Posted on 11/20/2006 7:08:25 AM PST by Dane
Immigration wasn’t a winning platform
The Issue: Illegal immigration proves to be less of an issue for the American public than many in Congress had thought.
Our Opinion: It is time for Congress to devise a reasonable immigration-reform measure that meets the need for a more secure border and recognizes the importance of foreign nationals to our econ-omy.
In a campaign miscalculation that proved fatal to several candi-dates, incumbents and challengers — most of them Republicans — found that the illegal-immigration issue wasn’t nearly as important to the American public as they had thought.
Actually, illegal immigration trailed several issues in importance, according to voters interviewed in exit polls.
Top priority was official corruption, according to 42 percent of the voters interviewed during exit polls, followed by terrorism (40 percent), the economy (39 percent), Iraq (37 percent) and values (36 percent).
Only 29 percent of the voters who talked to exit pollsters said illegal immigration was extremely important to them.
According to Republican pollster Ed Goeas and Democratic pollster Doug Schoen, only 8 percent of voters ranked illegal immigration as their top issue.
As a result, many candidates who had hoped that a tough stance on illegal immigration would overcome their constituents’ dissatisfaction with Iraq found themselves making concession speeches on election night.
Most notable was GOP Indiana Rep. John Hostettler, chairman of the House Immigration Subcommittee, who lost to his Democratic opponent, Brad Ellsworth, by a wide margin.
Hostettler was the prime mover of a heavily punitive illegal-immigration bill passed by the House late last year.
Included in the bill was a provision that would have made felons of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants living in the country. The provision was eliminated from the House bill during a House/Senate conference committee.
Hostettler also took part in what were termed field hearings across the country to stir up voters on the issue.
The Indiana Republican was not the only illegal-immigration hardliner to be rebuked by voters. In Arizona, through which thousands of illegal immigrates enter the United States each year, GOP Rep. John D. Hayworth lost his bid for a seventh terms in Congress.
He is the author of a book titled “Whatever It Takes: Illegal Immi-gration, Border Security and the War on Terror.”
A political opportunist, Hayworth supported President Bush’s guest-worker plan then turned against it when it appeared that an anti-illegal immigration stance would be more acceptable to his constituents.
All of this is a strong indicator that the American public probably is amenable to an immigration-reform bill that would incorporate a program that would provide a path for illegal immigrants eventually to attain U.S. citizenship.
Perhaps it’s time to revive Bush’s plan, which would allowed ille-gal immigrants to obtain three-year work visas. After the visas expire, the illegal immigrants would be required to return to their countries of origin and go through legal channels if they wanted to return.
Or maybe the plan devised by the Senate Judiciary Committee could be reconsidered. That plan would balance enforcement of immigration laws with a recognition of the role foreign nationals play in our economy.
And of course there’s the plan co-sponsored by Sens. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, and Edward M. Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat. Their plan would beef up border security and require illegal immigrants to pay all fees required of legal immi-grants as well as a $1,000 fine before they could become guest workers.
None of these plans amount to amnesty. They do secure the boarder while allowing foreign nationals to work in the United States.
Where's the barf alert?
It's full of illegals. And is one of the most violent cities in the country.
Oh, and why are you bashing Tancredo? After all, he has an ACU rating of 100, and you said we couldn't bash Martinez when he had the same rating.
How many candidates in favor of shamnesty or a guest-worker program lost? One can always attempt to discern trends by cherry-picking the data.
More viloent than Detorit, and Reading is in the middle of Amish country, please, your replies are getting ridiculous.
DeWine and Chafee lost to even bigger pro-amnesty liberal democrats.
"The Issue: Illegal immigration proves to be less of an issue for the American public than many in Congress had thought."
The problem was many of the solutions smacked of racist, illegal immigration. Where is the big push for a fence up north?
No doubt that this is more of an issue for the southern border states whose hospitals and social services are being driven into the ground.
Here is the two, million dollar questions that has to be answered:
1) Are we willing to commit to a huge, continental fence, (not some 700 mile, unfunded fence)? Would the Right accept a tax increase to pay for it? Or would it need to come from the defense budget, or run up the deficit more?
2) Do we expect that, some how, resources will be found to ship all illegals down south to avoid the amnesty charge?
Yawn.
No, it's not Dane. You're thinking of Lancaster. Reading is sliding downhill in a hurry because of a massive influx of illegals over the last decade. It was ahead of Philly in the most recent violence ranking.
