Mar 01 2007
Conservative Realignment
Hard core conservatives may need to face some facts: they bet all on fighting their President in 2006 and ended up losing big in the Congress. The risk here is the far right get’s the wrong message from this public rebuke. The example is best seen in a piece out by Robert Novak:
New York-based political consultant Kieran Mahoney’s statewide survey of probable Republican participants in the 2008 Iowa presidential caucuses shows this support for the “big three” GOP candidates: John McCain, 20.5 percent; Rudy Giuliani, 16.3 percent; Mitt Romney, 3.5 percent. Astonishingly, they all trail James Gilmore, the former governor of Virginia, with 31 percent.
How could that be? Because it was not a legitimate survey, but a “push poll.” That normally is a clandestine effort to rig a poll by telling respondents negative things about various candidates. Mahoney makes no secret that his voter sample was told of liberal deviations by McCain, Giuliani and Romney, and of true-blue conservatism by Gilmore (Mahoney’s client).
I like Jim Gilmore, he was VA’s last Republican Governor. If I thought he could win I would chose him. I like Guiliani better. My priority is winning the war against Islamo Fascism. Next is Romney. Sadly McCain is way to liberal for any serious consideration. He is a key asset to conservatism, but he will not be its standard bearer.
And neither will Newt Gingrich (out trashing Bush on Iraq) or Tancredo or Duncan Hunter. Conservatism took a blow in 2006 because of the far right and their arrogance – they road it all they way to blistering defeat. The bet the Congress and lost. How badly they lost has not yet fully dawned on them – or Novak.
Mahoney is trying to prove a point widely accepted in Republican ranks. None of the three front-line candidates is a natural fit for the nation’s right-of-center party. Without question, there is a conservative void. The question is whether Gilmore or any new candidate can fill it.
The most commonly mentioned void filler is not Gilmore but Newt Gingrich. A straw poll by the right-wing Citizens United organization of its political contributors showed Gingrich leading with 31 percent (followed by Giuliani at 25 percent, Romney at 10 percent and McCain at 8 percent). But based on his record as speaker of the House, Gingrich’s conservative record is far from flawless.
The keys to success are with Bush[W]-Reagan conservatives. Many of whom are like me – not a Republican but and independent. Gingrich is getting more money from the bedrock Rep donators – but he will not get the nod. Do the math. The pushed conservative garnered 31%, the liberal-RINOs got over 40% combined. The nation is about 30-30-30 (Dem-Indie-Rep). Far left is about 15%, far right is about 20-25%. No one wins without the middle and the middle is fed up with partisans. When the far right highjacked the President’s popular stances on a range of issues and then lost in 2006 they became, in essence, incapable. They wanted to make a show and they did – they showed failure. Instead of pursuing the war aggressively we are listening to ridiculous ramblings from the Liberal Dem leadership.
The old saying “Fool me once, shame on you, but fool me twice then shame on me” still carries weight. The far right had their chance, blew it. The far left is having their chance, and blowing it. The center right is ascending (Romney, Schwarzenegger, Rell, Bush) – as it should. The democrats who won in 2006 shifted center left to center right. Lieberman won CT handily when faced with far right and far left candidates. I could go on but what is the point – denial of what happened in 2006 is still too strong with the far right. I have completely lost interest in Hannity, Ingraham, Kristol and all the other far right talking heads. What is the point? They repeat demonstrably unpopular and unwinnable positions.
I, like many voters, are tired of theories. We need a small and focused and productive government. It is not all bad, it is not all good. Stop with the sound bite policies. We need to do something about illegal immigration – we need to keep the solid, family oriented, community oriented workers and get rid of the criminals. We need to get them out in the open, not marched to the borders.
We need solutions, not pipe dreams. Our patience is wearing thin with the squabbling without results. Win in Iraq and change the face of the ME for a brighter future (the thing the Dems screwed up). Keep taxes low, give us a comprehensive immigration package, bar the killing of embryos for science and shore up Social Security. These five things are plenty – and plenty hard to do. Focus on these and promise to make progress (not perfection – I don’t believe in that myth anyway). Do that and you will win in 2008. This ain’t rocket science.
The “Far Right” as you phrase them = Conservatives. The rest are Moderates or Liberals.
