This has been a fascinating election cycle in one important way. All sides of the Political Industrial Complex of this nation (centered in DC, NY City and LA) have been trying to ignore the Big Elephant in the room: The American Voters and their anti-government rage.

The NY Times comes out spinning like a top today trying to find some hope for their leftist policies and any kind of deadly weaknesses in their conservative opponents (and pulease don’t try and tell me the NY Times has not gone far left over the last two decades). Buried deep into the article is this gem:

Not only do 89 percent of Americans say they distrust government to do the right thing, but 74 percent say the country is on the wrong track and 84 percent disapprove of Congress — warnings for Democrats and Republicans alike.

Emphasis mine. Let that highlighted number just sink in a bit. Ponder it and roll it over. Because it underpins all the other numbers in this poll. Today 9 in 10 voters distrust government to solve problems, spend our money wisely, treat us equally, protect our freedoms and/or be semi-competent. 9 in 10!

And which party has the libertarian, small government, Tea Party heart and soul of this 90%? Which party is the party of big government solutions. Which party has an abysmal track record of big government failures from the mortgage implosion due to social engineering, to trickle down government stimulus that failed to stimulate, to mountains of generational debt?

Only those in deep denial would ignore the obvious here.

Now, translate that anti-government rage (the same one, albeit at lower intensity at the time, that hit the Democrats in 2010) to the 2012 presidential election and you have really only one champion running that represents this 90%. There is only one who is acknowledged to have the least experience with bungled government solutions.

It’s not the President – that’s for sure. He came out and admitted the obvious yesterday, basically sealing his fate:

“The one thing that we absolutely know for sure is that if we don’t work even harder than we did in 2008, then we’re going to have a government that tells the American people, ‘you are on your own,’” Obama told a crowd of 200 donors over lunch at the W Hotel.

And the masses cheered! The goal of the 90% is to get government back into its minimal box so it can stop screwing things up. Yes, we want to be left alone, on our own.

Long time government and political workers are blind to opportunities outside government. Being immersed in the process of the bureaucracy and extremely inexperienced in the real world, they fail to understand when change is needed or a dangerous line has been crossed. With well intentioned ignorance the slavishly follow the established process – sometimes to horrible results.

Two glaring examples of blindered, bureaucratic thinking scar the national psyche to this day.

The first example is 9-11. President Bush enacted sweeping changes to the relationships between law enforcement and national security intelligence so that we no longer turn a blind eye to terrorists that we detect outside our borders once they come inside them to kill us. It is known as the Gorelick wall, that out dated barrier that said the FBI could not be notified of external threats now in the country, and Bush tore it down to great and silly angst from the left. If not for this classic bureaucratic communications barrier, we may have stopped 9-11 from being executed.

The 2nd example is the mortgage implosion which caused the Great Recession of 2008. At that time liberal law makers in Congress ignored warning signs that the flood of incapable home purchasers they backed in an attempt to expand home ownership was eroding the foundation of a major section of our economy (the housing market). Bureaucrats and left wing congress-critters blindly let our nation’s wealth evaporate in a burst of social engineering gone wrong, which in the end wiped out the life savings of millions of people.

There are thousands of more examples of smaller proportion out there (think Solyndra), so that 90% who distrust government have good cause for their views. And moreover, they are right.

Will Mitt Romney, with is own version of government run health care and is fealty to the Church of Global Warming/Al Gore, represent these 9 in 10 voters?

Laughable, isn’t it.

Can Governor Rick Perry and his support for in-state tuition for illegals (not even out of state rates, making a middle class Virginian less welcome than a Mexican day worker to Texas) represent them? Congress Critters Bachman, Paul or Gingrich? Senator Santorum and his desire to deny access to contraceptives (talk about your government intrusion)?

No, the one person who aligns perfectly with this 90% is Herman Cain. Buried even farther down in the NY Times poll article is Herman Cain:

Republican voters remain unenthused about their options to challenge President Obama next year, as the competition intensifies among Mitt Romney, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas and other contenders. The uncertainty has provided an opening for Herman Cain, who was viewed more enthusiastically by Republican primary voters than were other Republican candidates.

Be hard to know Herman Cain leads in that poll 25-21 over Romney, with Perry at something like 6%. Cain is presented as some aberration, and after thought.

This silly denial is not going to sway the 90%. The political news media is associated with the government – no matter how much the media opines over the days when they were watch dogs over, instead of mega phones for, politicians.

The more the Political Industrial Complex rejects Cain The Outsider, the more support he will garner because it will be clear to the 90% that the one guy government does not want at the helm is the one guy who wants to tame the bureaucratic beast. And who also happens to be the one guy who lives outside the box of bureaucratic thinking.

On a side note, forget the class warfare BS surrounding the CBO’s math on income distribution:

CBO finds that, between 1979 and 2007, income grew by:

• 275 percent for the top 1 percent of households,
• 65 percent for the next 19 percent,
• Just under 40 percent for the next 60 percent, and
• 18 percent for the bottom 20 percent.

One thing to realize is very few people live their lives in any one level of income. In 1979 I earned a living at the lowest quintile (I was 19 and working a lot of odd jobs and going to college). Today I live in the highest quintile.  Which means I have lived the American dream – as has just about everyone in the DC area and beyond. All this graph shows is my generation (entering their 50′s) is better off than my parents generation was at the same age.

