so let the GOP experience a few defeats. It will help make them better persons.
Disc jockeys on Spanish-language radio stations were able to mobilize literally millions of young Hispanics across the nation to demonstrate for these reforms, business is putting their lobbying muscle on the line and Congress seems to be responding. (As Everett Dirksen used to say, “When I feel the heat, I see the light.”) Is it really too hard to imagine that, some day, those same forces can mobilize the new Hispanic vote against their conservative critics? Or to have Congress go on a binge of social spending? Oh wait, that’s already happened….
Just what we need: more foot soldiers for the labor movement and the Democracy! Over the last dozen years, California has seen over 1.5 new Hispanics register to vote. Since the Golden State has about a third of the national Hispanic population, projecting that out to the national figures means an additional 4.5 Hispanic voters. That’s just about enough to wipe out the Bush margin in the popular vote from 2004.
We’ll register immigrant Democrats from Virginia to Florida, from Maryland to Texas and out to Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and California. It’s enough to make me say: “YEEAAAHHHHH!”
Sincerely, Howard.
P.S: You know I have to stay neutral, but I’ve always been your biggest fan! Please have your friend Harold Ickes call me back ASAP, he always seems to be out of the office when I call. Best wishes for the future!
— The anonymous author of this parody is a Democratic political consultant in California and is NOT the author of Primary Colors.
Of course it may turn out to be a moot point. I am beginning to wonder if this bill will even pass, especially given the Democrat's "ambitious" timetable for consideration, which is essentially designed to ensure that no one has time to organize against the bill, let alone actually read it.
The margin in the House is very close, and Speaker Pelosi will lose some Democrats, while probably only a handful of the most leftist Republicans will vote for this.
The GOP has been pathetic in combating the Dems. Their lack of leadership and any sense of urgency about America has brought the very existence of the GOP to the brink.
And now, the opportunistic, leftist Repubs, like McCain, et al, have set America up to stare its death in the face.
This monstrous amnesty bill will damage America beyond belieft, and give the libs the HUGE MEXICAN VOTING BASE they have been frothing over for so long. And the Dems to not care at all about the consequences of this travesty shamnesty bill — which will be huge in many respects.
We are staring America’s death in the face.
Until their is serious border enforcement, you’re right - these trends will continue.
40-60 million sounds really high. That would be 1 out of every 6-7 Americans.
Pelosi said she won’t try to pass the bill unless they can get at least 70 Republican votes. She obviously would like to be able to blame Republicans for this amnesty bill so that they will lose seats in 2008.
Really?! That works in our favor then, because it makes absolutely no sense for a Speaker to hamstring herself in that way. All it takes is 218 votes, no more.
“But real rank and file Republicans absolutely hate this bill’s amnesty provisions...” because THEY have to go home and defend it. Or not. Everyone who has been calling and emailing and faxing about this POS bill ought to make it a point to go to their congressperson’s town meetings during the Memorial Day recess and see how they try to defend it, or if they try to defend it. Be sure o ask them how they are going to guarantee that the enforcment provisions will be fully funded. Peasants with pitchforks, unite, you have nothing to lose but your country.
I wouldnt take her at her word. This is the kind of BS that people on the Hill will tell you to throw you off. She could just be trying to insure that the President lines up a nice margin of safety for her.
One of Dubya's biggest mistakes has been trusting people he should know cannot be trusted.
bump.
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