Here is the part of the Limbaugh Letter that I transcribed eight years ago:
The following is an excerpt from The Limbaugh Letter. I transcribed it off the press. Rush interviews Pat Buchanan:
Rush: Let me go back to immigration. We know where we're headed. What needs to be done right now to stop this?
Buchanan: Three things. One, put a security fence along all the major crossing points at the border and use the National Guard in the other areas if necessary. Two, begin to enforce the employer sanctions against companies that chronically hire illegals. Three, expel every illegal alien who has been convicted of a misdemeanor or a felony. In addition, pass an immigration law which is generous, but which cuts us back to more reasonable levels of immigration and holds to that moratorium for about five years. It can done. But the hour's getting very late for preserving the unity of this country.
Rush: And, if we fail?
B: If you fail, you lose the country.
R: That's apocalyptic. Define that. What's losing the country?
B: If you get an overwhelming majority of Hispanics in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas these are decisive electoral votes. If those constituencies say, "We want an open border forever", I think we lose the country.
R: You're talking about illegals who end up voting.
B: No, all the children of these illegals are legal citizens. Eventually you could have a de facto loss of the American Southwest to Mexico.
R: I can't go to California without this becoming subject one, two and three.
B: Rush, every talk show I do it's No. 1. People cannot understand why the President will not enforce the immigration laws of the United States. If this were Clinton we'd impeach him.
R: I've gotten calls on my program from people in agribusiness who say, "If you roll back illegal immigration, be prepared for food prices to go up."
B: Tell them, "I'm prepared."
R: I said, "I'm already paying high taxes to support the social welfare programs for these illegals, who have access to the health care system, unemployment, and so on. It's already costing us." But that told me the problem is between two constituencies - the corporate contributors, who like cheap labor; and the average voter, who does not like it at all. That's the conflict.
B: It is. Again, go all the way back to the 50's even all the way back to the Civil War, and the great Republican era from 1860 to 1932. The interests of big business and manufacturing and of the workers used to be the same: "Look, we've got the greatest market in the world, we want the highest standard of living for our workers." As old Henry ford said, "I want my workers to be able to buy the cars they build." Both sides had tremendous interest in basically protecting the American market, in term of Americans having priority entry to it. Now, however, big business has moved so much of its manufacturing and production abroad that it has become the leading lobbyist for keeping the U.S. market open for dumping of foreign goods, bringing in foreign workers and the rest. So the interests of big business and workers - both of which were once Republican constituents - are now in conflict.
22 posted on
Monday, August 08, 2005 3:35:19 PM by
raybbr
Thank you for posting that interview transcript, it is confirmatory of our understanding of history. It is also instructive to consider how the Democrats destroyed Buchanan, as they do every other conservative threat, by painting him as an extremist and, for good measure, an anti-Semite and even a Nazi. They are doing the same thing to the Attorney General of Virginia on a different issue today in the Virginia governor's race. And it is winning there as well.
It is even more illuminating to consider the establishment of the Republican Party joining hands with the Democrats to accomplish the same destruction. We see this pattern played out time and again over the years. Even Romney had much more fire to direct against his fellow Republicans in the primaries than he had to direct against Obama.
I have post after post saved in which I plead for McCain to "morally destroy" Barack Obama. I did not understand at the time that this was not just a matter of the Republicans being gun shy because of Obama's race, this is an ingrained habit of that part of the Republican Party to which McCain and Romney and so many others belong.
My hope is that more and more FReepers catch on to all of this much quicker than I did and understand that what happened to Pat Buchanan is symbolic of what happens across the whole party.
