The President of France wants a crackdown on illegal immigration in Europe.
Plans for a Europe-wide clampdown on immigration that could see asylum-seekers forced to apply for refugee status in advance and more effective deportation measures, are to be at the heart of France’s European Union presidency.
Nicolas Sarkozy, French president, is proposing a co-ordinated crackdown on illegal immigration in government documents, seen by the Financial Times, which have been drawn up in preparation for France’s EU presidency, which starts in July.
But the idea that Europe needs immigrants for demographic reasons is deeply mistaken.
The document – a so-called “pact on immigration” – also calls for swift implementation of biometric visas and compulsory language lessons for all new arrivals. It acknowledges that the EU needs migrants for demographic and economic reasons but it adds: “Europe does not have the means to welcome with dignity all those who see an Eldorado in it.”
Europe is a densely populated place. What is wrong with letting its population decrease as a result of lower fertility? It will become a more livable place.
Meanwhile the Bush Administration is looking for ways to increase the foreign deluge.
WASHINGTON -- With restaurants and resorts facing summer staff shortages, the Bush administration will announce federal regulations today to streamline the way foreign workers enter the country for seasonal jobs.
The Department of Labor is rewriting rules to help employers find and hire workers for temporary jobs as landscapers, waitresses and crab pickers more quickly and efficiently than current guidelines allow.
In one major change affecting industries such as construction and shipyards, the definition of "temporary" will be drastically expanded -- from the current 10 months to three years.
Will President Obama be even worse on immigration? Half Sigma says the Democrats are far worse on immigration.
I do NOT agree with the guy who says Republicans are equally blameful for high immigration. Go read Daily Kos and see how insanely pro-immigration they are. There's no Republican blog that's like that. I agree that there are Republican politicians who don't give a damn about what Republican voters think if they are receiving campaign contributions from pro-immigration businesses, but that's only so long as they are not losing votes because of it. It has primarily been the forces on the left, like the Daily Kos people, who have convinced the public to be pro-immigration and vote against their own interests.
If there is going be a serious reduction of immigration, it's NOT going to come from Democrats. That I guarantee.
McCain is so bad on immigration that who wins this Presidential election basically doesn't matter for immigration as near as I can tell.
Writing in the quite liberal New York Times Christopher Buckley, a former aide to George H.W. Bush and son of William F. Buckley, tries to defend John McCain against conservative criticisms by claiming that Hispanics are conservatives.
True, too, on immigration, Mr. McCain has allied himself with the Archfiend, Ted Kennedy. It’s also true — odd — that Mr. McCain is popular among Hispanic voters, who are themselves paradigms of cultural conservatism and without whose support any “conservative” candidate for president may be doomed to failure.
If Hispanics are conservatives then why can the Democrats rely on large majorities of Hispanics to almost always vote for Democrats? If Hispanics are conservatives then why do they have far higher rates of out-of-wedlock births? Just what makes establishment pseudo-conservatives like Christopher Buckley so eager to proclaim the myth of Hispanic conservatism?
Next Buckley seems to imply that anyone who has broken the law has lost the right to demand law enforcement.
(It would be interesting, by the way, to hear from Mr. Limbaugh, Ms. Coulter and Mr. Hannity as to whether they’ve ever availed themselves of the services of illegal immigrants. Answer carefully, now: that ambassadorship could be at stake!)
Mr. Buckley doesn't think laws should be enforced at midnight?
Is the “conservative” position on immigration that the only solution is a wall and midnight roundups by Border Patrol agents at Wal-Mart?
Is the pseudo-conservative position that open borders is the only solution?
A Los Angeles garment maker, American Apparel, employs large numbers of Hispanics to make t-shirts and other apparel. American Apparel has come out and publically supported Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton because Obama supports drivers licenses for illegal aliens.
Four decades ago, the chairman of General Motors proclaimed: "What's good for GM is good for America." Today we're saying, "What's good for American Apparel is good for America."
American Apparel is another company that believes in socializing costs while privatizing profits. Bring in the workers who are cheap to employ and foist the cost of their education, health care, police, justice system, prisons, and other costs onto the net taxpayers.
We urge voters to consider Obama on the Democratic side.
We urge voters to consider McCain on the Republican side.
Why? Because of their honesty on the issue of immigration, the most significant civil rights concern the country has faced in 50 years.
Why Not Clinton?
We appreciate Senator Clinton's campaign on many fronts, but when it comes to the issue of immigration she has not shown the same strength and conviction as Obama. This was clear during last week's California debate. While he supports driver's licenses for undocumented workers, she is opposed "at this time." Tell that to a mother of three in East L.A. driving her children to school every day. Obama has also pledged to accomplish immigration reform in his first year; Clinton has not made such a commitment. Immigration is the most critical issue that faces the United States, California, and Los Angeles today-we appreciate the Obama campaign's clear voice on it. We also applaud his refusal to scapegoat immigrants for political gain, as some other candidates have.
Hillary opposes drivers licenses for illegal aliens in part because when New York liberal Democrat Governor Eliot Spitzer tried to implement drivers licenses for illegal aliens the opposition was so intense in liberal New York that he had to drop his proposal. I think Hillary got the message. Obama is to the rhetorical Left of Hillary on immigration.
You have to wonder how many illegal aliens does American Apparel employ.
Some immigration experts criticized the advertisement and said it amounted to an admission that American Apparel uses illegal immigrants.
“It is self-serving propaganda to perpetuate cheap labor policies that are in violation of American law,” said Vernon M. Briggs Jr., a professor emeritus at Cornell who specializes in immigration policy. “This is not ‘apartheid.’ This is simply law-breaking. ‘Apartheid’ is an emotional term that is designed to inflame the issue.”
American Apparel needs irrational reactions since rational analyses of personal interests would lead most people to oppose immigration of low skilled and low IQ workers.
Update: On immigration will Obama or Hillary do more to help Mexicans move to the United States? Contra American Apparel, most Latino voters prefer Hillary.
Last week's primaries were dubbed "Hispanic Super Tuesday," and indeed the Latino vote proved pivotal to Hillary Clinton's gains. She received an overwhelming majority of Latino votes despite Barack Obama's last-ditch efforts to differentiate his position on immigration.
The support Obama had enjoyed in Illinois' Latino communities even slipped significantly since the last time he ran for office.
Hispanics/Latinos feel less need to prove they aren't racist. Some of their voting probably reflects the dim view they hold of blacks.
The Boston Globe had to report on Mitt Romney's use of illegal immigrants for lawn care not once but twice to get him to stop it. It took
Standing on stage at a Republican debate on the Gulf Coast of Florida last week, Mitt Romney repeatedly lashed out at rival Rudy Giuliani for providing sanctuary to illegal immigrants in New York City.
Yet, the very next morning, on Thursday, at least two illegal immigrants stepped out of a hulking maroon pickup truck in the driveway of Romney's Belmont house, then proceeded to spend several hours raking leaves, clearing debris from Romney's tennis court, and loading the refuse back on to the truck.
In fact, their work was part of a regular pattern. Despite a Globe story in Dec. 2006 that highlighted Romney's use of illegal immigrants to tend to his lawn, Romney continued to employ the same landscaping company – until today. The landscaping company, in turn, continued to employ illegal immigrants.
Two of the workers confirmed in separate interviews with Globe reporters last week that they were in the country without documents. One said he had paid $7,000 to a smuggler to escort him across the desert into Arizona; the other said he had come to the country with a student visa that was now expired. Both were seen on the lawn by either Globe reporters or photographers over the last two months.
Romney, informed of this situation by the Globe reporters, finally cracked down.
He also released a copy of the short letter of termination he sent to Mr. Ricardo Saenz of Community Lawn Service.