The chart is all good news if you include an age factor. More lying statistics from failed bureaucrats trying to steal you hard earned money.

If a liberal tries to tell you otherwise, realize how poorly robbed the poor sap was of a decent education – and pity the fool.

In World War II the rallying cry was “Remember the Arizona”- to recall the attack on Pearl Harbor and unite in fighting for the survival of the nation and its unique constitutional form of government. It is ironic how the cycle of human history can evolve around something so innocuous as a name.

In 2010, the rallying cry for the elections will be “Remember Arizona”, where the socialist-progressive forces had the 2nd Pyrrhic victory of the year:

A Pyrrhic victory (pronounced /ˈpɪrɪk/) is a victory with devastating cost to the victor; it carries the implication that another such will ultimately cause defeat.

The first Pyrrhic Victory of course was the destruction of our health care system, a system now so cruel that special needs families are being punished with brutal new taxes:

5. The“Special Needs Kids Tax” takes effect Jan. 1, 2013: This provision of Obamacare imposes a cap on flexible spending accounts (FSAs) of $2500 (Currently, there is no federal government limit). There is one group of FSA owners for whom this new cap will be particularly cruel and onerous: parents of special needs children. There are thousands of families with special needs children in the United States, and many of them use FSAs to pay for special needs education. Tuition rates at one leading school that teaches special needs children in Washington, D.C. (National Child Research Center) can easily exceed $14,000 per year. Under tax rules, FSA dollars can be used to pay for this type of special needs education.

This is rationing, plain and simple. These tax hikes are the results of behind the door death-panel deliberations. This is unconscionable, since all the FSA’s do is make sure special needs are taken care of by the family with pre-tax dollars. Uncle Sam has surely become a greedy old miser under the Pelosi-Reid-Obama ‘regime’ if he must steel money from special needs kids.

But the completely bogus and propaganda-riddled court decision on the Arizona immigration law will be universally felt across this nation – and rejected for the lie it is. This is the 2nd Pyrrhic Victory.

We all have seen court shopping, but this incident was ridiculous. The Judge wrote an opinion against something that was not even in front of her, completely irrelevant to the case. She twisted the language of the law to create a myth (apparently the only talent a socialist-progressive has).

In enjoining Arizona’s landmark immigration law, U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton maintains the Obama administration’s carefully cultivated fiction: that what concerns the White House regarding S.B. 1070 is its effect on legal, rather than illegal, aliens. Almost nowhere in the government’s briefs or the judge’s ruling is the arrest and detention of illegal aliens addressed.

…

The only lawful aliens to whom the judge could point who would not necessarily have proof of status “readily available” to them, however (neither the federal government nor the judge asserted that proof of status was “unavailable” to such individuals), were visitors from visa-waiver countries, asylum applicants who have not yet received a green card, victims of certain enumerated crimes such as trafficking who are assisting law enforcement, and women who have petitioned for relief under the Violence Against Women Act. But presumably the lawful status of such aliens would be known to the federal government. If an Arizona officer inquired into those aliens’ immigration status, ICE would tell the officer that the person is authorized to be in the country, ending the investigation.

Andy McCarthy also weighs in:

The Arizona law is completely consistent with federal law. The judge, however, twisted to concept of federal law into federal enforcement practices (or, as it happens, lack thereof). In effect, the court is saying that if the feds refuse to enforce the law the states can’t do it either because doing so would transgress the federal policy of non-enforcement … which is nuts.

The judge also employs a cute bit of sleight-of-hand. She repeatedly invokes a 1941 case, Hines v. Davidowitz, in which the Supreme Court struck down a state alien-registration statute. In Hines, the high court reasoned that the federal government had traditionally followed a policy of not treating aliens as “a thing apart,” and that Congress had therefore “manifested a purpose … to protect the liberties of law-abiding aliens through one uniform national system” that would not unduly subject them to “inquisitorial practices and police surveillance.” But the Arizona law is not directed at law-abiding aliens in order to identify them as foreigners and subject them, on that basis, to police attention. It is directed at arrested aliens who are in custody because they have violated the law. And it is not requiring them to register with the state; it is requiring proof that they have properly registered with the federal government — something a sensible federal government would want to encourage.

The decision makes no sense at all. Does that mean state law enforcement cannot participate in any aspect of federal law? Both states and the federal government have gun laws. In VA we use the federal gun law as a way to send violent criminals to jail for a minimum sentence. It is up to the state to determine the use of the federal gun law, and append its penalties to any parallel state laws. How about when states modify social security or medicare laws, or interpret education laws?

Whoever this ‘judge’ is she is beyond activist – she’s seeing things. As McCarthy notes, the answer for Americans is simple:

The upshot of it is to tell Americans that if they want the immigration laws enforced, they are going to need a president willing to do it, a Congress willing to make clear that the federal government has no interest in preempting state enforcement, and the selection of judges who will not invent novel legal theories to frustrate enforcement. They are not going to get that from the Obama/Reid/Pelosi Democrats.

You can be a fan of the ridiculous concept of deporting or chasing all illegals from the country and this decision of course bothers the heck out of you. No doubt these people will be lining up out the door to vote in November.