Plenty of other pubbies lost who were in favor of shamnesty or guest worker programs. I'm just pointing out how nonsensical it is to look at two races as proof of a point - especially when Hayworth was tainted by the Abramoff scandal (a little detail you keep attempting to brush aside).
God Bless you Dane for keeping to post this articles. People have to listen on this issue big time.
Americans want some compromise on this issue. They want real border security, and they want illegal immigration to end. However, they are not too thrilled with a blanet Deprt them all big or small or starve them over the border approach either.
THe question will be this. If Comprehensive immigration reform passess what next. Shall we keep running people on the "You might become a citizen but I will never view you as legit" platform. During the past year certain Republicans bottled up the bill in Congress. THey had silly political like hearings whose purpose was to grandstand that solve. If we were smart we would pass a bill this Congress. However I think people will not be smart and they will be on the outside looking in next session.
Better to ride the Dane train to Alta Mexico, formerly the USA....
If his position on illegal immigration is such a loser, why did he win re-election?
2) Do you expect that, somehow resources will be found to supply all illegals with all the hospitals, education, training, and insurance they need?
There are no easy answers, but we cannot pretend all the expense is on one side.
Immigration wasn’t a winning platform
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While, J.D. Hayworth and Randy Graf lost, 1 out of 3 is good in baseball, very poor in politics.
Yes it was .. because every democrat who won WAS STRONG ON IMMIGRATION. Immigration was a winning platform .. but too many of our RINO's were not willing to get onboard.
As their vote in the 110th Congress is for nancy pelosi as Speaker.
Never underestimate the ability of ideologues to draw stupid conclusions. It was precisely because the GOP did little more than window dressing on the immigration problem, and that right on the eve of election, that most people weren't willing to give the GOP another chance to do nothing.
What does one have to do with the other ..??
The statement was: Immigration wasn't a winning platform.
YES IT WAS!!
People need to have more patience with the poilitical process both at home and in Iraq. Haste makes waste.
Terrorism - kill the bad guys
Immigration - stop it and deport illegals
Spending - disembowel the spending machine
Most everything else is secondary.
"Pure nonsense and a big loser for Republicans because the base is against this shamnesty. Shagging arse across the border isn't immigration. It's a crime!"
I think the "bases" view point of this a little diverse.
Dane, I see you are you going to post your pro-amnesty articles 24/7 as usual?
Maybe you can catch a clue Dane:
The Legend of Arizona
By The Editors
We have many disagreements with our friends on the open-borders Right, but we have to give them credit for sheer doggedness. There is not an election that is immune from their inventive interpretations. Every one, it turns out, is a mandate for more immigration, for “earned citizenship” and the like. If a pro-immigration Republican just barely hangs on in a primary against an underfunded, single-issue restrictionist; if a restrictionist loses an election at the same time everyone else in his party, regardless of his position on immigration, is losing; if a restrictionist Republican wins his own reelection but cannot get an open-borders Republican to win the following election; if voters try their hardest to kill official bilingualism: In each and every case, the voters have shown that they favor mass immigration.
For years, the immigration lobby has pointed to California as an example of the supposed dangers of Republicans’ standing in the way of the immigration-driven transformation of the country. This tale depends on a series of obvious misreadings of the recent political history of California. Last week, our friends acquired a new myth. The 2006 elections were, on their telling, a decisive rejection of immigration control.
The myth is being spread by veteran pro-immigration conservatives such as Fred Barnes, Michael Barone, Linda Chavez, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page, along with Tamar Jacoby and Arlen Specter. The White House, an easy sell for this kind of thing, appears to have bought it, judging from clues in the news coverage of the appointment of Sen. Mel Martinez as general chairman of the Republican National Committee.
The centerpiece of this myth is Arizona, where enforcement hardliner J. D. Hayworth lost his reelection bid and the likeminded Randy Graf lost his campaign to succeed a Republican congressman. Sometimes the spinners throw in Rick O’Donnell’s loss of a marginal Republican seat in Colorado.
Time for a reality check. This year’s anti-Republican wave was indiscriminate, washing away such immigration hawks as John Hostettler and Charles Taylor, but also such amnesty supporters as Mike DeWine and Lincoln Chafee. In other places, Republicans were able to withstand the wave in part because they opposed amnesty: Chris Shays was the only Republican congressman to survive in Connecticut, and Pete King kept his seat in New York.