"Given your company's disregard for the clear instructions provided on this issue last year, I am forced to terminate my contract with your company, effective immediately," the letter stated. "My family will no longer utilize your services and all scheduled visits are cancelled as of today. I am disappointed that our relationship must end on this note,
He's disappointed that this gardener service didn't put forth the effort needed to make it easier for him to win the Presidency. He's disappointed that running for President places constraints on who he can use as a servant.
but we simply cannot tolerate your inability to ensure that your employees are legally permitted to work in the United States."
But Ricardo Saenz argues that enforcing immigration laws is not his job.
Ricardo Saenz, of Community Lawn Service, told NewsCenter 5's Jorge Quiroga Tuesday, "I'm not the INS (Immigration & Naturalization Service). It's not my job to keep track of all that."
Illegal immigrants are not just a problem for the American southwest any more. They've spread far and wide. Now they've spread far enough to get Mormon Presidential candidates from Massachusetts in trouble.
Groups that support a crackdown on illegal aliens haven't settled on their champion in the race for the White House, but there's little doubt which Republican scares them most — former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.
"He was an absolute disaster on immigration as governor," said Roy Beck, president of NumbersUSA, a group that played a major role in rallying the phone calls that helped defeat this year's Senate immigration bill. "Every time there was any enforcement in his state, he took the side of the illegal aliens."
Huckabee is making headway because Romney is a Mormon. Many Christians do not see Mormons as really one of them.
Romney is poking at Huckabee on his views about illegal immigrants.
After Romney and Giuliani argued over immigration, Romney turned on Huckabee for a proposal he made as governor of Arkansas to give breaks in college tuition to the children of illegal immigrants. "Mike, that's not your money," he said. "That's the taxpayers' money. And the right thing here is to say to people that are here legally as citizens or legal aliens, we're going to help you. But if you're here illegally, you ought to be able to return home or get in line with everybody else, but illegals are not going to get taxpayer-funded breaks that are better than our own citizens." Huckabee responded: "In all due respect, we're a better country than to punish children for what their parents did. We're a better country than that." "I worked my way through college," Huckabee added. "I started work when I was 14, and I had to pay my own way through, and I know how hard it was to get that degree. I'm standing here tonight on this stage because I got an education. If I hadn't had the education, I wouldn't be standing on this stage. I might be picking lettuce. I might be a person who needed government support rather than who was giving so much money in taxes I want to get rid of the tax code that we've got and make it really different."
Romney's campaign has sent out an email explaining how
To back up its claims against Huckabee, the Arkansas Republican is quoted in the Romney mailer as saying last year that "what is good is a pathway to a legal status." In 2006, Huckabee supported the Senate's earned legalization plan over a House bill, which would have made illegal immigration a felony.
The mailer also quotes Huckabee as saying in 2005 that "illegal immigrants are actually financially supporting U.S. citizens."
Think that's an exaggeration of Huckabee's position? Nope. Huckabee told John Hawkins he wants the old path toward citizenship for illegals and this is just like George W. Bush.
Mike Huckabee: Well, I'm not as sure that leaving and then coming back is as important as it is to acknowledge that what they've done is illegal, pay a fine, and then get in line behind the people that are going through the process of being here legally. It's important that we have a legal process.
We can't just ignore our laws. We either change them or enforce them for clearly this land is a land that is dependent on more workers than we currently have for many of the jobs that Americans honestly don't want. So there is, I think, a reality that we shouldn't just sort of look the other way. I don't believe in amnesty. That's not a good idea, but creating a pathway where people can have a form of restitution to make things right, to understand that laws have to be obeyed or some consequences have to be applied.
The rest of the Republican field is so weak that Huckabee has a chance. Will fundamentalist Christians who oppose the Open Borders elites put Huckabee's positions on other issues ahead of immigration policy and vote for him in spite of his immigration positions?
Congress is showing some fear that the populace doesn't want what the elites want on immigration.
Last month, the Senate gave up on the DREAM Act, after falling short of the votes needed to take up debate. The plan, which would have given children of illegal immigrants access to US colleges and universities and, eventually, to citizenship, was once viewed as one of the more likely immigration measures to pass Congress.
This week, another program with broad bipartisan support fell off the legislative agenda, as Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) of California said she was postponing plans to legalize the status of hundreds of thousands of migrant agricultural workers. She had urged her colleagues to add the guest-worker provisions in her AgJobs bill to the $283 billion farm bill now before the Senate. But she said in a statement Monday that the politics on the issue weren't promising: "When we took a clear-eyed assessment of the politics of the Farm bill and the defeat of the DREAM Act and comprehensive immigration reform, it became clear that our support could not sustain these competing forces."
Millions of phone calls, letters, faxes, and emails have reached into fear centers of politicians who want to get reelected. People got mad enough about plans for amnesty that Congress got the message.
We still have work ahead of us. We need to defeat some of the biggest pro-immigration and pro-amnesty Congressmen and Senators who are running for reelection. If we can do that then Congress will go further down the path of immigration restriction.
Hillary Clinton -- and the other Democrats running for president -- couldn't possibly have assumed that they would forever skate around the issue of illegal immigration. That notion came to an end in the most recent debate, when the New York senator badly slipped over a question about her state's controversial plan to issue driver's licenses to illegal aliens. Did she think no one would ask?
Democrats had better start dealing with this. Polls show a large majority of Americans, including Democrats, opposed to illegal immigration. They also find that most Americans favor some sort of amnesty for many illegals. Clinton apparently tried to finesse the two, while ignoring what's behind the numbers.
What many Democrats (and Republicans) don't "get" is that the support for amnesty is highly conditional. It rests on trust that any official pardon will be the last one.
People have been fooled too many times by past amnesties. I see no need for an amnesty. We can just deport all the illegals that are here.
I don't think the leading Democrats are capable of moving right on immigration to an appreciable extent. Hillary's recent obvious support for amnesty ("bring everybody out of the shadows") shows she's not going to come down hard on illegals.
I think it’s important to bring everybody out of the shadows. To do the background checks. To deport those who have outstanding warrants or have committed crimes in the United States, and then to say to those who wish to stay here, you have to pay back taxes, you have to pay a fine, you have to learn English, and you have to wait in line. And I hate to see any state being pushed to try to take this into their own hands, because the federal government has failed.
So I know exactly what Governor Spitzer’s trying to do and it makes a lot of sense, because he’s trying to get people out of the shadows. He’s trying to say, “O.K., come forward and we will give you this license.”
But without a federal policy in effect, people will come forward and they could get picked up by I.C.E. tomorrow. I mean, this can’t work state-by-state. It has to be looked at comprehensively. I agreed with President Bush and his efforts to try to approach this. He just didn’t have the political capital left by the time he actually got serious about it.
And it’s unfortunate that too many people are using this to demagogue the issue, instead of trying to solve it: you know, people in politics, people in the press, and there’s a kind of unholy alliance.
Let me translate "demagogue this issue": That means "demand that illegal aliens be deported and oppose amnesty". Hillary isn't saying that we should build a wall along the entire US-Mexico border. She's not calling for tough enforcement against employers who hire illegals. She's not calling for deportation of the sort that Ike Eisenhower carried out in the 1950s (I like Ike).
What the Democrats have going for them: 7 years of George W. Bush and counting. Rising oil prices. A real estate meltdown. A potential recession starting next year. An unpopular war in Iraq.
What the Democrats have going against them: They are even less willing than the Republicans to obey rising popular demands an end to illegal immigration and a reduction of legal immigration. They want more tax money to spend.
In France a new law requires DNA testing when supposed family members try to immigrate.
When then-Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy pushed tough limits on immigrants last year, the left called it an attack on France's African and Arab populations. In a country roiled by changing complexion and identity, and on the eve of national elections, Mr. Sarkozy's new "contract" set a high bar: Know the French language, embrace civic values, and show means of support.
Some 600 pro-immigrant groups hit Paris streets, protesting how quickly Europe and France were closing to the foreign-born and how aggressive the measures seemed to be. But the law passed.