I’ve asked repetedly for links to your claims that the “Far Right” lost the Elections in 06.
All the evidence I’ve seen pointed to Voters not seeing a dimes worth of difference between the two parties. Bush, and the congresses he has led have spent more money than any in resent history. Pork projects SOARD under his “Leadership”.
Would You Vote For A Candidate Who Said This?
“The war on terror is a misnomer,”
“It’s a war on militant Islam.”
How About this?
In the war on illegal immigration, we need to construct two “walls,” physical or virtual barriers — along the Mexican and Canadian borders.
“The second thing is to aggressively go after employers, the magnets attracting illegals,”
“You don’t need many laws, just enforce the ones that are there. It’s not brain surgery. We must begin to use the bully pulpit to reinvigorate the discussion of western civilization and its values.”
If You truely are a conservative, what do you think of this?
“Conservative” as in a lifetime rating of 99 by the American Conservative Union since he became a congressman . It’s the organization’s highest rating among announced presidential candidates. The ACU does not rate mayors (such as presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani) or governors (such as presidential candidates Mike Huckabee, George Pataki, Bill Richardson and Mitt Romney).
And When we get our “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” how will it help with this?
Last November, congressional investigators reported that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) had lost track of 111,000 files in 14 of the agency’s busiest district offices and processed as many as 30,000 citizenship applications last year without the required files. Poof! I have heard first-hand from adjudicators in Texas and southern California who have piles of files in backrooms that have yet to be read. The application backlog remains in the millions. Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Susan Collins, R-Maine, called for a Government Accountability Office review that uncovered at least one case in which an applicant with ties to the terrorist group Hezbollah was granted citizenship without a check of his primary file.
“It only takes one missing file of somebody with links to a terrorist organization to become an American citizen,” Grassley, who is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, noted in The Washington Post. “We can’t afford to be handing out citizenship with blinders on.”
Or legal status. Multiply that by several million in the case of Bush’s guest worker program.
If we Can’t Handle What Were Doing Now, Please Explain How We Will Handle Millions More.
The F.B.I look bad too:
The FBI’s background check backlog for legal immigrant applicants stands at a reported 100,000 files, which have been waiting for action for a year or longer. At least they didn’t shred them all (uh, as far as we know) — which is what federal contractors did at the immigration center in Laguna Niguel, Calif., over the last several years. To rid itself of a 90,000-document backlog, supervisors ordered workers to destroy passports, birth certificates, approval notices, change of address forms, diplomas and money orders. Then they reported that they had reduced the backlog to zero. Poof!
“The situation is reminiscent of what happens to beleaguered adjudicators at the USCIS every day, and it is not the least bit funny. The adjudicators cannot eat the applications, nor can they stuff them down their clothes. In order to get good evaluations, they need to move these applications as quickly as possible. The easiest way to do this is to approve them. Needless to say, this means that fraud-laden applications are often not detected and aliens receive a wide variety of benefits, including United States citizenship to which they would not be entitled if the relevant facts were known. As more aliens get away with committing fraud, the ‘word’ spreads through the communities and more aliens are emboldened to commit fraud, further eroding any integrity that might have still remained in the process. To make things worse, when an application is denied, the alien is virtually assured that no special agent will be looking for him to seek his removal from the United States.”
We are incapable of imposing order and handling the current crush of legal immigrant applicants in a fair and timely way. You want “comprehensive immigration reform”? Start with border control, reliable adjudications, consistent interior enforcement, and efficient and effective deportation policies. And don’t pretend that piling on is going to fix a darned thing.
I could not have said it better myself. I’m open to suggestions on how we can handle the MILLIONS more. Any Ideas?
You can say what you want about the comprehensive immigration package, (which is currently being drafted IN SECRET), but this is the reality of what we are living with down here and the press neglects to talk about.
http://www.laweekly.com/general/features/the-town-the-law-forgot/15731/
Here is what it’s like in Central, Ca.
Less than a mile from my home is a former farmhouse whose new owner moved in several stationary Winnebagos, propane tanks and outdoor cooking facilities — and apparently four or five entire families rent such facilities right outside his back door.
Dozens live where a single family used to — a common sight in rural California that defines illegal immigration in a way that books and essays do not.
