Posted on 03/24/2002 5:09:11 PM PST by americanpatriotUSA
Hasta la Vista, Baby Bush's Hispanic strategy comes unraveled.
By John O’Sullivan From the April 8, 2002, issue, of National Review
n March 12, two quite separate events combined to undermine the Bush administration's strategy for building a new GOP majority by winning Hispanic votes with such policies as an amnesty for illegal Mexican immigrants. The first event was the result of the Democratic primary in Texas, in which conservative millionaire Tony Sanchez handily defeated former attorney general Dan Morales with a campaign that stressed the rise of Hispanic power. The second was the near defeat in the House of Representatives of Section 245(i) — a measure to allow more than 200,000 illegal immigrants to remain in the U.S. while regularizing their status, rather than requiring them to return home to apply for U.S. entry from there.
The Texas primary strengthened the evidence that the Hispanic vote is drifting firmly into the Democratic camp — irrespective of the GOP's immigration policies. And the House vote signaled that in the aftermath of September 11 most Republicans want to tighten immigration policy rather than liberalize it. Together, they suggest that the Bush administration's Hispanic strategy is falling apart.
In particular, the House decision — in which the Republican leadership averted defeat by a single vote — established that the White House no longer has the Re publican votes to push through its larger plans to amnesty 3 million illegal Mexican "guestworkers" as a favor to Mexico's President Fox. Not only did a clear majority of Republicans, including some close to the leadership, rally to the standard raised by Colorado representative Tom Tancredo in opposition to 245(i); but those who voted against it included all the Republicans (and some Democrats) who are considering a run for higher office this year, with the sole exception of New Hampshire representative John Sununu Jr. The measure achieved its narrow victory only with the support of congressmen like Lamar Smith of Texas and Judiciary Committee chairman James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, who generally favor tighter immigration controls and would almost certainly oppose the broader amnesty proposal.
The measure now faces an uncertain future in the Senate, where Robert Byrd of West Virginia has announced that he will prevent its passage under the "unanimous consent" provision that was its best hope of an early win. He expressed theatrical astonishment that the House and the White House should be so keen to pass "what amounts to an amnesty for hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens, many of whom have not undergone any background or security check." The politics of an immigration amnesty just got more perilous.
It may have helped the opponents of 245(i) that the previous week President Fox, in between eloquent appeals for a warm American welcome for Mexican immigrants, had handed back to Castro's secret police the handful of Cubans who had sought asylum in his own embassy. But that merely provided them with a nice secondary justification: Their main incentive was changing public opinion. Those Republicans with the most urgent reason for getting public opinion right — their own electoral interests — voted against the White House. One congressman, when taxed by a loyalist, gave his reason simply as "September 11th." Tancredo's immigration-reform caucus, which a year ago had a membership in the low teens, now boasts more than 60 adherents. And Robert Byrd has just reminded the GOP that even if the national Democratic party favors Hispanic immigration even more fervently than the White House does, local Demo cratic candidates may still flay them for a vote that seems to endorse and encourage illegal immigration.
The lesson for the White House is — or should be — clear: It can only pass the broader immigration amnesty it has been promoting over and against the votes of the majority of Republicans. That course will doubtless be urged upon it by some political analysts and pressure groups, citing the precedent of Clintonian "triangulation." That precedent, however, suffers from an obvious flaw: Clinton's triangulation meant supporting a welfare reform that was overwhelmingly popular with the American public, whereas illegal immigration is highly unpopular. Indeed, pollster John Zogby reports that 83 percent of Americans believe immigration laws are too lax. So the GOP majority would have public opinion on its side in resisting any move to make immigration easier. In which case the White House cannot deliver the goods on which its electoral outreach to Hispanics is based — and it would therefore be well advised to adopt a different strategy.
The good news from the Texas primary is that this may not matter very much, since the old strategy was doomed to fail anyway. It was based on a whole series of assumptions about Hispanic voters, each one of which was either plainly false or highly questionable: for instance, that Hispanic-Americans favor high levels of immigration. In fact, opinion polls clearly show that Hispanics differ only slightly from other Americans on immigration. A clear majority of Hispanics favor either the current or lower levels of immigration. Hispanic voters are swayed much more by the general policy stances of both parties than by immigration.
Another questionable idea is that Hispanic voters are "natural Republicans" because of their conservatism on moral questions such as "gay marriage" or abortion. Sure, in a California referendum on gay marriage, Hispanics voted disproportionately against it. But Hispanics tend to be liberal on economic questions, and when it comes to voting and party identification, in the self-satisfied but accurate words of liberal California analyst Harold Meyerson (now of The American Prospect), "their economic progressivism has consistently trumped their moral conservatism."
Are Hispanics likely to become more Republican the longer they stay in the U.S., and the more they rise up the income scale? No. A study by political scientists James G. Gimpel and Karen Kaufmann showed that Hispanics became more Democratic the longer they stayed in the U.S., and though Republican identification did indeed rise with prosperity, the Democrats retained a 10-point lead even at the highest levels of income.
The Texas primary confirmed these gloomy results for the GOP even before the results were tabulated. Hispanics were 12 percent of the Texas electorate in 1998, and are expected to be 20 percent — the "tipping point" at which their rise will make Texas a Democratic-leaning state — within six years. As GOP pollster Matthew Dowd, a longtime booster of the Hispanic/amnesty strategy, conceded to Dan Balz of the Washington Post: "The question this year is whether the Sanchez campaign advances that [i.e., making Texas a competitive swing state rather than a reliably Republican one], compressing six years into six months." It might do so; Sanchez combined an ethnic appeal to Hispanics — objecting to his opponent's wish to answer questions in English and Spanish rather than solely in Spanish in a televised debate — with an economic appeal to moderate middle-class whites, calling for low taxes.