But you can also be a fan of the more realistic Bush-Kyle-McCain approach of setting up a process to document migrant workers, limit their time here, throw out the violent criminals for life if they commit a single violent crime (after doing their time of course) and for long term illegals to be provided a one-time option to pay back taxes and penalties and become legally documented – and this act also bothers the heck out of you. Because no matter what, we cannot have open borders and lawlessness. There are only a few doe-eyed liberal know-nothings who believe in complete anarchy along our borders.

If there are no laws, or the laws are gleefully ignored on a select basis by the nut jobs who are in power in DC, then we don’t have a constitutional government for the people and by the people. We would have become vassals to imperial Lords & Lady’s who do as they please and demand we pay for their luxuries, greed and debauchery (i.e., taxes).

Arizona is rapidly being stripped of its American roots, becoming more a way-station for the destitute to migrate to the point where they will be abused by greedy employers, renters, insurance agents, check cashers – and yes pols who want votes so they can stay suckled to the government till. The violence and destruction of this wave of humanity is blatantly obvious, requiring even the federal government to put up warning signs to keep Americans out of now dangerous areas of America.

Without laws America is gone – and this is a simple and basic set of laws we are dealing with here. You have to be in this country legally to live and work here, not to mention suck off the government services. So here we sit in 2010, with a rallying cry to save our unique constitutional government that has echoed through the decades of our history from a different kind of battle. We will still “Remember Arizona“, as we line up in November to save this wonderful and unique shining city on the hill.

For example, Team Obama and the liberals in DC keep trying to find a way to silence critics on the internet and control free speech. While the compliant news media is all tingly in the legs over Obama’s irrational policies, the internet and a few real journalists are threatened with boycotts and censorship when they lodge objections. How is this different from the 1930′s equivalent of book burning?

Goebbels rose to power in 1933 along with Hitler and the Nazi Party and he was appointed Propaganda Minister. One of his first acts was the burning of books rejected by the Nazis. He exerted totalitarian control over the media, arts and information in Germany.

The internet is the modern day, electronic version of books containing historic knowledge and wisdom. It is also at times nothing more than a comic book.

The lack of ability for Team Obama to assume overt control as Goebbels did does not mean the desire and effort are not being applied! What about the Fox News ban to the White House Press corps in 2009? What about the proposal by Team Obama for controls on the Internet? I loved this string of pretzel logic:

“A system of limitless individual choices, with respect to communications, is not necessarily in the interest of citizenship and self-government,” he wrote. “Democratic efforts to reduce the resulting problems ought not be rejected in freedom’s name.”

You don’t get much more Goebbels like than that! Or can you?

Goebbels was famous for instituting Hitler’s “Big Lie“ – something so audaciously wrong people hesitated to react:

The Big Lie (German: Große Lüge) is a propaganda technique. The expression was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, for a lie so “colossal” that no one would believe that someone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”

All this was inspired by the principle–which is quite true within itself–that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. - Adolf Hitler

Remember, not all insight and wisdom comes from evil, but it can be used by evil. This Big Lie theory is probably a very valid observation, given all the fringe conspiracy theories that run from the truthers to the birthers. In fact, Nazis made huge leaps in science, math and engineering – all valid. They just twisted this knowledge to evil purposes. They twisted this knowledge to THEIR purposes.

If you feel your cause is righteous (like you need to save the planet or something dramatic) you can rationalize using any tactic, especially if you do not know how that bright idea of yours was used and abused in the past.

So the Big Lie is a method to trick the general public into following the wrong path – based on establishing false premises. Was the Stimulus Bill a Big Lie? It did nothing for the unemployed at large, but it did shovel tons of money to state and federal jobs, which coincidentally filled the coffers of public employee unions. All purely accidental I am sure.

Was the health care bill a Big Lie? It could have been since most people were covered with top rate insurance, but will now trade that in for crappy government plans on the false promises this will reduce cost while covering everyone. And of course all this will come to pass without death panels limiting care to those who need to get on with shuffling off their mortal coils.

What is becoming evident with Team Obama is they employ the Big Lie all the time. And they will emphasize it with inaction in the face of critical issues, as a way to inflate the lie to sufficient size. Take immigration reform and the Arizona crisis with rising violent crime. It has been recently exposed by  US Senator (no less) that the President Obama has allowed the situation in Arizona to deteriorate so he could apply the Big Lie:

On June 18, 2010, Arizona Republican Senator Jon Kyl told the audience at a North Tempe Tea Party town hall meeting that during a private, one-on-one meeting with President Obama in the Oval Office, the President told him, regarding securing the southern border with Mexico, “The problem is, . . . if we secure the border, then you all won’t have any reason to support ‘comprehensive immigration reform.’” [Audible gasps were heard throughout the audience.] Sen. Kyl continued, “In other words, they’re holding it hostage. They don’t want to secure the border unless and until it is combined with ‘comprehensive immigration reform.’”

Well, this explains why Team Obama wants to sue Arizona for instituting a law identical to federal laws now on the books. If Arizona FIXES their problem then Obama’s Big Lie disappears. And remember how Goebbels had a compliant press that distributed the Big Lie? We have that in this situation here as well. Tom Maguire has highlighted some serious falsehoods promulgated by Team Obama and the New York Times regarding the rise of crime near the border. No wonder a free internet is so bad for government run journalism.

This is the Obama Modus Operandi and is being applied to the Gulf Oil Spill as well. Was it incompetence that delayed the government action – or was it something else? Here I verge on the brink of conspiracy theory myself, so  I will not draw conclusions but draw attention to some disturbing facts.