Now, President Sarkozy has again upped the stakes. Not only will incoming families face a higher hurdle, but an amendment quietly introduced DNA testing as a way to prove biological ties among them. In addition, French embassies abroad will be newly empowered to conduct extensive background checks of prospective residents.
Sounds like people with the legal right to immigrate to France have been bringing in non-relatives as relatives.
This French law is part of a larger trend European countries to cut down on immigration.
"Immigration is the problem of the 21st century for Europe," argues Thierry Mariani, the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) lawmaker and author of the DNA test bill. "If Denmark, Finland, Norway, Holland ... countries that have a tradition of respect for human rights have accepted for many years the DNA approach, it is because there is a real problem."
Similar trends and views are emerging throughout Europe. In Belgium, one of the few agreements between the Flemish and Wallonians is to create far stronger measures to limit migration and asylum, and to make deportations of illegal workers easier. Last week, Holland debated whether to stop funding the protection of former Dutch lawmaker Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somalian who lives under a death threat by radical Muslims.
France, Belgium, Denmark, Holland, and Switzerland have all witnessed the rise of a conservative discourse that has shifted the gravitational center of immigration politics. The formerly extreme views of nationalist voices like Jean-Marie Le Pen in France are today part of the mainstream discussion.
Yet as immigration expert Judith Sunderland of Human Rights Watch in Milan, Italy, points out, immigration politics now cut across the European political spectrum. "Most of the fights are no longer over whether to proceed with new laws and policies," she argues. "Immigration is seen as a crisis for both the left and the right."
In American the Europeans are generally seen as to the left of Americans on average. For example European politicians support a larger welfare state and more intervention in labor markets. Democrats tend to see Europe as a model for social policy they'd like to implement in America. But European leftist politicians are effectively to the "right" of American Democrat politicians on immigration.
So what are the Europeans afraid of? Islam.
Riva Kastoryano, an expert on immigration at Sciences Po in Paris, argues that the root of greater apprehension among mainstream Europeans is a fear of the spread of Islam. "Much of the old xenophobia about foreigners in Europe has been recast today as a perception of 'Islamophobia,' " she says.
The fear of Islam is rational though. Muslim minorities do not accept the cultures and values of the countries they immigrate to.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali argues that Islam must be defeated.
Hirsi Ali: We have to revert to the original meaning of the term tolerance. It meant you agreed to disagree without violence. It meant critical self-reflection. It meant not tolerating the intolerant. It also came to mean a very high level of personal freedom.
Then the Muslims arrived, and they hadn’t grown up with that understanding of tolerance. In short order, tolerance was now defined by multiculturalism, the idea that all cultures and religions are equal. Expectations were created among the Muslim population. They were told they could preserve their own culture, their own religion. The vocabulary was quickly established that if you criticize someone of color, you’re a racist, and if you criticize Islam, you’re an Islamophobe.
Reason: The international corollary to the word tolerance is probably respect. The alleged lack of respect has become a perennial sore spot in relations between the West and Islam. Salman Rushdie receiving a British knighthood supposedly signified such a lack of respect, as did the Danish cartoons last year, and many other things. Do you believe this is what Muslims genuinely crave—respect?
Hirsi Ali: It’s not about respect. It’s about power, and Islam is a political movement.
Reason: Uniquely so?
Hirsi Ali: Well, it hasn’t been tamed like Christianity. See, the Christian powers have accepted the separation of the worldly and the divine. We don’t interfere with their religion, and they don’t interfere with the state. That hasn’t happened in Islam.
But I don’t even think that the trouble is Islam. The trouble is the West, because in the West there’s this notion that we are invincible and that everyone will modernize anyway, and that what we are seeing now in Muslim countries is a craving for respect. Or it’s poverty, or it’s caused by colonization.
The Western mind-set—that if we respect them, they’re going to respect us, that if we indulge and appease and condone and so on, the problem will go away—is delusional. The problem is not going to go away. Confront it, or it’s only going to get bigger.
I agree with Hirsi Ali on at least one point here. Westerners hold false beliefs that cause them to underestimate the demographic vulnerability of the West to Muslim immigrants. I suspect these false beliefs have their origin in the Cold War. During the Cold War the communists presented their ideology as the universal ideology suitable for all of the world. Western opponents of communism argued that communism wasn't suitable for the whole world and instead argued that Western beliefs held universal appeal. Too many Westerners came to believe this propaganda and came to believe that the triumph of Western beliefs was inevitable because no other credible belief system (secular or religious) competed with anything Western.
However, Hirsi Ali is making mistakes in how she describes the differences between Christianity and Islam. One of Hirsi Ali's mistakes is to paint Islam as somehow lagging behind Christianity in going through a process of accepting a division between religion and state. Christians were able to accept that separation in large part because the base texts of Christianity ("render unto Caesar that which is Caesar") are compatible with that separation. Jesus Christ never ruled a kingdom. He never led soldiers into battle. He never created a legal system. He never wiped out tribes that rejected his religion. By contrast Mohammed did all those things. The founder of Islam presented a model of the state that has no room for a separation of religion and state. Islam hasn't so much lagged behind as it has stayed true to its teachings while Christianity changed its relationship to the state because a change in that relationship wasn't incompatible with Christianity.
Also, Christians have not stopped bringing their religious beliefs into the voting booth. Their values still influence what they'll decide to be acceptable policy. But Christians in Western countries see less conflict between what they believe governments should do and what governments actually do because Christian values so heavily influence what Westerners (even secular Westerners) believe are appropriate values. By contrast, when Muslims come into the West they bring a different and much more incompatible set of values. The values disagreements between Christian and secular Westerners are small in comparison to the values disagreements between Western and Muslim values. Muslims do not see non-Muslims as their equals. Islam is therefore incompatible with Western notions of equality.
The continued existence of Belgium is questionable and yet they come together against immigration.
Belgium, divided between Dutch-speaking Flanders in the north and French-speaking Wallonia in the south, has spent 120 days since national elections without a new government. Political parties have been unable to agree on the country's direction, and fears are growing that Belgium will dissolve. Yet signs of a breakthrough in the coalition talks emerged Tuesday morning when the Christian Democrats and Liberals temporarily put aside their differences and agreed on a tough new approach to asylum policy and economic migration.
Despite this agreement, political analysts stressed that the crisis was far from over with the important issue of how to grant more autonomy to Flanders and Wallonia still hanging in the balance. They underlined, however, that the deal illustrated how immigration had become a unifying issue in a country where the prime minister-in-waiting recently publicly fumbled the words of the national anthem and where the unifying force for Belgians of all linguistic stripes is a love of the country's 400 kinds of beer.
The Vlaams Belang party wants to deport the Muslims. The populace as a whole is reasonably worried about the alien and hostile Muslim parallel society in their midst.
Pollster Scott Rasmussen finds that in the aftermath of the massive immigration fight that self identification of people as Republicans has risen.
During the month of June, the number of people identifying themselves as Republicans increased and the number of Democrats was little changed. That’s the first time in 2007 that the number of Republicans has increased. (see history). The gap between the parties the smallest it has been since last July.
It’s interesting to note that the number of Republicans increased during the same month that the President’s Job Approval fell to another all-time low.
Bush isn't seen by Republicans as very Republican. Bush allied with Ted Kennedy and other Democrats to try to push through a massive immigration amnesty that the overwhelming majority of the American people opposed. A majority of Republicans in Congress opposed this and the upshot is that more people identify themselves as Republicans.
Fewer identify as Democrats.
A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of 15,000 adults in June found that just 32.0% now say they’re Republicans. That’s up more than a full percentage point from a month ago and is within a tenth-of-a-point of the GOP’s best showing in ten months.
