Posted on 06/28/2006 1:45:44 PM PDT by Dane
WE LOST THE REFERENDUM
It was a landslide.
They had that referendum on illegal immigration yesterday and the answer was clear.
People don’t care.
I’m not saying that as a criticism, or as accusation, but as an observation. If yesterday’s Republican Primary in Utah’s third congressional district was a test of the country’s sentiment on illegal immigration, it is unarguably clear that people aren’t that bothered by it.
At least they’re not in Utah.
Congressman Chris Cannon pounded the living snot out of challenger John Jacob. It wasn’t even close. John Jacob lost in every county, jurisdiction and precinct. At no point did he lead in any category and every new report of results was more bad news. As I sat last night at the computer with his staffers, watching the results post on the Internet, it was clear that by the time 10 percent of the precincts had posted that the race was lost.
So I’ve got egg on my face.
I attacked Chris Cannon ruthlessly. I was John Jacob’s loudest and most passionate defender. His loss is also my loss. His failure to represent the interests of the people is also my failure to read the interests of the people. What I thought was important was clearly unimportant to the voters. And in a republic, the voters are always right.
It turns out that Salt Lake City’s two daily newspapers, and Provo’s newspaper, the state’s other talk-show host, and most of the state’s politicians were all more in touch with the sentiments of the Republicans in the Third District than I was. It is clear that their general liberalism is a better reflection of voter sentiment than my rabid conservatism.
And I should have known that. Instead, I was blinded by my desire to evangelize the world to my view of freedom – a decidedly conservative and Constitution-based view. But Utah is not a politically conservative state. It is dominated by the Republican Party, but not by conservative Republicans. The governor is a moderate to liberal, one senator is a moderate and the other is arguably a liberal. The last two governors were moderate to liberal and the attorney general is moderate to liberal.
Those are not accusatory labels, they are merely demonstrations of the consistently expressed will of the people. When Utahns go to the polls, they often pick moral conservatives, but rarely pick political conservatives. More typically they go for social liberals.
And they rarely go for political challengers from the right.
So, logically, John Jacob’s campaign was doomed from the beginning. And I should have known that. I probably did know that, but chose to ignore it, caught up in the talking-head argument that this was the time and place the people would rise up against government neglect of the border and acceptance of illegal immigration.
That argument made sense. This was the chance. It was the chance for conservatives in the Republican Party to call to account the ruling liberal wing of the party. But that is not what the voters wanted.
And that can’t be ignored.
If this was a referendum on illegal immigration, it seems the people want Senate over House, Kennedy over Tancredo. It seems that Chris Cannon’s 10 years of being the open-borders guy in the House is something the Republicans in Utah’s Third District wanted to reward.
Again, that is not an accusation. It is not bitterness. It is an observation. The landslide re-election of an incumbent is not a call for change – in that incumbent’s conduct or in the direction of his party. It is a ratification and approval of what they both have stood for.
George Bush and Vicente Fox won last night. It was a fair fight, I made the issue as clear as I could, and people chose what I wasn’t selling. Which is their right and the great beauty of our republic.
We tried to make our stand, and we got steamrollered. We can take comfort in knowing that we did our best, and we can seethe in the bitterness of knowing that it didn’t do any good. It was duty done, but pointlessly.
And I apologize for that. For taking up so much of your time with this issue. For being so passionate about something for which there is not a public enthusiasm. For being clearly out of touch with what Republicans want. For misreading the potential of this election.
It is impossible to ignore the fact that Chris Cannon won this primary by a larger margin than he won the primary two years ago. Last time’s $50,000 campaign did better than this time’s $700,000 campaign. And even that second figure is uncertain. It is possible that John Jacob’s campaign ran out of money a month ago, that it was underfunded. It is possible that John Jacob was a poor candidate.
But it is also irrelevant.
In his concession remarks – he bypassed a prepared speech – John Jacob said that the results of the election showed that Chris Cannon has support in Washington.
Actually, that’s not right.
The results showed that Chris Cannon has support in the Third District.
His constituents have known him for a decade and they seem overwhelmingly to like him and what he does. The referendum failed. It’s business as usual – business with which the voters seem completely content.
If this primary was an opening battle in the war to bring the Republican Party back to its conservative roots, we got massacred. And that will be noticed and have consequences. We conservatives hoped to show momentum and strength and didn’t. And we may have hurt our cause substantially as a result. Opposition to illegal immigration has been hurt, and so has the attempt to chastise the party. We fell flat on our face, and to the winner go the spoils.