First, Team Obama literally forged a scientific consensus on their crazy decision to close down all off shore oil drilling for 6 months. A decision that will stop Gulf oil production for years and expose us to more risks as wells are shutdown and the best rigs and people move to other regions of the world. The government outright lied, and was called on it by the scientists whose names had been used on the forgery:

Ken Arnold, an engineer and consultant, said the changes went beyond just the drilling moratorium. The Interior draft he looked at included timelines for each safety recommendation. The “bulk” of those recommendations, he explained, were all ones that could be done within 30 days. And most of the longer-term provisions would result in only “marginal increases in safety.”

Yet when the final report came out, the timelines he saw had been removed, no doubt because they argued against the necessity of a six-month moratorium. Mr. Arnold adds that the Administration’s decision to allow industry to continue drilling “gas injection wells”—which, he says, are no more risky than production wells—only shows the moratorium makes “no sense.”

Who could be so crass as to take a crisis like this and exploit it thusly? Well, why do we have a crisis like this? The oil could have been burned off at the site of the explosion – it did not need to travel to all the coastal regions. But that option (along with chemical dispersement) was derailed by our government. The oil could have been sucked up by a flotilla  of international ships, avoiding the damage to wetlands, wildlife and summer vacation plans. Except those ships were held at bay by the government. The oil could have been contained with booms, blocked by sand bars, etc. All efforts blocked by the government. The crisis became epic due to a series of strange acts of inaction. How ironic.

Was it orchestrated this way? Well what does this story tell you?

The panel appointed by President Barack Obama to investigate the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is short on technical expertise but long on talking publicly about “America’s addiction to oil.” One member has blogged about it regularly.

…

Environmental activist Frances Beinecke on May 27 blogged: “We can blame BP for the disaster and we should. We can blame lack of adequate government oversight for the disaster and we should. But in the end, we also must place the blame where it originated: America’s addiction to oil.” And on June 3, May 27, May 22, May 18, May 4, she called for bans on drilling offshore and the Arctic.

“Even as questions persist, there is one thing I know for certain: the Gulf oil spill isn’t just an accident. It’s the result of a failed energy policy,” Beinecke wrote on May 20.

Two other commissioners also have gone public to urge bans on drilling.

A panel instituted to INVESTIGATE the spill is stacked with liberal policy spouters and one or two people technically capable of grasping the basic physical forces and engineering being applied to the problem? It would seem from this bit of evidence the plan all along was to bolster the Big Lie (i.e., we need to halt use of oil, no matter what the cost).

And don’t think this approach is limited to the White House. Speaker Pelosi recently exposed her part in the health care big lie as she decided to let Medicare patients and doctors suffer to get her liberal agenda through.

These people are not leaders, they are liars. They create crisis so they can lie about the cures they propose. Cures to end the free market system of America – not to do anything about their Big Lies.

This time, the comparison looks to be valid – Goebbels would be proud.

Sorry for the light posting again – on travel for a couple of weeks.

It has not been hard to understand how to manage migrant or guest workers in the US. It has just been a lack of political will and reasonableness. Those willing to do what it takes to work here will follow the processes, those who don’t shouldn’t be here. I still support the comprehensive immigration reform package that Bush, McCain and Kyle pushed. But it seems AZ has developed its own path forward, with a surprising and rewarding result:

Many of the cars that once stopped in the Home Depot parking lot to pick up day laborers to hang drywall or do landscaping now just drive on by.
Arizona’s sweeping immigration bill allows police to arrest illegal immigrant day laborers seeking work on the street or anyone trying to hire them. It won’t take effect until summer but it is already having an effect on the state’s underground economy.
“Nobody wants to pick us up,” Julio Loyola Diaz says in Spanish as he and dozens of other men wait under the shade of palo verde trees and lean against a low brick wall outside the east Phoenix home improvement store.
Many day laborers like Diaz say they will leave Arizona because of the law, which also makes it a state crime to be in the U.S. illegally and directs police to question people about their immigration status if there is reason to suspect they are illegal immigrants.

This is the opposite tact my home of Herndon, VA took – which was one of the first flash points in the immigration discussions. The town tried to set up a place for day workers to congregate and meet potential day employers. It worked – for a long time the workers were not milling around the downtown 7-11 causing havoc.

But then the town had to close down the day worker center, and guess what – the day workers are back downtown.

I would not be surprised to see all the border states start to consider this kind of step, given the incredible burden on our government resources the illegal (non tax paying) workers and their families are in these tight budgetary times. I think VA should seriously look at this option. Whatever it takes to turn our streets back to centers of commerce and leisure, instead of an endless unemployment line.

Case closed.

In broad outlines, officials said, the Obama administration favors legislation that would bring illegal immigrants into the legal system by recognizing that they violated the law, and imposing fines and other penalties to fit the offense. The legislation would seek to prevent future illegal immigration by strengthening border enforcement and cracking down on employers who hire illegal immigrants, while creating a national system for verifying the legal immigration status of new workers.

Hopefully the great work outlined in the 2007 bill, such as one-strike-you’re-out, can be retained. But as I predicted would happen, this is the end result of the scorched-Earth disaster the far right inflicted on the GOP Congress in 2006 and President Bush in 2007, sowing the seeds of a huge migration of culturally conservative Hispanics from the GOP column into the Democrat column.