The problem with all this is that our now-spurned laws were originally intended to ensure an (admittedly thin) veneer of civilization over innate chaos — roads full of drivers who have passed a minimum test to ensure that they are not a threat to others; single-family residence zoning to ensure that there are adequate sewer, garbage, and water services for all; periodic county inspections to ensure that untethered dogs are licensed and free of disease and that housing is wired and plumbed properly to prevent mayhem; and a consensus on school taxes to ensure that there are enough teachers and classrooms for such sudden spikes in student populations.
All these now-neglected or forgotten rules proved costly to the taxpayer.
In my own experience, the slow progress made in rural California since the 1950s of my youth — in which the county inspected our farm’s rural dwellings, eliminated the once-ubiquitous rural outhouse, shut down substandard housing and fined violators in hopes of providing a uniform humane standard of residence for all rural residents — has been abandoned in just a few years of laissez-faire policy toward illegal aliens.
My own neighborhood is reverting to conditions common about 1950, but with the insult of far higher tax rates added to the injury of nonexistent enforcement of once-comprehensive statutes.
The government’s attitude at all levels is to punish the dutiful citizen’s misdemeanors while ignoring the alien’s felony, on the logic that the former will at least comply while the latter either cannot or will not.
Will “Comprehensive Reform Solve this? If so, how? Wont the Flood Gates open even wider? If not, why not?
Will Comprehensive Reform solve this?
Since 1990, the number of poor Mexican-Americans has climbed 52%, a figure that skewed U.S. poverty rates. Billions of dollars spent on our own poor will not improve our poverty statistics when 1 million of the world’s poorest cross our border each year. The number of impoverished black children has dropped 17% in the last 16 years, but the number of Hispanic poor has gone up 43%.
We don’t like to talk of illegitimacy, but here again the ripples of illegal immigration reach the U.S.-born generation. Half of births to Hispanic-Americans were illegitimate, 42% higher than the general rate of the American population. Illegitimacy is higher in general in Mexico than in the U.S., but the force multiplier of illegal status, lack of English and an absence of higher education means that the children of Mexican immigrants have illegitimacy rates even higher than those found in either Mexico or the U.S.
Education levels reveal the same dismal pattern — nearly half of all Hispanics are not graduating from high school in four years. And the more Hispanic a school district becomes, the greater level of failure for Hispanic students. In the Los Angeles district, 73% Hispanic, 60% of the students are not graduating. But the real tragedy is that, of those Hispanics who do graduate, only about one in five will have completed a high school curriculum that qualifies for college enrollment.
That partly helps to explain why at many campuses of the California State University system, almost half of the incoming class must first take remedial education. Less than 10% of those who identify themselves as Hispanic have graduated from college with a bachelor’s degree. I found that teaching Latin to first-generation Mexican-Americans and illegal aliens was valuable not so much as an introduction to the ancient world but as their first experience with remedial English grammar.
Meanwhile, almost one in three Mexican-American males between the ages of 18 and 24 recently reported being arrested, one in five has been jailed and 15,000 illegal aliens are currently in the California penal system.
Statistics like these have changed the debate radically. While politicians and academics assured the public that illegal aliens came here only to work and would quickly assume an American identity, the public’s own ad hoc and empirical observations of vast problems with crime, illiteracy and illegitimacy have now been confirmed by hard data.
Ever since the influx of illegals into our quiet valley became a flood, I have had five drivers leave the road, plow into my vineyard and abandon their cars, without evidence of either registration or insurance. On each occasion, I have seen them simply walk or run away from the scene of thousands of dollars in damage. Similarly, an intoxicated driver who ran a stop sign hit my car broadside and then fled the scene. Our farmhouse in the Central Valley has been broken into three times. We used to have an open yard; now it is walled, with steel gates on the driveway. Such anecdotes have become common currency in the American Southwest. Ridiculed by elites as evidence of prejudice, these stories, statistical studies now show, reflect hard fact.
The growing national discomfort over illegal immigration more than four years after “Mexifornia” first appeared is not only apparent in the rightward shift of the debate but also in the absence of any new arguments for open borders — while the old arguments, Americans are finally concluding, really do erode the law, reward the cynical here and abroad, and needlessly divide Americans along class, political, and ethnic lines.
If so, how so?