Some of the victorious Democrats favored enforcement first. James Webb, whose victory tipped the Senate, is one of them. Another is Hostettler’s opponent, Brad Ellsworth. Harold Ford, who stunned everyone by nearly winning a Senate seat from Tennessee, opposed amnesty.
Even in Arizona, Sen. Jon Kyl, who voted against the open-borders bill, beat a Democratic candidate who supported it. Arizona voters also approved, by wide margins, three ballot measures cracking down on illegal immigration, plus one declaring English the state’s official language. The Journal noted only the last of these, writing that it “suggests to us that what Americans want isn't so much restricted immigration as it is a culture of assimilation.” We continue to find the Journal’s breezy confidence that continuous mass immigration, much of it from a single source, can coexist with a “culture of assimilation.” But the state’s voters were clearly also saying that they want tougher policies against illegal immigration.
A final piece of mythology concerns the Hispanic vote. Exit polling found that 30 percent of Hispanics voted for Republican House candidates, down from 38 percent in the 2002 midterms. To see the significance of this drop, it has to be put in context. The percentage of white voters who picked Republicans fell from 58 to 51 percent over the same period. Hispanics just followed the national trend.
It is probably true that Graf’s monomaniacal focus on immigration contributed to his defeat; unlike some others, we are willing to acknowledge facts inconvenient to our political desires. But the balance of the evidence suggests that restrictionism can be a politically valuable element of a conservative platform.
Senator Martinez was a lead sponsor of the amnesty bill that the Senate approved earlier this year, without the votes of most Republicans. His immigration views appear to be part of the rationale for his selection. A Center for Immigration Studies analysis of the bill, extrapolating from the experience of the 1986 amnesty, conservatively estimated that more than 14 million people would gain legal status and move toward citizenship because of the measure’s various amnesty provisions —— and this estimate didn’t even take into account the bill’s huge increases in future legal immigration.
So the White House’s answer to last week’s losses appears to be to pass a bill that most Republicans dislike, in the service of a policy that will import more Democratic voters to the country. Get ready for a long spell in the minority.
I hope you realize that the 8 amnesties granted since 1986 for a couple of million illegals have added years of waiting to those waiting overseas 10 to 30 years to LEGALLY immigrate here. To ask God's blessing on for those doing something illegal, and stabbing your thumb in the eye of those trying to do things legally is evil.
And Buchanan appears to have hit the nail on the head, despite your liberal-attempted-spin:
Why the GOP is losing
By Patrick J. Buchanan - November 3, 2006
Entering the weekend before his midterms, George Bush and his party appear fated to lose the House they have held for a dozen years. The Senate is on a knife's edge.
The latest polls continue to show that by 52 percent to 37 percent Americans wish to see a Democratic takeover. Approval of Congress has never been lower. Americans think the nation is on the wrong track. Support for the war in Iraq has collapsed to a third of the nation.
What went wrong? Certainly, on three traditional Republican issues – strong military, conservative judges and lower taxes – the GOP remains America's Party.
How do we know? Because no Democrat in a close race is calling, Mondale-like, for higher taxes or attacking Bush for elevating judges John Roberts and Sam Alito to the Supreme Court. In the tight Senate races in Tennessee and Virginia, Democratic nominees Harold Ford and Jim Webb are outspokenly pro-defense.
On immigration, where Bush aligns with Kennedy-McCain, his party has abandoned him. The Republican House stands for border security, no amnesty and no new guest-worker program. Nor is this a losing issue. Even Hillary Clinton voted for 700 miles of security fence on the Mexican border.
What, then, are the causes of Republican malaise?
First is the perception the GOP is no longer a virtuous party that seeks to live up to principles and a high standard of public ethics. The adventures of the Abramoff Gang, Mark Foley, Duke Cunningham and his poker-party pals, of pork barrel and bridges to nowhere have demoralized the Republican base and disgusted Middle America. There is a feeling, even on the right, that if this crowd is run out of Dodge, its expulsion will not be unwarranted.
Second, while the macro economy seems to be firing on all eight cylinders – the Dow has risen above 12,000, and the Misery Index of inflation plus unemployment has fallen to the lowest levels in modern times – not all Americans are participating in the prosperity.
Employment in health care has grown by almost 2 million, but some 3 million manufacturing jobs have vanished. There has been a population explosion among billionaires, but the real median wage of a male worker has not risen in decades. The daily closure of factories here, as more and more Chinese goods show up at Wal-Mart, points to inescapable consequences: The price of the GOP's free-trade-uber-alles ideology is the loss of the Reagan Democrats.