Some of my 2006 Predictions. First this on from June 15th, 2006:

David Broder points out the path the Republican hard line is on with their ‘make illegal workers felons’ nonsense.  He reminds us of the last time the Rightwing went obsessive and equated people who are trying to make a living and feed-house-raise a family to rapists, murderes and thieves.  They took the largest state in the country and turned it from Reagan Red to Moonbat Blue nearly over night.

…

The immigration problem is worse now, and more of a drain than before – but the hardline solutions will only make it much, much worse.  The amount of money it will take to round up and prosecute all the workers is staggering.  The draining of our security forces to focus on workers and not terrorists will expose us, and the political fall out will be fierce.

The far right is playing with the one issue that can totally reverse all their accomplishments in one fell swoop.  … Never a party to stop while they are behind, it seems we could see a similar effect this year.  It will be sad to see.  We will lose the tax cuts, the drive to protect this nation with dilligence and perseverence, we will see the funding of fetus farms for stem cells, we will see abortion on demand in our school clinics…

Nailed that one, sadly. Here is another one from June 15th, 2006:

This confirms the 80-20% problem the hardliners face. Making illegal immigration a felony with deportation the punishment is opposed by 80% of the country. So, are we going to let this problem fester because the 20% cannot get all they want? That’s up to the 20%. What they need to understand is they may be standing by themselves next fall when the conservative coalition fractures over their intractability.

The coalition did fracture and the GOP lost Congress later that year. Fast forward, and here are my comments from June 6th 2007:

It looks like the Immigration Hypochondriacs might just make permanent the current amnesty program of useless laws and inflexible idealogues which has allowed the situation to be created in the first place. Most people do not understand the stakes. Those that do, don’t care. If the Immigration bill fails to pass, that will end the conservative revolution. It will have officially run its course.

…

Oh, but the self destruction brought on by the immigration hypochondriacs does not end there. Not only do they keep all that they ranted and raged against for years in place, they totally neuter the only national GOP force left in the country: Bush. There will be no new tax cut legislation now. Way to go dysfunctional GOP! There will be no more efforts to protect and respect human life. And so on. That is the end result of this, no more conservative agenda. If Bush fails on this bill he becomes a lame duck President and nothing passes. This is the short sightedness of the far right. If they cannot get what they want – no one gets anything.

Yep, I nailed that one too. Here are some more premonitions from June 9th, 2007:

With the immigration hypochondriac spew about how un-American it is to provide a path to legal status here for illegal workers, by paying fines and back taxes and staying away from crime, they have sent a signal to the Hispanic population – both immigrant and recent citizens. A signal that is unmistakable because the rhetoric from the right is seen as condoning a second hand status to America’s recent immigrants. I don’t care what the so called intentions are of the immigration hypochondriacs, I see the results. I see legal and illegal violent immigrants left on the street (and about the excuse “oh they weren’t going to be picked up anyway” – they will under current law???). I see the largest minority voting block reacting – and moving towards the Democrats.  

So let’s recap on how the heros of America fixed things up here. They left all these criminals on the street, they called Bush a traitor, and they chased the largest growing block of voters to the Democrat side. Not to mention losing a lot of conservative independents who will not jump off the cliff with them. And I get the feeling these folks are just getting started!

This one from September of 2007th was in the midst of the Dems eating crow over The Surge success as Iraq started turning around:

But the GOP, by letting hotter heads control the topic, have not and will not be able to take advantage of the Democrats mistakes because they have made their own mistakes and in a critical area that is pivotal to winning elections.

…

These kinds of numbers portend an even bigger bloodbath for the GOP than they saw in 2006. One just needs to look at the polls leading up to the 2006 election to see the writing on the wall. The GOP is not gaining support because they are seen as more as dangerous or wrong for this country than the Dems. Otherwise they would be seeing a benefit from the Dems debacle. Michael Gerson notes in WaPo where the shift has come, and it comes from two groups reacting to the same issue. The shift is from moderate conservatives (which means people like me) and the hispanic community – which can move 5-10% of the vote away from the GOP in a flash

And it was a bloodbath. So now President Obama and the Democrats will likely pass the same general bill President Bush and those nasty moderates attempted to pass twice. And they will get the political boost the GOP should have gotten if its ‘principles’ weren’t so far out in the fringes.

Not only will the Hypochondriacs lose on this issue, they will have destroyed the conservative movement and all its gains since Reagan. That is political FUBAR in anyone’s book. Folks can find all my posts over the years on this matter here.

Addendum: I meant to note some other harsh realities, some good and some bad. The good news is the Amnesty Hypochondriacs are going to experience their full impotency. There never has been a ground swell of resistance to the general elements of the comprehensive immigration bills of 2006 and 2007. They cannot threaten the minority with further irrelevance. America is not against law abiding immigrants, especially those here for many years and integrated into their communities

The bad news is the moderates who wanted reasonable controls are also not at the table. America wants something done with the violent and criminal elements (not the misdemeanor violations of working without proper papers). Without the ‘moderate’ conservative influence we may get a solution that is too lenient on these hard core criminals. The Dems have the margins to reject anything the GOP proposes right. Baby and bath water have now been tossed out, and we have what we have.