There are over 4,000,000 aliens now in illegal status, people who entered legally as tourists or stuÂdents or temporary workers but did not leave when their visa expired. Our government has no reliable way to track our visa arrivals, to know when they leave or don’t leave, or to find them and deport them if they don’t leave.
The US–VISIT program is still not implemented five years after the 9/11 attacks. Yet some supposÂedly serious lawmakers want to burden the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services with ten to twenty million additional background checks and visa applications in a new guest worker program. That is a recipe for catastrophe.
The public is beginning to understand that the lack of serious enforcement permeates our entire immigration system, not only our physical borders with Mexico and Canada. Until we can get agreeÂment that enforcement of our immigration laws is a serious task requiring serious measures and dediÂcated resources, all other reforms are futile.
The place to start is with border security, because secure borders are a precondition for control of immigration at all levels. Once we have achieved that and demonstrated a commitment to immigraÂtion law enforcement, we can move on to more complicated problems.
Enforcement—and the enforceability of any proÂposal—will be the key issue on many fronts, because our whole immigration system is burdened by a history of incompetence, corruption, and failed management systems.
The sooner we can demonstrate the ability to enforce our immigration laws effectively, the easier it will be to move forward with a meaningful overÂhaul of a broken system. That’s why I see enforceÂment not as a delaying tactic, not as a short-term, half-way solution to a larger problem, but as the key to addressing all of these problems.
I call immigration enforcement a “new strategy†because it has never been tried; it has only been given lip service.
In the 1986 amnesty legislation, we tried amnesÂty without enforcement.
I think it’s time to try enforcement without amnesty.
Tom Tancredo, Muckracker, Exstremist, and whatever else A.J would call him.
Read this:
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/gbase/Tools/PrintFriendly?url=%2Fgbase%2FCurrents%2FContent%3Foid%3Doid%253A92554
Then tell me how this new reform will help.
Hazelton, Pa.
After the small town of Hazleton, Pa., experienced a stabbing, a drug bust and a few absentee landlords with as many as nine residents living in a single unit, Mayor Louis Barletta said he lay awake one night and thought, “I’ve lost my city.”
The common thread running through many of the problems facing the once-sleepy town of about 23,000 residents is that the offenses involved illegal immigrants.
Before 2000, Barletta recalled, the town averaged one murder every seven years. After an influx of illegal immigrants, there have been three murders in the last 18 months.
The problems prompted the mayor to enact new policies, including an ordinance to punish businesses hiring illegal workers, punish landlords who rent to illegal immigrants, and declare English the town’s official language.
Hazleton’s policies inspired Starletta Hairston, a former council member in Beaufort County, S.C., who saw similar problems in her community. She pushed for the enactment of county policies in 2005 to deny licenses to businesses that employ illegal aliens and to deny business licenses to illegal immigrants.
“When the federal government drops the ball on enforcing immigration laws, it’s up to the local governments to protect the taxpayers,” Hairston said.
I think a lot of people wear their “Jersey” too tight. It’s great to love the republican party. But to let them blindly take you over the cliff on this reform that doesn’t solve the problem is dangerous. As is excusing their abandonment of conservative principles on the size of government, spending, etc. Reagan and the Class of 1994 had it right. We have lost our way after that. And by joining the Lib’s in the need to pass this Comprehensive Bill, we will put the party into permanent minority statues. Once we get those Millions as registered Demacrates, say good by to the dream of recapturing a majority for a generation. We had a chance to save the Country from this invasion, but looked the other way instead. It will bite us in the end. Time to cook, take care folks! Enjoy your day.
And yes, Reagan gave Amnesty to around 3 Million. But he also passed laws to solve the problem. Laws we have NOT Enforsed.
stevevvs
“Our farmhouse in the Central Valley has been broken into three times. We used to have an open yard; now it is walled, with steel gates on the driveway.”
walled? doesn’t EVERYONE know that a wall won’t keep anyone out?
I’m just kidding of course, but that’s the argument of the ‘anti-wallers’ about a wall on the border.
while a fence make not keep a determined person out, at least if it’s tall enough and strong enough, they have to make a very determined effort and it may delay them long enough to get help. But no wall, they can just come and go as they please.
Bravo, AJ! Excellent post. I have saved it for future use.
The 5 things you listed are right on target. And I too, think Rudy and Romney will be the ticket in ’08. Praying hard for both.