The survey also found that the number of people identifying themselves as Democrats fell two-tenths of a point to 36.1% in June. Only once since January 2004 has the number of Democrats in the country been lower (35.9% in December 2005). Democrats gained about two percentage points of support during 2006 and peaked at 38.0% in December of last year. Since actually taking control of Congress, Democrats have given back all of those gains.
Republican candidates who run on platforms arguing for big reductions in immigration can win and can pull more people into the Republican party.
The shift toward identification as Republicans came in spite of Bush polling as the second most unpopular US President in history.
The highest unfavorable rating for any President is earned by Richard Nixon. Sixty percent (60%) of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of the only President to resign from office. Thirty-two percent (32%) have a favorable opinion of the man who famously went to China.
Close on Nixon’s heels for most unpopular is the current President, George W. Bush. Fifty-nine percent (59%) have an unfavorable opinion of him. Lyndon Johnson (42%), Bill Clinton (41%), and the first President Bush (41%) are the only other Presidents viewed unfavorably by at least 40% of Americans.
59% view Bush unfavorably. Can Bush come up with more bad policies and push his disapproval rating past Nixon? Bush has a very competitive streak. Maybe he'll view this as a challenge. Become the most reviled President. He's so convinced of his rightness that he might figure the public is sufficiently wrong that the measure of the public's disapproval is a measure of how much he's making the correct decisions.
We managed to stop the Imperial Senate's immigration amnesty bill.
WASHINGTON — The Senate on June 28 drove a stake through President Bush's plan to legalize millions of undocumented immigrants, likely postponing major action on immigration until after the 2008 elections.
The bill's supporters fell 14 votes short of the 60 needed to limit debate and clear the way for final passage of the legislation, which critics assailed as offering amnesty to undocumented immigrants. The vote was 46 to 53 in favor of limiting the debate.
Keep in mind that some of the Senators who voted against this version of amnesty happily voted for other previous amnesties and can not be trusted. Dozens of Senators need defeat in their next primary campaigns for reelection.
Pete Domenici, an Albuquerque Republican, supported the initial compromise version of the bill but said it is now "neither workable or realistic" and is likely "dead on arrival" in the House.
Jeff Bingaman, a Silver City Democrat who voted for last year's immigration-reform bill, said he could not support this one.
But on the bright side Bingaman and Domenici were willing to back out of support for this bill when popular outrage became loud enough. The amnesty supporters we should most want to defeat for reelection are those who knew about the intensity of the opposition to amnesty and yet voted for cloture anyway.
How effective was popular outrage toward this bill? Almost one third of Senate Democrats voted against cloture.
Only 33 Democrats, 12 Republicans and one independent voted to advance the bill, while 15 Democrats joined 37 Republicans and one independent to block it.
Five of the six senators running for president voted in favour of the overhaul: Republican John McCain and Democrats Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Christopher Dodd and Joe Biden.
Hillary Clinton voted for this monstrous bill and therefore is unfit for the Presidency. Ditto Obama and McCain. Next time you hear someone say that McCain is a courageous independent Republican remind them that McCain voted for an immigration amnesty bill that would change the demographics of America for the worse.
So at least one dozen Republican Senators should be targeted for defeat in primaries when they next run for reelection. Ditto the Democrats who voted for it.
The bill was very unpopular with the public.
Only 13 percent of those in a CBS News Survey taken earlier this week said they supported passage of the bill. Almost three times that number, 35 percent, opposed it. Even more, 51 percent, said they did not know enough about the immigration legislation to say whether they supported passage.
See these post comments for lists of who voted for and against cloture (which is effectively for and against immigration amnesty). Note that some Senators who voted against cloture really wanted this bill to pass but jumped ship once they saw it was going down.
"Enforcement first," or even "enforcement only," is how opponents of the Senate bill describe their alternative to immigration reform. That is, enforce the laws already on the books, and life in the US will become uncomfortable enough that many of the 12 million illegal immigrants now here will leave of their own volition. Beef up the border, and fewer will make it into the US in the first place.
"What we'd like to see is [government officials] enforce the laws that currently exist, which they have never done," says Ira Mehlman of The Federation of American Immigration Reform (FAIR) in Washington. "Most Americans fundamentally find objectionable that to even consider enforcing our laws we have to first make a deal with the people who break the laws."
Mickey Kaus says we need to create proto-campaigns against pro-immigration amnesty politicians to scare them to switch positions (and ParaPundit adds that we should defeat some of them too)
What They Understand: Hot Air has a video plan of action for Republicans who want to do something more than phone or email their Senators. It's simple but could be high-impact. ...
P.S.: The ad says,
"Money seems to be the one thing our politicians understand."
That's a good shot at the pro-comprehensive business lobbyists. But actually, the prospect of political defeat is the thing politicians most understand. (The money helps them avoid the defeat.) That means the most effective thing that could be done to pressure pro-comprehensive Senators is to start organizing actual campaigns against them--primary challenges, but also general election challenges to Republicans from anti-comprehensive Dems, and vice-versa. It's easy to organize on the Web, and by organizing now you might get your Senator to change his or her vote. Once the vote is cast it's too late. ...
P.P.S.: According to WaPo, Sen. Lindsey Graham now insists he won't vote for an immigration bill that doesn't add a (phony) "touchback" provision forcing illegals to leave the country briefly in order to get their Z visas.** This is a hilariously fresh get-tough posture for Graham, whose precious Grand Bargain somehow failed to include this essential element. But it's also a sign of fear. What's he scared of? Maybe this. ...
Update: Mark Krikorian suggested I'm skeptical of the Hot Air plan (to demand refunds of RNC contributions). I'm not. It's a good idea. It's legitimate--but it could really screw them up! I just think the politician's ur-fear--fear of losing office--could also be triggered quickly by relatively easy, Web-based proto-campaigns. If Graham's worried, others can be made to worry. ...
I think Mickey is right. A search on Lindsey Graham on YouTube ought to turn up a bunch of anti-Graham amateur ads excoriating him for his position on immigration. Well, some YouTube entries for Lindsey Graham immigration look promising. MIckey points to this anti-Graham ad.
Which immigration amnesty proponents in the Imperial Senate are up for reelection in 2008? We need to start targeting them now.
We need to take back control of the Senate. It has fallen into enemy hands. The United States Senate is not run for the American people. It is run by and for a clubby elite. John Hawkins at Right Wing News has an insightful account of how really only the cloture vote matters for the next round of the immigration amnesty fight.
First off, it does look like the Senate immigration bill is coming back. The conventional wisdom seems to be that it's going to be brought up right before the July 4th break, so that the Senate Republican leadership can try to use that as leverage to get votes (In other words, "vote for the bill or we'll have to waste your vacation time until you do").
This is despite the fact that the conservative leaders of the anti-amnesty movement are refusing to cooperate, and won't give Mitch McConnell a list of amendments that they want considered. My source tells me that the reason for this is that the game has now been rigged. McConnell is essentially promising to bring the amendments up in exchange for cloture votes, but Trent Lott is publicly saying that they will strip any problematic amendments out in committee.
The amendment game won't matter. Some Senators will vote for some of the amendments counting on those amendments to get stripped out in a House-Senate committee meeting to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the amnesty bill.
In other words, if the bill gets through the Senate and the House, the Democrats and the open borders Republicans will work together when the bills have to be reconciled in committee to strip out any amendments that the "grand bargainers" don't like. Therefore, at this point, it doesn't matter what amendments pass, because any tough enforcement provisions that slip through will be rendered toothless when the bills are reconciled.
Some "moderate" Senators who favor amnesty are going to be allowed to vote against the bill by Senate leaders because they are up for election in 2008 in close elections. So those Senators also need to be targeted for defeat in the next primaries and next election along with all the Senators that vote to end cloture.