Politics is like baseball. When you lose, you congratulate the winner and walk off the field.
Chris Cannon won because he represented what people want. He won the election. He deserves congratulations.
It seems to me that they held an election and nobody cared. Lousy turnout, meaning Cannon got the votes of 3% of the registered voters.
I don't know how in the world the single-issue voter can spin that as a shot over the bow of the US Senate.
"Moonbat" similar to the epithet Idiotarian and like that term can also be applied to people anywhere on the political spectrum (for example both terms have been used to describe US conservative Pat Buchanan).
According to de Havilland, a moonbat is "someone on the extreme edge of whatever their -ism happens to be". Adriana Cronin defines the term as "someone who sacrifices sanity for the sake of consistency". This term has long been used to describe protesters on the political Left, but was originally coined to also describe commentators on the political Right as well as certain libertarians."
I learn something new every day at FR. :-)
You do know that Bush,Larua and Cheney all ran the same type of telephone ads for Bilbray that they ran for Cannon? So, by ya'lls rationale since Bilbray can thank Bush for his election NOT Tancredo.
I said Cannon. I meant Jacob, of course.
Excellent post!
I just posted #100. Check it out.
Hope you are doing well.
I live in Indiana, also a cold weather state. We are covered up with them. The illegals are overwhelming the emergency rooms so that our own people spend the whole day waiting. According to local radio programs, the ratio in ER waiting rooms is about 10 to 1 with illegals. The nurse who was talking on the radio said that when a group of 20 or 30 are all speaking Spanish, you can pretty much believe that they are not legal. The hospitals have to hire translators.
The small rural towns are also inundated. The town where my aunt lives (population approx. 25,000) has rental housing on her street with 10 or 15 single men living together with no furniture, beds, etc. They see them come and go...no families with them.
I could go on and on, but the point is that this is not just a border state issue. Indiana is not a wealthy state and was not prepared for the influx of people needing services.
I believe that this is the reason the immigration issue is going to be an important one in the coming election. People here are mad about it. The protests with Mexican flags woke up a sleeping citizenry here.
I remember changing planes in Salt Lake City once and taking a tour of their Temple Square. There was a panhandler nearby whining about how awful the Mormons were-- expecting him to work before he was given anything, denying him alcohol and even a cup of coffee. I asked him why he hung around there to panhandle and he told me "because the tourists were kind." "Not me, buddy" I said and walked away to his cursing that I must be one of them.
I don't like big cities in America much, but I must say Salt Lake City is one of the better kept ones.
You do know that Bilbray was running for the seat, not just the primary.
You do know that even so Bilbray cancelled a meeting with Bush and stopped the telephone calls.
Don't you?
I stand corrected on the McCain meet.
"But you guys are prone to hyperbole"
Funny coming from a poster that tends to allude to boxcars and the holocaust when opinions to the right of amnesty are expressed.
I still believe using it to describe the right dilutes the term.
Plus, it's just soooo perfect for describing the left. You know, it kinda has that leftie naturalist/alternative-animistic-paganist quality to it.
I prefer wingnuts for the right. Tools are more right-wing than left-wing.
Yes, I questioned the local myself, Utah prolly doesn't have 200K illegals in the whole state (yr. round) no wonder the voters there don't feel invaded.
However, Cannon himself brought this partly on, with his 'welcome illegals speech', driver's lic., Titian's, etc.
From what I can see, quite bluntly, Pennsylvania could use illegal immigrants, even those that have children and user city services.
"Illegals"...NO....our electeds *should be* working to expedite the LEGAL precesses, already in place, to welcome ALL immigrants (that we need) and that really want to become Americans.
As a 'Nation of Laws' we do not reward our citizen lawbreakers, there for we should not *reward* any illegal lawbreakers. (or allow them to line-jump)
So why on earth would someone run on an anti-illegal platform in a state where there are not enough illegals to matter?
If the 'status quo' remains it will be interesting to see if UT voters would so readily re-elect another OBL pol in 10 years.
Once you guys give amnesty to every illegal in the country (and then their extended families in Mexico) forget about republican control (let alone conservative) control of this country again.
--Watch what happens to RINOs in districts where the issue matters more to its voters.--
That's what I am thinking.
And Orrin Hatch is a Senator from what state?
Wow you sound like Jim Jone's followers. Drink the purple Kool-Aid
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