Conservatives & Immigration: A Match Made In Stupidity

7:22 am EST August 27th, 2007 | News | 21 Comments

If it’s one thing I’ve learned about the right in the last sixteen years of watching politics it is this: they must be outraged about something. Conservatism thrives on outrage, mad howling upset people enraged at some injustice or indignity. Contrary to the propaganda pushing people like Ronald Reagan as “sunny optimists”, Republicans must use blind, seething outrage to get the conservative base out to the polls.

At the formation of the modern conservative movement in the mid-1960s, it was sufficient to whip up a frenzy against blacks. Those voters who saw the decay of society in equal rights for blacks found a home in the Republican party as a barrier between their white middle-class America and the supposed hordes of poor inner-city blacks – especially the men who were coming for their daughters. As time marched on, the Republicans regularly used this issue to outrage their base, from Nixon talking about law and order to Reagan’s welfare moms and of course George H. W. Bush and Willie Horton. In that time conservatives have also used to varying degrees the spectre of a nation under assault by gays, Jews, and blacks to spook their base into voting Republican. To many of their voters Republican leadership preserves leadership that looks like them and their families.

But things have changed. It’s not okay anymore in America for that sort of blatant prejudice to be a part of acceptable discourse. The Republican strategy of bashing blacks, gays, and Jews has had to move underground and while still a part of the conservative movement, it is used sparingly so as not to attract attention. It isn’t dead, but close to it.

So what to do? Who is left to demonize?

Soon after the 2004 election the decision was made to transform “immigration” as a major campaign issue. Clearly many conservative Republican leaders realized that the close concentration of gay marriage referendums that helped get the vote out in 2004 would not happen again, and even so Americans are increasingly libertarian on the issue of same sex unions. The “Christian” far right somewhat realizes that there’s no way to get an amendment banning gay marriage through the government. So immigration is probably the last gasp of the conservative Republican strategy to divide America by race and get white voters out for Republicans.

The weird thing is, they’ve decided to veer away from the cultural aspects of the issue (their type of xenophobia – discussing racial slurs, making up racist caricatures, etc. – simply doesn’t work in modern America outside of the fevered swamps of Rush Limbaugh or Free Republic) and focus on “security” concerns.

Conservatives claim that 9/11 shows us that our borders were not secure enough. But the 9/11 hijackers did not come into America with a coyote across the U.S. – Mexico border. They were here on visas. They didn’t cross a river. They flew in on a modern airplane. If we had built that ridiculous fence they’re so obsessed about on the southern border in 1995, 9/11 would still have happened. Even worse, they wail “9/11″ when talking about immigration, but are clearly unwilling to make the policy changes needed to actually fight terrorism as outlined in the 9/11 report or even the Baker-Hamilton report. This is of course because they don’t care about terrorism and immigration. “Terrorism” is just magical pixie dust they apply to any and everything, thinking that the halo existing around that magical incantation in 2001-4 still exists. It doesn’t.

The other, more recent argument made by anti-immigration pundits like Bill O’Reilly and Michelle Malkin is that illegal aliens are coming to America to kill us. Without looking up the numbers I think it’s safe to say we have more to fear from our fellow American citizens than someone without their proper papers. Nobody kills, robs, maims and rapes Americans like other Americans. Now they’re also claiming to be upset about illegal alien criminals being released – like in the recent shooting in Newark. But here, for the ten thousandth time, conservative policy is likely to blame. The right advocates harsh penalties for many nonviolent crimes, including possession of marijuana, prostitution, etc. The prisons are overcrowded, and as such we end up with a revolving door on our justice system. And when people commit these crimes, they are regularly sent back out onto the streets, where they commit crimes again. It isn’t just illegal aliens doing this, but all criminals. If conservatives really cared about this issue they would be all over those harsh sentences – but they don’t actually care about solving the issue, just whipping up outrage.

Implicit in these arguments is also the sentiment that somehow a crime is worse when an illegal alien does it. To any rational person, this makes no sense. Murder is murder. Rape is rape. Whether the person committing the crime has papers or not doesn’t make the act any more or less harmful. But conservatives do not care about this. They have elections to win and fear mongering to do. America is going to be a majority minority nation sooner rather than later, and for some people that scares them. For Republicans in particular the fear comes out of how tilted minority voting is in favor of Democrats (Blacks – 90% Dem, Asians – 62% Dem, Hispanic – 69% Dem plus the Jewish vote goes 70% Democratic).