In Ohio, which was indispensable to Bush is 2000 and 2004, free trade is a millstone around the GOP neck. If Bush loses the House or Senate, free-trade globalism goes on the shelf. Not only will Bush fail to win congressional support of a Doha Round trade treaty, he will be denied any renewal of fast-track authority. The new Congress will not rubber stamp trade treaties, but demand a voice and votes on any new deal the Bushites negotiate on behalf of Corporate America.
But if Republicans are swept from power, the reason will be Iraq. By two to one, Americans have reached the conclusion that the war was a mistake, that taking down Saddam was not worth the price in blood, that the management of the war has been as botched as John Kerry's joke, that it is time to bring the troops home and let Iraqis do the fighting for their own freedom, democracy and independence.
And the more seats Republicans lose Tuesday, the greater will be the pressure on the party and president to find an early exit.
Yet about the war, America remains divided and conflicted. For the roaring Republican reception to Bush's calls for "victory" testifies to another truth. While most American wish we had never gone in and want out, America does not want to lose the war as we lost Vietnam.
Neither party knows a way to accomplish what America wants: to leave Iraq without losing the war. And the reason neither party knows how to do it is because it cannot be done. Like a patient suffering from cancer, we want an end to the "chemo" – the awful news daily coming out of Iraq – but we do not want the consequences.
What, then, has cost the Republican Party its patrimony?
The answer is, first, hubris. Dominating Congress for a dozen years, the GOP began to behave with the same haughtiness as those they displaced. They forgot who sent them here, and why.
Second, ideology. Bush Republicans refuse even to reconsider, despite contradictory evidence, what their ideology teaches: that free trade is best, that U.S. power is invincible, that all the world wants to be like us, that our motives are always pure and theirs malevolent.
Tuesday will bring the party back to earth. But it will not solve the crises that beset the country. For while the Democrats may be the political alternative, the Democrats' ideology of big government liberalism is even more bankrupt.
I've made this point before. Who speaks for the poor immigrant that has waited years to LEGALLY immigrate to this country? Why should they be penalized for wanting to do things according to our laws? Shagging ass across the border like a jack rabbit isn't immigration. It's a crime!
Trying to re-write history before it's even history.
Please pat buchannan's job these days is to be chrissy matthews "amen" corner.
I agree with the plight of legal immigrant.
My question is this. Why don't we deal with that in this legislation and
Second, does it disturb any of you that many of the vocal groups against illegal immigration dont seem concern about the plight of the legal alien.
Illegal immigration measures pass underwhelmingly
[Here the Hispanic journalist? puts his special spin on the measure passing. LOL!
Mexico ambassador: We need N. American Union in 8 years U.S. 'investment,' EU-style merger key to better relations, says diplomat
The real agenda folks!
You acknowledge the problem, and then you move on to a solution that fails to deal with the real problem. America has become the Welfare Dept. for Mexico. Send them home, and they can get in line just like everyone else. Is it so hard to understand that running like a jack rabbit across our sovereign border is a CRIME. PERIOD AND END OF STORY!!!!!!!!!
"Dane, I see you are you going to post your pro-amnesty articles 24/7 as usual?"
Notice how he is the only one! Looks like he is so out gunned here on FR. I have not seen any FR poster's advocating illegal immigration other than him. They may be here, but I have not seen them.
Can we all be that wrong? Let me think ... ah, NO!
The laws are broken. But I am not so sure blind obidence to the law (They are all criminals) is going to solve the underlying problem. THe law is meant to serve us not uws serve the law.
My point being that we got to figure out what to do with the people here. Especially those with American Children and spunces. We also have got to do something about a guest worker program that will help stem this problem
LOL! You live in your own little cyber world as the true and real electoral world passes you by.
My point being that we got to figure out what to do with the people here. Especially those with American Children and spunces. We also have got to do something about a guest worker program that will help stem this problem
You OBL bastard, such talk is not tolerated.
Just using parody against the tanredobots, not a slam towards you CF.
While you run around sceaming save the illegals and shamnesty because of the election, the truth is that nationalism is what's happening in this country.
Return Of Economic Nationalism
By Patrick J. Buchanan
"Well, the American people have spoken, and in his own good time, Franklin will tell us what they have said."
So one wag explained the Democratic landslide that buried the Hoover Republicans in 1932. The country was voting against three years of Depression and the president and party it held responsible.
But what was it voting for? FDR supplied the answer: a New Deal.