Immigration restriction comes down to winning elections. We need to defeat some of the bad apples. Trent Lott and Mitch McConnell should be targeted with primary challengers. Any other Banana Republican who has voted for cloture who will vote for cloture in the next attempt to pass S.1348 needs to get defeated. The immigration restrictionists need to build up a national movement to defeat sitting members of Congress. In spite of intense pressure by constituents far too many US Senators of both parties are in contempt of the will of the electorate. We have a big problem with these people.
What I want to know: Will the right wingers who are disgusted with Bush and who see the Republican Party as broken join a movement and work to take back control of Congress? Or will their anger fade once this latest battle over amnesty is decided?
The Republican whip, Trent Lott of Mississippi, who supports the bill, said: “Talk radio is running America. We have to deal with that problem.”
At some point, Mr. Lott said, Senate Republican leaders may try to rein in “younger guys who are huffing and puffing against the bill.”
The majority of Republican Senators should vote to remove Lott and McConnell from leadership positions. The majority of Republican voters should vote to replace these yahoos in Republican primaries.
We need to start with more calls and emails and faxes to US Senators against immigration amnesty.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Key Republican and Democratic senators are reaching for a deal to resurrect their stalled immigration compromise by requiring that some $4 billion be spent on border security and workplace enforcement.
The mandatory security funding is part of a plan to attract more Republican support for the measure, which grants legal status to millions of unlawful immigrants.
In private meetings Wednesday, the bipartisan group that crafted the delicate compromise was hammering out a plan to allow votes on a limited set of Republican- and Democratic-sought changes in exchange for a commitment from GOP holdouts that they will back moving ahead with the bill.
Republican architects of the measure, which grants legal status to millions of unlawful immigrants, expressed confidence that such an agreement was possible as early as Thursday.
Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) says S.1348 would reduce the rate at which people enter and stay illegally by only 13%.
Everyone becomes legal at once under this bill and stays there, no matter what happens. But even the new reforms in it take place — according to the Congressional Budget Office, we would only have about a 13 percent reduction in illegality. So that's just not sufficient. I mean, I think most American people think we'd have a dramatic improvement in reducing the flow of illegality if we have, as this bill does, a substantial increase in legal immigration.
Meaning that you think there will still be illegal immigrants coming across the border?
Oh, absolutely ... They predicted that we'd have a 25 percent reduction in illegality at the border. But we would have a substantial increase in visa over-stays, because we have a lot more people coming to the country on temporary visas.
13%. What a joke. It is an even bigger joke when we look at just how much worse the illegal immigration problem has gotten since George W. Bush took office. Ed Rubenstein has the facts:
But Steve Sailer says the masses have one big thing going for them in their battle with the elites on immigration: the internet lets us communicate and learn about whatever the Washington folks try to do outside of our sight.
Fifth, the Achilles heel of the Axis of Amnesty’s putsch was that the bill had to be posted on the Internet.
The legislation was written in secret. Committee hearings on it were blocked. It was far too long for many busy Senators and their staffers to read.
But networks of highly intelligent citizens examined it carefully and emailed each other with what they found. For example, Thursday's VDARE.com article, Ten Reasons The Amnesty/Immigration Surge Bill Is Appalling, by 'An Economist,' grew out of an email list utilized by a brilliant economist-turned-highly successful businessman, who has been devoting a lot of his extraordinary energy to immigration.
Contact your Senators and tell them to stop illegal immigration and slash legal immigration.
Instead of “comprehensive” reform, Bush should choose a second option: consecutive reform.
This advocacy of "consecutive reform" amounts to the editors of the National Review advising Bush on how he can eventually arrive at a point where it becomes politically possible to institute an amnesty and guest worker program. These editors are not using the term consecutive to mean "first control the border and then start deporting the illegals". No, no. They are providing counsel to George W. Bush, enemy of the conservative base, on how he can eventually get his wishes over the strongly held beliefs of said conservative base which the National Review's writers claim to see as their own base.
During this debate, both the comprehensivists and their opponents have stressed the critical need to control the border and to give employers a reliable system to verify the legal status of their workers. There is no reason that either imperative should wait on resolution of the amnesty or guest-worker questions. The administration has often said that enforcement cannot work without an amnesty or guest-worker program; but it has refuted that claim by pointing out that its border-enforcement measures have brought the number of illegal crossings down.
Good point on the enforceability of border controls. This Bush administration improvement in border enforcement that they speak of was a cynical attempt by Bush to pretend to the public that he was finally going to stop illegal immigration and he was doing that only in order to convert the same level of illegal flow into an even larger legal flow of the same people. Why try to give strategic advice to someone so dishonest?
But they do not even go far enough in describing what is obviously true. Not only is enforcement possible, but role-back of the illegal horde is possible as well. Republican President Dwight "I like Ike" Eisenhower showed with Operation Wetback it was possible for a small group of immigration enforcement agents to round up and deport tens of thousands of illegal aliens and, by doing so, to spur hundreds of thousands to leave.
The National Review editors are merely "skeptical" about the wisdom of so-called "temporary" worker programs or amnesty.
When Americans are confident that the government is committed to enforcing any immigration laws, they will be more open to changes to those laws. We are skeptical about the need for a guest-worker program or a sweeping amnesty. But we would be willing to debate these policies in a few years’ time. They are not even worth debating, however, until we know that we are not merely legalizing millions of illegal immigrants while inviting millions more to be legalized in some future round of “reform.”
So what are they opposed to here? Are they only opposed to the invitation for millions more to come? Or are they also opposed to amnesty for the ones already here?
Still have doubts about whether the NR folks are wobbly? Well, consider some issue which evokes firmer reactions. How about gay marriage? Here's what you'll never see them write:
We remain skeptical about gay marriage. We believe that first we should strengthen the bonds of traditional marriage. Once we've done that we would be willing to debate gay marriage in a few years time.
They are far less ambivalent about where they stand on gay marriage than they are about Third World immigration, the expanded lower class it brings, and the inevitable shift leftward that it produces.
This NR ambivalence on immigration finds no equivalent among the mass of conservatives who overwhelmingly want less immigration period. The NR's editors are not taking their wobbly position on immigration due to some reflexively ambivalent approach to issues in general. By contrast, most of them are absolutely certain that neoconservative Lewis "Scooter" Libby should get pardoned for perjury and obstruction of justice. Check out here and here and here and even William F. Buckley here.. Though a couple of NR writers are less than nutty on Libby: Andy McCarthy and John Derbyshire (Derb again). While the recent attempt by US Senators to pass an immigration amnesty riled up conservatives (and quite a lot of moderates and liberals as well) to a level of anger not seen in many years Daniel Larison points out that what motivates the (at least supposedly) conservative elites is Lewis Libby. If only the NR crowd could get sustainably worked up about immigration restriction the way they do about Libby the nation would be much better off.
The NR crowd and other prominent (supposed) conservatives make recurring mistakes in their thinking. First off, they simply do not think enough about real evidence. They live in the realm of arguments and wordsmithing rather than in the realm of scientific evidence. Second, part of their failure to use evidence stems from accepting the boundaries of acceptable discussion that their supposed enemies the liberals set for them. Third, they trumpet narrow elite interests (e.g. Scooter Libby as compared to those two Border Patrol agents Compean and Ramos as candidates for pardon) over mass interests. Fourth, they put partisan politics (e.g. reflexive unthinking support for Bush as pack leader) ahead of positions arrived at through thinking. As a result, their priorities are consistently wrong and their positions are too often wrong.
Since the Republican National Committee is following Bush's lead on immigration and since so many Senate Republicans are for open borders Republican donors are giving their money to state rather than national Republican organizations.
Tina Benkiser, chairwoman of the Republican Party in the president's home state of Texas, says raising money has been successful "in large part to our principled stance against illegal immigration." Since the beginning of 2006, when substantial immigration debate began, she says, "the Republican Party of Texas has experienced an exponential increase in direct-mail donations from supporters statewide."