For that very reason, however, his looks like a transitional candidacy even if he wins in November. For as Hispanic voting strength grows, so it is likely to reflect in Texas the liberal economic voting patterns celebrated by Meyerson in California.
What lies behind this political drift in Texas? Exactly the same force that is pushing once-reliable GOP states like California and Florida into, first, the "undecided" and eventually the "Democratic" column: demographic change driven by immigration. The Hispanic share of the population has risen sharply in these major states in the last 30 years; the Hispanic share of the electorate is now catching up, as immigrants become citizens and register to vote; and their votes heavily favor the Democrats. What has happened in California and now Texas is destined to happen in all the states with large concentrations of His panic immigrants. This is not a political prediction; it is a mathematical relationship.
As the study by Gimpel and Kaufmann demonstrated, moreover, this drift will be very hard to reverse. Republican hopes for major gains in the Hispanic electorate are without foundation. Democrats lead the GOP by large margins in every Hispanic group except Cuban-Americans. There is no sign that any significant group of Latino voters is "in play." Because Hispanic voters lean to the Democrats on economic and social grounds, the GOP would have to change almost all its policies (on taxes, welfare, regulation, labor law) to have any hope of attracting Hispanic crossovers in the long term. Above all, insofar as there is a modest drift rightwards among Hispanics as they rise economically, that is more than canceled out by the fact that continuing immigration channels new, poor Hispanic voters into the Democratic ranks.
Of course, there are Hispanics — between one-quarter and one-third of the total Latino electorate — who loyally pull the Republican lever. But they are the very voters who are least likely to favor sectional appeals to a separate Hispanic identity, such as an amnesty for illegals, and most likely to respond to traditional Republican arguments for patriotic assimilation. In the post-9/11 atmosphere, other Hispanics might be won over to their side by a patriotic appeal of that kind. But unless the Bush administration wakes up to the electoral impact of continuing immigration, the most the GOP can hope for is to slow the pace of its decline.
You're living in a dream world.
President Bush hasn't "legalized illegal aliens", as you say. Bush is a principled and pragmatic conservative, who understands how to play politics and be a successful leader. And Bush has betrayed no one. He is a man of integrity and character. The American people believe Bush is a man who can be trusted and they continue to support him with 80% approval ratings. At this rate Bush will kick butt in 2004. Guaranteed!
Your lies and distortions are noted.
A win in a primary doesn't necessarily translate into a win at the general election. The Republican strategy to go after Hispanic votes is a good one. They should also go after Asian votes and black votes - but not at the price of compromising Republican philosophy. They should do it by generating moves that draw these groups into the capitalist system and show them their own best interests are served by the Republicans instead of those racial panderers the Democrats.
Hope people have a long memory this November and in 2004.
He has betrayed the conservative base...SOME of us will remember..add that to the increase Democrat Hispanic vote and he is cooked
Oh yea, before that it was Hispanics for Republicans all the way!
Actually I think Pete Wilson WAS a Democrat in 94.
Your Brain-Dead Bush Spin and Propaganda are noted as well. BTW, since when are "opinions" "lies"? Only a party hack could think in these terms. Oh and when signs the 245I amnesty bill are you going to come back here and admit that you were wrong? LOL.
Then it sure will in 2004 - because if even a tiny fraction of the about-3/4 of voting-age Americans who are European-American are alienated by "amnesty" into either voting for protest presidential candidates or just not voting for president, Bush can win the entire Hispanic vote and still lose in 2004. That's simple math - because European-Americans outnumber Hispanic-Americans so much.
Many European-Americans here in Red Nation - in states where Bush won overwhelmingly - are alienated by Bush's push for "amnesty." He cannot afford to lose even one county of Red Nation in 2004 if he wants to be reelected.
IMMIGRATION resource library: public-health facts, court decisions, local INS numbers!
OK, complain!
I'm not happy about a lot of stuff either.
I am happy clinton is gone and "personally" I'll give GWB more time before I really start bitching.
BTW I've never voted RAT either...never have, never will
LMAO!
Look bucko, I'm a republican, a conservative and a Bush supporter. If that makes me a party hack, so be it. I don't agree with the President, all the time. I don't agree with him on 245(i). But I have no intention of quiting Bush and joining up with an idiot like you.
Bush hasn't moved center-left. That's a lie. Bush hasn't "legalized illegal aliens". That's a distortion.
You're just another ignorant, big mouth troublemaker, who wouldn't know the truth, if it bit you in the balls. Take your anti-Bush rhetoric and stuff it.
It is a fitting name with a fitting pronunciation. Bush should go with it.
But still I wouldn't count on many Hispanic voters.
Yep. It is a Fool's Gold but tell that to Karl Rove the guy that managed to make a horse race of an election that was already in the bag for Bush.
Hispanic vote Democrat, and Tony Sanchez will prove this one and for all in November 2002. Then Karl Rove will have to go to the drawing board to think of a new angle.
Hey, maybe Rove will rediscover the conservatives that were instrumental in putting Bush into office? NAH! It makes too much sense.
He might start trying to convert Tony to the GOP if Tony is elected!
LOL. Yes, now that I can see.
...this is an outright granting of amnesty to an illegal alien...
While I don't agree with Bush on 245(i), this provison of HR1885, isn't an amnesty. Amnesty is the act of an authority, by which a pardon is granted to a large group of individuals. A pardon is, the excusing of an offense without exacting a penalty. Under the conditions of 245(i), any foreigner, who wants to reapply for legal status to remain in the US, must pay a $1,000 fine. Paying that fine, means, theres no pardon and no amnesty!
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