Stretched thin in Afghanistan and Iraq, the American military will begin recruiting skilled immigrants who are living in this country with temporary visas, offering them the chance to become United States citizens in as little as six months.

Immigrants who are permanent residents, with documents commonly known as green cards, have long been eligible to enlist. But the new effort, for the first time since the Vietnam War, will open the armed forces to temporary immigrants if they have lived in the United States for a minimum of two years, according to military officials familiar with the plan.

Many in the Republican Party are addicted to the divisive practice of exploiting nativist fears to scare up votes. 
As with any addiction, the first step to kicking it is to admit you have a problem and ask for help.

…

The nation’s 46 million Hispanics are America’s largest minority, and they’re on track to represent one in four Americans by 2042. Every two years, another 1 million Hispanics join the voter rolls. Two-thirds of Hispanics voted for Barack Obama. Political experts say that, if Republicans don’t stop hemorrhaging Hispanic support, they might never win another presidential election. Period.

..

Specifically, there are five things that Republicans did which cost them Hispanic support.

• They made language and culture the issue rather than illegality, which irked U.S.-born Hispanics who might otherwise have stayed out of the fray;
• They didn’t condemn the racism in their ranks on the part of those who believe that Hispanic immigrants are inferior to the immigrants of old;
• They let the debate digress from one that was anti-illegal immigration to one that was anti-immigrant to, finally, one that was anti-Hispanic;
• They fell into the trap of offering simple solutions to what remains a complicated problem



; and
• They either assumed that Hispanics were not in play or that they could win some of those votes on the cheap with a spattering of Spanish ads.

The fact is there is a group inside the GOP chasing away groups of naturally conservative voters by their extreme tactics and commentary. The only good news is that the Dems are not taking real advantage of the GOP’s blunders:

f there is one message President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team has broadcast about Cabinet picks, it is that ethnicity and gender will not be the first considerations when filling the slots. 

Credentials over tokenism, after all, was a fundamental principle of Obama’s presidential campaign that highlighted his ideas and community values over his African-American background. Still, if all goes as planned, Cabinet members with hefty résumés will present a picture of diversity. 

Hispanic political leaders agree. Their expectations for seats at the president’s top policy table are not about meeting quotas but about advancing the reality that within this fastest-growing ethnic group are seasoned policy experts who understand the economic, foreign and domestic policy concerns shared by everyone. 

Obama promised hope and change, and Hispanics hoped for the usual two Latinos in the Cabinet. And heck, why not three or four? Now that would be a change. 

But at this early stage in the appointments process, there is a trickle of disappointment running through the Latino community. 

The GOP needs to squash the voices calling for over-the-top responses to immigration. They need to put and end to the lies I have been hearing to this day (such as President Bush did nothing about our borders during his 8 years). We don’t need inaccurate hyperventilating tinged with hefty dose of snobbery to win elections. In fact, we need just the opposite.

Their promise was we didn’t need any new laws to fix the problem. It was a out and out lie of course. The far right zealots just did not want to deal with those long term illegals who had set up roots here over many years to get off with hefty fines and paying back taxes with interest (which was a more than reasonable punishment for a misdemeanor paper filing crime). They claimed there were problems at the border, but of course the border has nothing to do with ‘amnesty’. They claimed all sorts of irrelevant imperfections (like Congress ever produces perfection??). So they tanked the reasonable compromise and destroyed the GOP in the process. It was at this time, on this subject, the nativist went crazy and started to really attack moderate conservatives in viscous ways. It was, as I said, disgusting.

But the far left is no better, and in fact probably worse. They want to just give everyone here US Citizenship so they can refill their base with new voters. They don’t care how big a drain these non-tax paying people drain our government and limit services that should be going to tax paying residents (including legal immigrants). They want to break laws so they can control the legislature. It would have been a huge defeat for the left if the comprehensive immigration bill had passed. It would be the end of real ‘amnesty’, where people get short cuts to US Citizenship for illegal acts.

As a reminder here is what would have been in place if the far right had not gone crazy in their extremism:

1. All illegal aliens would have to register with the government, use a tamper proof ID (not some drivers license) and be limited to 2 three-year stints as a migrant worker.
2. The borders would be strengthened (they have been).
3. No one caught entering illegally would be allowed in, they would be turned back (Bush instituted this policy which made last year the last year any illegal entrant who was caught at the border could still enter).
4. Stiff fines and clear responsibilities on companies and individuals who hired migrant workers to play by the rules and collect taxes.
5. A ‘start over’ period for illegal immigrants here for more than 2-3 years (no new arrivals would qualify) who had to pass a criminal background check, pay a fine and all back taxes, use the immigrant worker ID and tracking process before they were allowed to stay and begin their time towards US citizenship if they so desired. EIther that or they had the same 6 years before they would have to leave.
6. One strike and your out rule: any immigrant (legal or illegal – this is very important) who committed a felony or violent crime would be banned from this country forever. Where they would serve time was being debated, but the fact is anyone who violated our trust in such a manner would be booted, never to come back. 

Of course none of these common sense steps forward are reality today. None. Instead, as I predicted, the chance for real immigration reform is slipping farther and farther away as the extreme backlash from the far left starts to build – a backlash that was a response to extreme positions from the far right in the first place. Here in my home state of Virginia we are rapidly losing ground on immigration to this liberal backlash:

Virginia, known for some of the nation’s toughest policies on illegal immigration, appears to be abandoning its hard-line approach as state officials consider proposals to help foreign-born residents assimilate, including increasing the number of English classes.