Both phone and direct-mail fundraising remain strong for the party in Michigan, says state Chairman Saul Anuzis.
"In Michigan, seven out of nine congressional Republicans oppose the bill, our activists are publicly opposing amnesty, and we are also re-establishing our brand image by fighting a Democrat attempt to increase taxes," Mr. Anuzis says. "These issues are keeping our people engaged, where otherwise we could feel a [donations] drop-off."
Similar reports from other state Republican officials in Arizona, Colorado, Iowa and Delaware suggest that opposition to any form of amnesty for illegal aliens is a fundraising winner.
Meanwhile, Republican National Committee donations are tanking.
In the first three months of this year, the committee collected $24.6 million, down from $35 million in the comparable period last year, $32.3 million in the first quarter of 2005 and $46 million in the first quarter of 2004.
Also, the National Republican Senatorial Committee is raising half as much as its Democratic Party counterpart. Read the full article. State parties calling up for donations are pitching against the S1348 bill by calling it the Bush-Kennedy bill and getting big donations. Yes, they are pitching against a sitting Republican incumbent President and the fund raising pitch is working. The Republican base has moved on. Bush's approval rating has sunk to Jimmy Carter's level and that approval rating was measured before details of the immigration proposal Bush negotiated with US Senators became public knowledge.
The Republicans can do much better if they diistance themselves from Bush and adopt positions on immigration that align with both the conservative base and even with the majority of independents and Democrats.
Republicans, you are headed toward massive defeat in 2008. Change your foreign and domestic policies.
A poll of 600 likely Republican and 600 like Democratic Iowa caucus attendees (where they decide who to support as party nominees for President) were asked their views on continuing the war in Iraq. Bush has lost the Iraq war in Iowa.
5. Do you favor a withdrawal of all United States military from Iraq within the next six months? (Republicans Only)
Yes 54%
No 37%
Undecided 9%8. Do you favor a withdrawal of all United States military from Iraq within the next six months? (Democrats Only)
Yes 81%
No 5%
Undecided 14%
The numbers on Bush compared to Reagan are even more damning for Bush and his war. Congressional Republicans should get a clue and turn against the war. Ditto for Republican Presidential candidates. The top 3 stories with highest interest with the American public at the moment are gasoline prices, Iraq, and immigration. The Republicans need to improve their policies on all of them.
In reaction to Peggy Noonan's column arguing Bush has betrayed and abandoned conservatives on immigration and other topics and they should treat him likewise, Rod Dreher points out that conservatives (at least those who supported Bush for years) bear a lot of responsibility for the failed Presidency of George W. Bush. I gotta agree.
I've got no strong objection to Noonan's analysis, and indeed I'm thrilled to see it. But it seems to me that we conservatives need to avoid falling into a historical revisionism that allows us to portray ourselves as passive victims of a feckless president. Not saying she does this, but I think as the last wheel comes off this presidency, and the GOP comes to grips with what this presidency has meant for the Republican Party and the conservative movement, there will be a strong temptation to resist owning up to our own complicity. Success has a thousand fathers, after all, and failure is an orphan. This failure is not President Bush's alone. The Republican Party owns it. The conservative movement, with some exceptions, owns it.
Bush supporters should take a hard look at themselves and how they came to support him for so long.
If we're looking to blame someone for the failure of Republican government and the conservative crack-up, look to the White House, yes, and look to the late, unlamented Republican Congress. But also look to the conservative talk show hosts, the conservative columnists, and finally, in the mirror. The only way we're going to rebuild after the present and coming political shattering is through honest reckoning, and taking responsibility for what we've done. It is tempting to blame Bush for everything. But it's not fair, and it's not honest. Bush is today who he always was. The difference is we conservatives pretty much loved the guy -- when he was a winner.
My one mistake with Bush was not to oppose the Iraq invasion before it happened. As soon as the looting started I started thinking the people like Eric Shinseki were right about needed troop levels. Then I started thinking that Greg Cochran's interpretation of the supposed WMD evidence was correct. I already disagree with Bush on immigration, border security, energy policy, the Medicare drug benefit, No Child Left Behind (which I call No Lie Left Behind), the nature of Islam, the prospects for democracy in Iraq (I never saw any such prospects), and many other topics.
Note that the exception Dreher links to is The American Conservative. Yes, the AmCon guys definitely did not drink the Bush Kool-Aid. Whereas the National Review folks drank it in large quantities and cried for more. The list of conservative commentators who supported Bush through thick and thin is quite long. I'm going to discount many of their views in the future. Though I can't say I spend much time reading commentary anyway, preferring mostly to read rawer sources of information with which to do my own analyses.
At this point I'd like to know: Who called Bush correctly early on? Who on the Right quickly figured out Bush's weaknesses and came to see his Presidency in a negative light? These are the people to pay attention to on other subjects. They have better track records in figuring out what really is. Of course, you can find people on the Left who saw Bush as terrible. But most of them would have done so regardless just based on a President's being a Republican. It is more useful to look at which commentators see someone clearly when they do not have partisan motives. So who saw Bush clearly? I'm thinking Greg Cochran, Lawrence Auster, Steve Sailer and some of the VDare writers.
Daniel Larison observes that the rhetoric that the Bush Administration is using against conservative opponents of immigration amnesty is very similar to the rhetoric Bush has used for years against liberals and anti-war conservatives.
In fact, this tendency in casting political disagreement as the result of the moral deficiency of the opponent dates back to the beginning of Mr. Bush’s first presidential campaign when he accused Congress of “balancing the budget on the backs of the poor.” The tendentiousness, the dishonesty, and the preference for liberal rhetorical tropes (”racist,” “sexist,” “elitist” are some of the favoured terms of abuse hurled by the administration and its lackeys) were all there from the start. They re-emerged on a regular basis: those who were against democratisation in Iraq were racists who believed Arabs were not fully human, or something of the sort; those against the appallingly bad Harriet Miers nomination were sexist elitist chauvinist pigs, and so on. In smearing antiwar conservatives, of course, Mr. Bush had, still has, many willing helpers in the movement. Then there were all those in positions of some influence who saw what was happening, knew it was wrong and said nothing. The betrayals and compromises of the previous five years were no less horrible, no less significant and no less damaging in their different ways to this country than this amnesty bill, but those things were all bearable so long as they greased the wheels and kept the GOP in power in Congress. That seems to be the thinking of more than a few pundits who are now outraged at the treatment of Bush’s immigration critics. Now, having lost Congress, there is a sudden discovery among Republicans that Mr. Bush and his loyalists are dishonest, obnoxious and buffoonish. It took them long enough to admit this.
So the conservatives who only now are finally outraged at Bush didn't object to those tactics until those tactics were directed at them. Well, we are lucky that Bush has so mistreated them. Else they'd still be defending him and we need their support against this immigration amnesty monstrosity.
As myriad liberals have been pointing out this week as conservative complaints about the rough treatment Bush and his allies have meted out to opponents of the amnesty bill, there is absolutely nothing new in the methods that the administration is using. Mr. Bush has a long record of attacking his enemies by disparaging their patriotism, decency and common sense. He has learned well from the example of the masters of deceit and chutzpah–Wilson, FDR, Clinton–who were always sure to accuse their political opponents of the very things of which they were far more likely to be guilty. Opponents of amnesty on the right, who have mostly been more tolerant of Mr. Bush’s other projects (and some of whom have actively joined in with Mr. Bush in his past attacks or have made the attacks on his behalf), have now discovered that vilifying political opponents, denigrating their good faith and intimating that they are possessed of hateful prejudices are undesirable and unacceptable methods of debating policy.
Again, I sympathise in this case, since I also find the amnesty bill appalling. A great many conservatives, be they enforcement-first or restrictionist or some mix of the two, are finally in agreement that the administration has gone mad. Of course, he has been intent on doing this since 2001. There are no surprises here. From the day Mr. Bush signed No Child Left Behind, he had declared his hostility to the beliefs and interests of large numbers of people in his coalition. Everything that followed was merely a continuation of this. Now Mr. Bush and his allies in the GOP leadership declare their own constituents bigots, and apparently, finally, those constituents have started losing patience with these frauds. It’s about time.