All week, politicians and pundits will be putting their spin on the election returns, but there is a more certain way to know what Americans are voting for, and voting against. Which issues, in the tight races, did the candidates campaign on, and what issues did they consciously seek to avoid?
Among the more dramatic events of this election year was one that has been little debated: The return of the trade-and-jobs issue, front and center, to American politics.
Note: Almost no embattled Republican could be found taking the Bush line that NAFTA, or CAFTA with Central America, or MFN for China, or globalization was good for America and a reason he or she should be re-elected. But in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan, attacks on free trade were central elements of Democratic strategy.
"Protectionist Stance Is Gaining Clout," ran a headline inside The Wall Street Journal election eve. "Democrats Benefit by Fighting Free Trade, and Next Congress Could Face Changing Tide."
The Journal focused on Iowa's 1st District, an open seat given up by GOP veteran Jim Nussle, who was running for governor. As the Journal related,
"Bidding for a seat held by a free-trade Republican for nearly two decades, Democrat Bruce Braley had gained an edge by taking the opposite view: bashing globalization. ...
"Mr. Braley has made opposition to the Bush administration free-trade agenda a centerpiece of his campaign. He has run ads blaming the state's job losses on Bush's 'unfair trade deals.'"
Sherrod Brown, the Democratic challenger to Ohio's GOP Sen. Mike DeWine, also launched assaults on globalization and made the Bush trade deals a central feature of his campaign.
With the 2006 election, America appears to have reached the tipping point on free trade, as it has on immigration and military intervention to promote democracy. Anxiety, and fear of jobs lost to India and China, seems a more powerful emotion than gratitude for the inexpensive goods at Wal-Mart. The bribe Corporate America has offered Working America—a cornucopia of consumer goods in return for surrendering U.S. sovereignty, economic security and industrial primacy—is being rejected.
What is ahead is not difficult to predict.
The Doha Round of global trade negotiations is dead. Even if Bush cuts a deal with Europe, it could not pass the new Congress. In mid-2007, when Bush asks for renewal of his fast-track authority—presidential power to negotiate trade deals, while cutting Congress out of any role save a yes-or-no vote—it will be amended drastically or batted down handily.
But if the free-trade era is over, what will succeed it?
A new era of economic nationalism. The new Congress will demand restoration of its traditional power to help in shaping trade policy. When the U.S. trade deficit for 2006 comes in this February, it will hit $800 billion, pouring more fuel on the fire.
Even before Tuesday, wrote the Journal, "the Republican-controlled Congress (had) already showed its sensitivity ... helping derail a deal by Arab-owned Dubai Ports World to purchase the commercial operation at five U.S. ports and approving millions of dollars to build a wall to stem the tide of illegal immigrants from Mexico."
A rising spirit of nationalism is evident everywhere in this election, not simply in the economic realm. Americans are weary of sacrificing their soldier-sons for Iraqi democracy. They are weary of shelling out foreign aid to regimes that endlessly hector America at the United Nations. They are tired of sacrificing the interests of American workers on the altar of an abstraction called the Global Economy. They are fed up with allies long on advice and short on assistance.
Other leaders in other lands look out for what they think is best for their nations and people. Abstractions such as globalism and free trade take a back seat when national interests are involved.
China and Japan manipulate their currencies and tax polices to promote exports, cut imports and run trade surpluses at America's expense. Europeans protect their farms and farmers. Gulf Arabs and OPEC nations run an oil cartel to keep prices high and siphon off the wealth of the West. Russians have decided to look out for Mother Russia first and erect a natural gas cartel to rival OPEC. In Latin America, the Bush's Free Trade Association of the Americas is dead.
We are entered upon a new era, a nationalist era, and it will not be long before the voices of that era begin to be heard.
"Second, does it disturb any of you that many of the vocal groups against illegal immigration dont seem concern about the plight of the legal alien."
First, I don't see that contradiction here.
Second, let's stay on topic, cf: the subject is illegal aliens, not "undocumented workers" or "illegal immigrants". If anyone is `muddying the water/poisoning the well' it is those of you anxious for amnesty who push for open borders by using confusing eupehmisms for foreign lawbreakers.
legal immigrants=baby
illegal aliens=bathwater
eupehmisms=rancid bovine excrement swarming with maggots
using this reasoning, we should all forget to file our tax returns. it's needlessly complicated,confusing,time-consuming,ect.
keep paying taxes-thousands of illegals depend on you!
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