In the coming weeks, the Virginia Commission on Immigration will send Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) two dozen recommendations, most of which would help immigrants instead of penalizing them.

Those on both sides of the issue say interest in immigration has waned because of the growing economic crisis, a clearer understanding of the state’s limitations on a largely federal issue and backlash at the voting booth.

“I think some reality set in,” said state Sen. John C. Watkins (R-Chesterfield), the group’s chairman.

Recommendations include shortening the Medicaid residency requirements for certain qualified immigrants, offering in-state tuition to immigrants who meet specific criteria and creating an immigration assistance office.

Remember when the far right called the immigration bill a ‘shamnesty’? Well, this is the product of their efforts. They gleefully cheered the demise of the comprehensive immigration bill claiming it would be much better without it. How may conservatives feel like thanking the far right for this result? Not me.

People don’t see the subtleties of history while they are living through it. They react to the ‘now’ – it’s the way our brains our naturally wired. We sample a variety of signals and respond. Our intellect provides us options to step back from this input/react wiring, but at times we forget to switch it full on. The far right became obsessed with silly buzz words like ‘amnesty’ and ‘breaking the law’, as if the government should be allowed to kick you out of house, job and the country for not licensing your vehicle, or keeping it insured.

And in response to their historic failure, we now have the far left in charge and they are trying to find ways to assimilate more aliens. They are trying to find ways to spend more tax payer dollars on people who do not pay taxes! It is a circus of the absurd, clowns to the left and clowns to the right.

I will seriously miss President George Bush, who appears to be the last good leader we will see for sometime. He led on national progress, not for ideology, fame or votes. He found compromises that would move the nation one more step to the right – which is how you do it in democracies. You don’t play dictator and force everyone to conform. I will miss his wisdom, which will be all the more painful given all the reminders of less sane heads that now surround us and lead the national debates.

The conservative senator, speaking to a group of GOP officials gathered in Myrtle Beach at a conference on the future of the Republican Party, described how the party had strayed from its own “brand,” which, according to DeMint, should represent freedom, religious-based values and limited government.

“We have to be honest, and there’s a lot of blame to go around, but I have to mention George Bush, and I have to mention Ted Stevens, and I’m afraid I even have to mention John McCain,” he said.

Earth to DeTwit – McCain beat all the ‘pure conservatives’ in the primaries because ‘pure conservatives’ are political poison. Stevens is the only person who deserves to be on this list, but DeMint gets honorable mention for adding to the internal wars and further fracturing the conservative movement and pushing more people out of it than attracting in. It is not lack of agreement on the ‘challenges’ or ‘goals’ (e.g., ‘smaller government’) that have destroyed the conservative coalition, it is the extreme proposals for these goals by purists over the years which have peeled away one issue related group after another.

Let’s back up a second and just get back to first principles of democratic governance. Supporting reasonable diversity of opinion regarding ‘how’ to address a generally accepted ‘challenge’ provides for creating governing coalitions (e.g., ‘how’ to deal with ‘illegal immigration’). When people strive too far into extreme versions of ‘how’ then the larger group of people who agree on the ‘challenge’ fracture into two or more groups. There is infighting and the extreme views of some push many of those who agreed on the ‘challenge’ to conclude the remedies are too toxic or risky to do anything about and they move to the opposing political camp.

George Bush has done NOTHING against conservatives accept deal with the reality that the nation is not far right and does not buy into the far right’s prescriptions for ‘how’ to deal with ‘challenges’. He has to get laws passed through Congress, and that means compromise on the ‘how’.  Success is moving the nation stepwise towards the grander ‘how’ envisioned by some as the ultimate goal.  They key here is movement at a pace the nation will accept and support.

Conservatives became impatient even when Bush was leading a nation through war and to the right. their impatience bloomed when Bush was not giving in to their demands as fast as they wanted. Talk about self absorbed. And for the sin of dealing with reality, the ‘true’ conservatives turned on our nation’s leader and their party’s leader. Which said all anyone needed to know about ‘true’ conservatives, their honor code, their connection to reality, their understanding of what it takes to govern America in the 21st century. If you want to repulse people turn on your allies because you are greedy to have your way now. That is a reputation killer any day of the week.

For example, let me pose a serious question to DeTwit: Since I am not personally tied to any religion I have attained my views on the sanctity of life through a broader sense of spirituality and from science itself, which dictates when life begins and allows us to use the engine of evolution to legally determine an embryo or fetus is not ‘part of the mother’ or simply a ‘clump of cells’. DeTwit claims the GOP is for religion-based values, but I attained my values and views through science and knowledge of the law. My approach has broader appeal and can be accepted by those more tied to science than scripture, and has the benefit of reams of legal precedence regarding DNA testing in trials. My approach happens to validate the views of many who, through faith, also believe in sanctity of life and why it is wrong to kill embryos for spare parts.

So, am I ‘pure’ enough because I use science and law to make an iron clad case against destroying embryos – which happens to validate those religion-based values? Will the DeTwits of the world continue their useless battle against evolution as proven science, as solid as the science that dictates the laws of motion and satellites, planets, etc? Will people armed with a high school level grasp of science continue to demean and challenge those of us who spent years learning about the truth of God’s Creation in amazing detail? This is why the conservative movement is totally busted. I am not a ‘true’ conservative and my efforts to support the right to life efforts is usually met with dazed looks and condescension.