Love the “perfection” comments as well…so true and so much of a problem today with Ingraham et al, imho.
And if Newt Gingrich thinks that he can win, he has another thought coming….The numbers do not add up. He needs to stop with the fantasy now!
Enforcement,
Two weeks ago, in nearby Landis, N.C. we had a 6 month Pregnant woman killed by a Drunk El Salvador Alien. He had been DEPORTED 3 TIMES, Used 2 Different Alieses, was arested in N.C. 4 previous times, under two different names , and possesed a MEXICAN DRIVERS LICENSE! Of course, he had no U.S. License, and no Auto Insurance.
But not to worry, “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” is a commin’. And all these problem will vanish. Poof!
Without a WALL, nothing changes. We Deport, and Deport, and they just keep coming back. It’s a huge problem here.
I think a persons income makes a difference in their opinion on this. If you make 40K or less, you see and deal with this more in your normal life than those in nice upscale neighborhoods making 100K or more per year.
I have to go, ENFORCEMENT, fight the good fight in my absense.
I’m still waiting for A.J. to supply links to his claims. Maybe someday…
He is like Fitz, he makes claims, but when it’s time to back them up, he can’t. All the Evidence I’ve seen on the 06 Election points to everything BUT Immigration as to why the Rep’s lost. Of to work. Enjoy your day.
And a second Bravo! You speak for me A.J., and I’ve fanned this piece out among my entire list.
While the omniscient ones meet this weekend at CPAC, fawning and preening and competing to compose the most outraged scolding of McCain for “dissing the base,” normal people will stay home and hopefully pray hard that Giuliani manages to navigate the orthodox obstacle course without serious injury. My advice for Rudy at CPAC: smile a lot, tug at your chin while intently nodding, give a kick-ass speech about FREEDOM, [huge bonus points if you mention you’re an avid reader of blogs — you might even get your parking ticket stamped], then sprint for the caravan and get out of D.C. in one piece. Leave the SunniCons to war with the ShiiaCons while you commence to sweep up the big, wide middle. Just git ‘er done, and start moving the GOP past this interminable family feud.
P.S. Keep a close eye on Newt. I think he supports Rudy and he may be doing some stealth operating on that score — hope I’m not imagining that.
Holy flip. Eight out of eleven posts (several of which are LENGTHY) from ONE poster. Stop it AJ, you’re giving SteveVVS a nervous breakdown!
Sally Vee,
I am going to head to CPAC tomorrow (in my backyard) and do some posts from there. Should be fun! Will let you all know what kind of reception I get this year on blogger’s row.
SteveVVS,
I am all for dumping the criminals – one strike and you are OUT! Everybody is. It is treating them all like criminals which has to end. Agreed?
I’ll throw a few more things in the mix here. Mexico is a country without real law. The only thing that matters to them is what you can get away with. Everyone wants a bribe or a handout. It is a totally corrupt culture that is based on five rich families that control the country and everyone else takes what they can steal. Then we expect these people to come up here and be model citizens?!? The only thing we do when we allow them to invade the US is to perpetuate the corruption down there. We drain the labor out of the country and make it poorer because they don’t produce as much down there. We break up families because they can’t all come at once so usually the husband does and he leaves his family behind. Check out this link by the self proclaimed “Wetbacks Wives”. They are asking the US to enforce its borders and send their husbands home!
http://www.artcamp.com.mx/venga/
The only thing we are doing by throwing the border wide open is to provide a poverty relief valve for the corrupt Mexican government. If we were to stop allowing them to export their poverty here, they would have to clean up their act!
The number of hit and run accidents down here has exploded. People get run over in the street and the driver just keeps going. This used to be a rare incident, now we hear it way too often becuase the drivers don’t want to get jailed for having no license, insurance, registration and have their car confiscated. Usually when they find the car, and they do quite often, it was an illegal. I’m tired of them causing fires in the brush because they have shantytowns in the canyons and don’t put out their fires. I’m tired of coming to a screeching halt on the freeway because some illegal hasn’t yet figured it out that you shouldn’t change a tire in the fast lane. I’m tired of seeing friends bus their kids 15 miles out of town to go to school because the school across the street is loaded with seventy percent illegals kids.