It was as if the conservatives didn't want to believe that a tough sounding hawkish fundamentalist Christian Texas Republican could possibly be their enemy. He sure fooled them.
Both Dreher's and Larison's posts are worth reading in full.
The Republican National Committee, hit by a grass-roots donors' rebellion over President Bush's immigration policy, has fired all 65 of its telephone solicitors, The Washington Times has learned.
Faced with an estimated 40 percent falloff in small-donor contributions and aging phone-bank equipment that the RNC said would cost too much to update, Anne Hathaway, the committee's chief of staff, summoned the solicitations staff and told them they were out of work, effective immediately, fired staff members told The Times.
Several of the solicitors fired at the May 24 meeting reported declining contributions and a donor backlash against the immigration proposals now being pushed by Mr. Bush and Senate Republicans.
"Every donor in 50 states we reached has been angry, especially in the last month and a half, and for 99 percent of them immigration is the No. 1 issue," said a fired phone bank employee who said the severance pay the RNC agreed to pay him was contingent on his not criticizing the national committee.
But Bush hears what he wants to hear and his people filter out the rest.
"We have not heard anyone in our donor calls who supported the president on immigration," said a fired phone solicitor, who described himself as a Republican activist.
"We write these comments up from each call, and give them to a supervisor who passes them on to the finance director or the national chairman," he said. "But when I talked with the White House, the people there told me they got nothing but positive comments on the president's immigration stand."
Yet outside of the White House and outside of rigged polls by liberal media outlets the truth about American attitudes about immigration policy is easy to learn.
So where are the Republican Presidential candidates on immigration? As for McCain, let me put it this way: the only way Senator John McCain could get elected President is if he switches to the Democratic Party.
"There's a part of the Republican base that feels very emotional and very strongly about this issue. I understand that," McCain said during a brief stop in Memphis. "But the majority of... ...Republicans and majority of the American people support this approach."
The Arizona senator described himself as the only Republican seeking the presidency who supports the plan, and he called on the others to come up with something better.
McCain is going down on the immigration issue. His career is over.
By contrast, former Senator and former TV show prosecutor Fred Thompson strongly opposes the immigration amnesty bill S.1348.
RICHMOND, Va., June 2 — In a preview of the themes he is likely to emphasize in a presidential campaign, Fred D. Thompson tossed some red meat to Republicans here Saturday night, assailing the immigration bill in Congress and warning of a mushroom cloud he said radicals around the world were waiting to see rise over the United States.
Mitt Romney also opposes the S.1348 amnesty.
Romney, in outlining his immigration position, advocates three broad principles. He says he wants to secure the borders, establish a fraud-proof employee verification system, and offer no special residency or citizenship privileges to the estimated 12 million immigrants in the United States illegally. He objects to a provision in the current bill that would create a special "Z visa" allowing undocumented workers to remain in the United States and work legally.
A Republican can not win the Republican nomination if he supports immigration amnesty. It is as simple as that. He won't be able to raise funds. People in primaries won't vote for him - unless Democrats vote in Republican primaries.
If Republicans want to win elections in 2008 they need to do two things:
The Republicans need to put distance between themselves and the failed Presidency of George W. Bush. Otherwise they face electoral defeat.
Regardless of which political party you belong to tell your elected representatives what you think of the Iraq war and immigration amnesty. Here's the US Senate contact list and the US House of Representatives contact list. Give a call, send an email, send a fax. Phone calls count the most.
I am amazed and surprised by the events of the last week in conservative circles. After years of watching conservatives offer very partisan defenses of Bush as a supposed fellow conservative I honestly did not expect them to reconsider. Bush's support for the Senate immigration amnesty bill S.1348 and his insulting defense of it is serving as some kind of final straw that broke the back of support for Bush from mainstream Republican commentators. Whoever thought that the mainstream sorta-conservatives would finally rebel at the latest revision of a plan for Electing a New People? Yet the split is now looking pretty deep. The New York Times has noticed what is happening in the right wing blogosphere and with right wing columnists.
WASHINGTON, June 2 — President Bush’s advocacy of an immigration overhaul and his attacks on critics of the plan are provoking an unusually intense backlash from conservatives who form the bulwark of his remaining support, splintering his base and laying bare divisions within a party whose unity has been the envy of Democrats.
It has pitted some of Mr. Bush’s most stalwart Congressional and grass-roots backers against him, inciting a vitriol that has at times exceeded anything seen yet between Mr. Bush and his supporters, who have generally stood with him through the toughest patches of his presidency. Those supporters now view him as pursuing amnesty for foreign law breakers when he should be focusing on border security.
Conservatives feel offended that not only do they oppose what Bush is for but Bush is insulting them.
This week, after Mr. Bush’s suggestion that those opposing the Congressional plan “don’t want to do what’s right for America” inflamed conservative passions, Rush Limbaugh told listeners, “I just wish he hadn’t done it because he’s not going to lose me on Iraq, and he’s not going to lose me on national security.” He added, “But he might lose some of you.”
Note to Rush: You are one slow learner. Bush lost me years ago.
Such sentiments have reverberated through talk radio, conservative publications like National Review and Fox News. They have also appeared on Web sites including RedState.com and FreeRepublic.com, where postings reflect a feeling that Mr. Bush is smiting his own coalition in pursuit of a badly needed domestic accomplishment, and working in league with the likes of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, a co-author of the legislation.
Yes, right-wingers, Bush is smiting you. Try to remember this after the fight over S.1348 is over. He doesn't respect you. He is using you. He is a bad President of the United States.
Former Ronald Reagan speech writer Peggy Noonan has taken a very firm position in opposition to the immigration bill cooked up by Bush and some US Senators. Noonan calls the bill a lie.
Naturally I hope the new immigration bill fails. It is less a bill than a big dirty ball of mischief, malfeasance and mendacity, with a touch of class malice, and it's being pushed by a White House that is at once cynical and inept. The bill's Capitol Hill supporters have a great vain popinjay's pride in their own higher compassion. They are inclusive and you're not, you cur, you gun-totin' truckdriver's-hat-wearin' yahoo. It's all so complex, and you'd understand this if you weren't sort of dumb.
In a later column Noonan went even further and on June 1, 2007 announced a deep split between George W. Bush and the conservative base.
What political conservatives and on-the-ground Republicans must understand at this point is that they are not breaking with the White House on immigration. They are not resisting, fighting and thereby setting down a historical marker--"At this point the break became final." That's not what's happening. What conservatives and Republicans must recognize is that the White House has broken with them. What President Bush is doing, and has been doing for some time, is sundering a great political coalition. This is sad, and it holds implications not only for one political party but for the American future.
The White House doesn't need its traditional supporters anymore, because its problems are way beyond being solved by the base. And the people in the administration don't even much like the base. Desperate straits have left them liberated, and they are acting out their disdain. Leading Democrats often think their base is slightly mad but at least their heart is in the right place. This White House thinks its base is stupid and that its heart is in the wrong place.
For almost three years, arguably longer, conservative Bush supporters have felt like sufferers of battered wife syndrome.
To the Bush supporters who feel like battered wives I say: stop torturing yourselves. Admit your mistake for having supported Bush in the first place. We all make mistakes.
Noonan has been developing her doubts about Bush for over 2 years and Noonan's critique is devastating.
The beginning of my own sense of separation from the Bush administration came in January 2005, when the president declared that it is now the policy of the United States to eradicate tyranny in the world, and that the survival of American liberty is dependent on the liberty of every other nation. This was at once so utopian and so aggressive that it shocked me. For others the beginning of distance might have been Katrina and the incompetence it revealed, or the depth of the mishandling and misjudgments of Iraq.
