Recently, as Congress debated an immigration “reform” proposal, a memorandum on official Democratic National Committee stationary was retrieved from a trash can on South Capitol Street in Washington, D.C. This memo was faxed around the country and in time reached California. Although coffee stains covered most of the salutation, it appeared to read, “From: H. Dean. TO: HRC.” However, the rest of the memo was intact and perfectly clear…
Dear Senator,
Nice to see you the other night at that $25 million coast-to-coast Hollywood-to-Broadway fundraiser. You certainly know how to rake in the bucks! We should have enough to make the opening ante in 2008. I’m glad to hear that Chelsea is doing so well. Please give my regards to Bill next time you see him.
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Anyway, I appreciate you keeping us informed about the details of this “new” legislation involving immigration. We see it as a vital step towards keeping the economy running, strengthening border enforcement, clarifying rules for legal immigration, cracking down on illegal immigration, blah, blah, blah. But, off the record: Let's get down to the politics of it.
Can you believe that the Republicans are handing us the future on a silver platter? An analysis of ethnic voting patterns done by Peter Brimelow and Ed Rubenstein projected three Democratic victories for every Republican one if current population trends (i.e., a growing minority vote) maintain themselves or intensify. There are no guarantees in life, of course. But I’ll take three out of four election victories any day of the week. Hey, given our record this decade, we’d be glad to take any wins nationally. The “bi-partisan McCain-Kennedy plan” seemed almost deliberately designed to help Democrats and hurt Republicans. How does it do so? Let us count the ways…
First and foremost, most Hispanics are Democrats. True, George W. Bush tied a record for winning Hispanics in the 37-40 percent range. (Don’t believe the nonsense that he got 44 percent of Hispanics. Those were the same exit polls that gave us “President Kerry.” The figures were revised down in 2005.) W received about the same level of Hispanic support as Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan did in their re-elections. But even if we are generous and grant that he got the 44 percent the Republican National Committee is claiming, that means a solid majority of Hispanics still voted for a lackluster Democrat against an incumbent Republican president who bent over backwards to court them in a time of war and low unemployment. The record shows that since the Second World War, the Hispanic community has supported Democrats for president ranging from a high of nearly 90 percent for their fellow Catholic JFK to a low of 60 percent for Mondale, McGovern, and Kerry, for an average of roughly 2 to 1 Democratic. So any amnesty plan will create more Democratic than Republican voters in the foreseeable future. It took the last wave of Catholic immigrants — from the Irish famine refugees of the 1840s and Southern/Eastern workers of the post-Civil War era — nearly a century to consider voting Republican for Ike in the 1950s. Now a similar scenario is being set up again.
Second, immigration reform has been an item on the liberal agenda ever since the strict limits of the 1924 National Origins Act (which deliberately attempted to maintain the nation’s ethnic balance of the 1920s). The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act was promoted by President John Kennedy, drafted by Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and pushed through the Senate by Senator Edward Kennedy. It’s been called the Kennedys’ greatest gift to the Democratic party. If Teddy serves out his next term, that will mean 50 years in the U.S. Senate. Nice of the Reeps to give him a crowning achievement that will also create more Democrats. What’s next, Dr. Bill Frist supporting a Canadian-style national health-care bill with the Bay State’s Senior Senator?
Third, the Bush/Rove plan divides Republicans. Not just congressional Republicans like Tom Tancredo and Jim Sensenbrenner on one side and McCain and Specter along with the Bushies on the other. But real rank and file Republicans absolutely hate this bill’s amnesty provisions. By a margin of 58 to 10 percent, Republicans think that legal immigration should be reduced (never mind illegal immigration)! Furthermore, by an 87-1 percent (!) margin, Republicans said the federal government was “not doing enough” versus “doing too much” to keep illegal immigrants from crossing the border. And those polls are backed up by real election results: Nearly 90 percent of ordinary Republicans voted for initiatives restricting illegal immigration in California and Arizona. Republicans were already vulnerable due to Iraq, Scooter Libby’s indictment, corruption, Jack Abramoff, high gas-prices, massive deficits, Homeland Security employees arrested on child porn charges, the loss of good jobs, and the generic Second Term Blues faced by most presidents. Did they really need to also fight amongst themselves with this? The more time conservatives spend fighting each other, the less chance they have to do damage to us. Can you say Speaker Pelosi for the next 20 years? Who said Rove wasn’t a genius!