That article about the lawless bordertown enviornment in LA is becoming more the rule than the exception now. This crap affects our lives in so many ways every single day and the proposed solution is to increase the problem by ten or twenty times. The fat drunk bastard writing this stuff up has a viseral hate for his own country!
Sally Vee I sure do hope you are right…that would be so great!!
Did you see the poll over at vote.com…it’s Rudy and Newt…
A.J.,
Getting rid of the criminals, even with one strike is great. I love it. The problem is, they just keep comming back. We are serial deporters, and they are serial returners. So we just go around in circles, until they kill someone. Without an effective way to keep them from returning, we are just wasting our time. There is no political will to solve the Border Problem. We need a wall. It has helped Israel immensly.
You all should read the L.A. Weekly article someone posted. I sent it out yesterday. And You should all read the Tucson Weekly article I posted. Both are excellent, and completely different. At last look at the PICTURES in the Tucson Weekly article.
I’m very concerned about the future of this once great Republic. I see a bleak future. I sure hope I’m wrong.
I’m at work, and must end for the day now.
Take Care. Read what I posted on how bad the LEGAL ALIEN problem is Currently. It is a mess. I see no way for that mess to improve by increasing the work load 4000%! Do you, honestly? Read it, it’s shocking, truely shocking.
SteveVVs,
You need to think through what the comprehensive plan would do – and you keep failing to do that. Resisting it by not understanding it is not going to get anybody’s attention.
The guest worker program includes a non-tamper ID. Without it no work. No work no reason to come. Once deported these people can come back but they will not find work (yes, there is always an underground – but stop looking for the mythical perfection). And if they do come back we send them back with the understand they host country jails them for ten years or more (we could pay and get a bargain on the incarceration costs). Too many attempts and you go to our jails for life.
It is not hard to make this work. Not hard at all. Do not expect me to keep responding to all the little examples of how things DON’T work, because I have no time or desire to knock every single one of them down. Suffice to know I can.
As I said, the “Fence Only” crowd (or anti guest worker program crowd) is not relevant anymore. Immigration reform will happen along Bush’s plan with Democrat support. The hard right took themselves right out of this one – thankfully. I only point out to you that your fears are unfounded and simply caused by your refusal to see how it COULD work. All of us who have rejected Tancredo know this to be true, and we are not sure why we even need to explain it anymore. I know I am done.
AJ, Everytime you talk about this immigration thing, you expose how woefully ignorant you are of the situation. The fact is that the immigration proposal that failed before DID NOT include a tamper proof ID system. If it had, that would have gone a long way toward many of us being more accepting of it. The other big problem was the numbers. We just cannot absorb almost ten million unskilled laborers into this country every year, and that actually WAS included in the bill.
Like I said before, I’m all for bringing these people out of the shadows and working on identifying them and I don’t even have a problem with giving them a path to citizenship. The problem is, that is not what they want! They want to cross our border back and forth whenever they feel like it with no regard of our laws at all. They want to make money without paying taxes, they want to use our hospitals without paying, they want to be eligible for government assistance without having to prove who they are. We went through this before, whenever we pass an AMENSTY bill, we get a lot more illegal immigration. We cannot possibly absorb every god damn poor person in the world! You are looking at this problem as if it was just about your illegal nanny Maria and a few workers in a strawberry field. That was a Loooooooonnnng time ago buddy. It has mushroomed way beyond that and you just don’t see it up close and personal every day. This is definitely going to split the republican party, regretfully, because people like you living comfy in your little bedroom community in Herdon VA are going to tell those of us living next to the BORDER WAR in our back yard to go pack sand! Got news for you buddy, no way in hell is this problem going to be solved by another law that our government has no intention of enforcing. The net result of this law is that it will cause a rush of illegals on the border, (from all over the world), and it will be a shooting festival even worse than it is now. And that’s saying something because it is a full on war now! Let me remind you, California is the most influential state in the union when it comes to elections and California is swinging heavily anti-illegal for obvious reasons. We have to live with the mess of it.
The fact is AJ, you have no idea what the hell you are talking about on this issue. And you can’t just claim the debate is over and we don’t matter anymore because we do. If the republican party does not wise up on this, they are done for years! I think you’re going to get a bit of an education at the CPAC conference that you’re not expecting.