There may be some temporary gain to this backlash vote – right now, the Republican candidates are competing to see “Who Hates Hispanics The Most?” – but beyond 2008 it probably won’t be much of a viable strategy. Heck, there’s a good chance it may not work in 2008. It represents the continuing bankruptcy of the right in America, who is literally on just about their last racial/minority group that they can declare war on. Beyond a few insular enclaves, many Americans now interact with Hispanics. Hispanic culture is firmly integrated into American culture, from food to music to fashion, politics, sports and beyond. The bug-eyed Mexican coming across the border to attack pure white daughters that is the bread and butter of Fox News is increasingly seen for the ploy that it is.

Since the founding of America conservatives have fought tooth and nail against social progress. And they have lost every single time. They will lose this fight too. It’s the American way. Viva America.

Public Education Makes America Great

3:09 pm EST August 26th, 2007 | Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Bank on it.

Topic: Education

Shorter Chris Wallace

2:40 pm EST August 26th, 2007 | News | 6 Comments

“If I want the truth about Karl Rove, I ask Karl Rove. Karl Rove would never lie to me, while the facts would. God bless Fox News”.

Topic: Fox News

The Latest “Surge Is Working” Spin

2:22 pm EST August 26th, 2007 | News | 2 Comments

Instapundit highlights a story about new glass in a store window as sign of progress in Iraq. Really. I guess glass in store windows is the 2007 version of schools being open and painted. The hucksters never learn.

Topic: Iraq

White House Prepping Pentagon Propaganda Operation To Bolster “Petraeus” Report

7:48 am EST August 25th, 2007 | News | 6 Comments

The spin never stops.

For the Defense Department, getting out Iraq information now will include a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week Iraq Communications Desk to pump out data from Baghdad and while serving more or less as a campaign war room.

According to a memo circulated Thursday and obtained by The Associated Press, Dorrance Smith, assistant defense secretary for public affairs, is seeking personnel for what he called the high-priority effort to distribute Defense Department information about Iraq.

The move, requested by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, comes as administration officials are gearing up for a rash of reports on the status of the war and recommendations from the military on troop levels going into next year. The crucial report will come from Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker.

Topic: Iraq

Rudy Giuliani Lied On NYC Surplus

7:14 am EST August 25th, 2007 | News | 3 Comments

Again, Republican candidate Rudy Giuliani’s rhetoric doesn’t line up with the reality.

Rudolph W. Giuliani has been broadcasting radio advertisements in Iowa and other states far from the city he once led stating that as mayor of New York, he “turned a $2.3 billion deficit into a multibillion dollar surplus.”

The assertion, which Mr. Giuliani has repeated on the trail as he has promoted his fiscal conservatism, is somewhat misleading, independent fiscal monitors said. In fact, Mr. Giuliani left his successor, Michael R. Bloomberg, with a bigger deficit than the one Mr. Giuliani had to deal with when he arrived in 1994. And that deficit would have been large even if the city had not been attacked on Sept. 11, 2001.

“He inherited a gap, and he left a gap for his successor,” Ronnie Lowenstein, the director of the city’s Independent Budget Office, a nonpartisan agency that monitors the city budget, said of Mr. Giuliani. “The city was budgeting as though the good times were not going to end, but sooner or later they always do.”

Topic: Rudy Giuliani

Republicans Vs. Minorities

7:33 pm EST August 24th, 2007 | Republicans | 6 Comments

Good summing up from Paul Krugman.

In fact, I suspect that the underlying importance of race to the Republican base is the reason Rudy Giuliani remains the front-runner for the G.O.P. nomination, despite his serial adultery and his past record as a social liberal. Never mind moral values: what really matters to the base is that Mr. Giuliani comes across as an authoritarian, willing in particular to crack down on you-know-who.

But Republicans have a problem: demographic changes are making their race-based electoral strategy decreasingly effective. Quite simply, America is becoming less white, mainly because of immigration. Hispanic and Asian voters were only 4 percent of the electorate in 1980, but they were 11 percent of voters in 2004 — and that number will keep rising for the foreseeable future.

Those numbers are the reason Karl Rove was so eager to reach out to Hispanic voters. But the whites the G.O.P. has counted on to vote their color, not their economic interests, are having none of it. From their point of view, it’s us versus them — and everyone who looks different is one of them.

So now we have the spectacle of Republicans competing over who can be most convincingly anti-Hispanic. I know, officially they’re not hostile to Hispanics in general, only to illegal immigrants, but that’s a distinction neither the G.O.P. base nor Hispanic voters takes seriously.

Republicans had a shot to win the Hispanic vote, especially on socially conservative issues there is some common ground – but just like with black voters, the GOP has allowed their racism to cut off yet another voting bloc. At some point the rich white male demo is not going to carry them over the finish line any more.