What I came in time to believe is that the great shortcoming of this White House, the great thing it is missing, is simple wisdom. Just wisdom--a sense that they did not invent history, that this moment is not all there is, that man has lived a long time and there are things that are true of him, that maturity is not the same thing as cowardice, that personal loyalty is not a good enough reason to put anyone in charge of anything, that the way it works in politics is a friend becomes a loyalist becomes a hack, and actually at this point in history we don't need hacks.
She sure has his number. Well Peggy, welcome to the ranks of the disaffected. You might want to take the time to read people who figured out Bush's character flaws years ago. Lawrence Auster had Bush pegged in 2000.
The most interesting development on the immigration issue comes from neoconservative disagreements with Bush. Many of the Jewish neocons have taken immigration positions more like those of Jewish liberals. But David Frum and Charles Krauthammer are part of a growing list of neocons attacking Bush on immigration.
But the campaign for legalization does not stop at stupidity and farce. It adds mendacity as well — such as the front-page story in last Friday’s New York Times claiming that “a large majority of Americans want to change the immigration laws to allow illegal immigrants to gain legal status.”
Sounds unbelievable. And it is. A Rasmussen poll had shown that 72 percent of Americans thought border enforcement and reducing illegal immigration to be very important. Only 29 percent thought legalization to be very important. Indeed, when a different question in the Times poll — one that did not make the front page — asked respondents if they wanted to see illegal immigrants prosecuted and deported, 69 percent said yes.
Mark Levin at National Review Online says Bush is losing him.
I guess it's legacy time over at the White House. The president is imitating Arnold Schwarzenegger now. Does the president have any conservative domestic initiatives that he's actively pursuing? If so, I'd like to know what they are. Richard Nixon tried this when his ratings were low. It didn't work.
Mr. President, the Left hated you the day you walked into the Oval Office, if not before. Their hate for you is frozen in time. If you actually believe in what you are doing, then I and many others misjudged you. You expanded the federal role in education, and we held our nose because of the war. You signed McCain-Feingold in the dead of night, and we held our nose because of the war. You expanded Medicare by adding prescription drugs, and we held our nose because of the war. You increased farm subsidies, and we held our nose because of the war.
So glad I didn't have to hold my nose due to support for the war. Bush was wrong on the war and the extent of his wrongness gets deeper with every passing day.
Levin does not like the feeling he gets when a Republican President attacks him.
Today you disparage us for opposing a massive amnesty program that endangers our economy and national security. Today you even embrace the religion of global warming, a stunning shift from prior policy (your administration even went to the Supreme Court and argued correctly that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant).
What's a conservative to do?
Mark, try dumping your remaining loyalty to the Republican President (assuming you have any) and put your loyalty to the United States of America first.
An amazingly large fraction of the National Review writers have begun taking positions on immigration like you find here, at View From The Right, and among VDare writers. For example, Mark Levin clearly understands many of the problems with illegal immigration and open borders:
Open borders do not promote free markets here or in Mexico. They promote big government here and corruption in Mexico. Nor do open borders promote limited government, sound fiscal policy, the rule of law, and a host of other fundamental conservative principles for which the Wall Street Journal editorial page once stood. Milton Friedman understood this. Tom Sowell understands it. And most Americans do as well.
I wish Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok would let themselves understand this.
Right wing commentator Laura Ingraham recently went on a tirade against Bush calling him a "neoliberal" (MP3 - worth a listen). Okay, yes, Bush is not a conservative. He's some sort of fundamentalist Christian neoliberal hawk - a rare hybrid which confuses everyone. But Laura, what took you so long? Though I guess I shouldn't be harsh on her. Better late than never.
The depth of Laura Ingraham's anger comes over clearly when she describes how opponents of the immigration amnesty feel about Bush's statements and position on immigration:
Is he kidding me with this? Here' s what I don't understand: This president will go out of his way to not question the motives of the Democrats who cut funding off from our troops. What does he always say? I'm not questioning your patriotism. What was that? If you ask me that was an implicit criticism of the patriotism of all the Americans out there who want our border enforced. They want the laws enforced. They want what's right for America Mr. President. I can tell you that. And they don't much like a President of the United States that they hit the pavement for and were ridiculed for supporting to turn his back on them. And not just turn his back on them, but throw, kick them to the curb. Oh you're just too stupid to understand this. That's what's underneath all this.
Bush's exact label on some ideological scale is less important than Peggy Noonan's remark: Bush lacks wisdom. One can be a conservative and be much wiser than Bush. One can be a liberal and be much wiser than Bush. The guy is unwise. He is uncurious. He's self righteous and convinced that he follows the will of God. Yet when he prays he obviously only listens to himself. He's a bad President.
I sense that Bush has overreached so far and has so insulted conservatives that we've crossed a Rubicon of sorts. But will their shock cause a permanent rupture between them and Bush? Have they learned a lasting deep lesson? Will the major mainstream conservative commentators stay disaffected toward Bush? Guesses anyone?
Update: Lawrence Auster thinks Bush deep down does not like conservatives.
Ok, so Ingraham now understands that Bush is harder on his own Republican loyalists than he is on the Democrats. But I don't think she yet gets what that really means--that Bush at bottom respects liberals and despises conservatives, because Bush's own deepest orientation is to the left, not the right.
I agree with Larry about Bush's own deepest orientation. But I suspect Ingraham might also as well when she calls Bush a "neoliberal". Still, Ingraham has a long way to go to fully understand what recent events have revealed to her.
What's more telling about the history of conservative commentary since the late 1990s? The commentators put too much value on group loyalty and loyalty to leaders and do not try hard enough to understand what is true in reality.
In yet another low of his presidency, George W. Bush attacks the conservative base that overwhelmingly opposes his immigration amnesty
GLYNCO, Ga., May 29 — President Bush took on parts of his conservative base on Tuesday by accusing opponents of his proposed immigration measure of fear-mongering to defeat its passage in Congress.
“If you want to scare the American people, what you say is the bill’s an amnesty bill,” Mr. Bush said at a training center for customs protection agents and other federal agents here in southeastern Georgia. “That’s empty political rhetoric trying to frighten our citizens.”
He is lying. Converting illegals into legals is amnesty.
an act of forgiveness for past offenses, esp. to a class of persons as a whole.
Then he had to go lie again:
“If you want to kill the bill,” he said, “if you don’t want to do what’s right for America, you can pick one little aspect out of it. You can use it to frighten people.”
What is little about converting 12 million illegal aliens into legals and then allowing them to bring family members in as legals? That's huge.
Bush keeps widening the gap between what is good for the nation and what he tries to implement as policy.
Over at The Corner Andy McCarthy asks a basic question about the Bush Administration's position on immigration: why should we go out of our way to urgently help illegal aliens gain legal status?
And, not to beat a dead horse, but Mr. Thompson's response does not address my main point: Why is the illegal status of people who've chosen that status by knowingly and wilfully violating U.S. law our problem? I don't see how that, as opposed to enforcement, is a crisis. It's understandably a matter of great importance to the illegal aliens, but why should the rest of us regard it as a problem, much less a priority? And if it were, for argument's sake, a crisis, then the first question ought to be: How and why did we let such a crisis happen?
Note to Andy: You let the crisis happen by letting some groups push government policies in directions against the national interest. These groups include corporate interests seeking cheap labor, Hispanic lobbyists, and Democrat operatives looking for votes
We can solve the illegal immigration crisis with real and sustained enforcement of US immigration laws. The Bush Administration's move toward greater enforcement has been slow and tentative. Bush clearly does not have his heart in greater enforcement. Well, that's what the American people want. Why should we cater to the elites and the illegals? Clearly the elites should cater to us and the illegals should leave. Stop breaking our laws. Get out of our country.