Let me pick up on Immigration Reform again as it is my favorite topic to bash ‘true’ conservatives with. I was listening yesterday to AM Talk Radio (rarely do that at all now, given the dominance of ‘true’ conservatives lamenting the end of the world) and a caller called in with an interesting idea on comprehensive illegal immigration reform.

Now before the purists start going off in the comment sections here, the fact is illegal immigration reform is completely out of reach for years if not decades, accept the liberal blanket amnesty kind that could pass this Congress and get signed by the new President. All those who used scream ‘amnesty bill’ are about to see what a real one looks like. And remember, this is what you all wanted when you torpedoed the McCain-Bush proposal twice. This is what you wanted, and this is all your doing. So don’t whine to me about illegals. The next three years are what you wrought when you tanked the best option conservatives realistically had to make a difference in a quarter of a century. (Note the emphasis on the word ‘realistically’).

Anyway, the point of recalling this call was the sincerity of the caller to find a solution, and the idiocy of the ‘true’ conservative host in response. Again, it illustrates what is wrong with the right and why, even if the Dems do screw up like the did in the last Congress, the conservative movement has little hope of leveraging anything off their screw ups.

The caller was exploring higher income tax rates for migrant workers, especially those who are the long term ‘illegals’ which would transfer into a new migrant worker program. The idea was interesting and I realized we would have to do something to the tax code since most low-end migrant worker jobs are well into that class of incomes where people pay no federal taxes. I could see completely eliminating this loophole for transient workers (i.e., non US Citizens) since they need to pay into the government services they and their families will utilize while here (and possibly waiting for US citizenship). It was an interesting topic on how to make sure immigrant workers pay their share of the load.

The AM Talk Radio host was able to spew back a couple of pure myths before I had to change the channel. For example: Millions of illegals are still poring across our borders.

Not true. Since Bush has been President the border has been strengthened in a variety of ways, and last year was the first year the US did not allow a single illegal caught crossing to just come on in after promising to meet their court date hearing. Last year, and since, all illegals caught at the border are turned back. None come in. Bush did this and it is a major change in our border policy. One I am sure Obama will be overturning.

And then the ‘True’ Conservative said another dumb thing: Why not have them leave and then come back in?

Clearly, this person thinks in terms of cartoon TV level concepts. Simple minded solutions many times come from simple minds. Right now our economy is teetering and we cannot afford any large government programs. To make sure all illegal immigrants ‘went home’ would cost 100′s of billions of dollars. To process them back in would cost 100′s of billions of dollars. And the worker shortage would drive food and other basic product costs out the roof. All this over a some misdemeanors (recall, illegal immigration is not a felony in this country). The stupidity of this concept is just jaw dropping astonishing. 20 million illegals to hunt down, deport, and then check back in simply to let some on the far right get some masochistic sense of punishment is truly a waste of my tax dollars.

Illegal immigration is a paperwork and fee related crime. It is not much different from not carrying insurance on a car in a state that requires it, not paying your taxes on time. Misdemeanor crimes have punishments that usually involve fees and financial restitution (with interest). Conversely, very few crimes require you to give up your house and job. Those that result in that kind of impact result from a stint in jail.

When the ‘true’ conservatives went on the ‘deport them’ screed the damage was done to the GOP brand. When people soil their images to such a stark and pungent degree it can take years to correct, and sometimes never gets fixed. The problem with the conservative movement is it repulses more people than it attracts. This is one of many cases where they became too ugly to bear. Look at what a ‘true’ conservative stands for:

1. Somehow removing all illegal aliens from the country and putting up massive barriers along our borders. Conveys a nice, warm and friendly view of that city on the Hill? More like a gated community of snobs who cannot be bothered by ‘the masses’.
2. Opposition to giving senior citizens in poverty or on the edge of poverty a prescription drug benefit through Medicare/Medicaid, a program that reduces the cost of these programs because it removes the need to go to emergency rooms for basic medications. Those mean old Scrooges on the right will try to keep medicine from the sick and poor! Where is the shining city on the hill in this?
3. Opposition to education reform and a desire to pull their kids out of the public school system. I think it is OK to want better than the public school system can provide for kids (we all do). But to also oppose corrective action on those public schools is a step too far. It again looks like those with money are trying to dump those struggling and run to their enclaves. We are a community which does need to fix problems, not hide in gated communities and private schools.
4. Bush did not want the war against al-Qaeda to be a war against Muslims or Arabs, but then the ‘true’ right went on a purely religious and race based attack against a company from a moderate allied Arab-Muslim nation that was buying into some of our port operations here in the US. Even worse than the racist and religious bigotry behind the panic was the fact those screaming ‘fire’ were not listening to what was in the deal for national security. The deal included the Arab company paying for and installing Cargo sensor systems in all their international ports that would be feeding products into our port. It was a disaster for the GOP and conservatism.
5. The ‘true’ conservatives still moan on and on about the statesman focused process McCain and Lieberman and 12 other Senators used to avoid constitutional showdowns with Bush’s judicial appointees. A very small number of appointees were not able to get on the bench, but conversely there was no repeat of the Bork or Thomas fiascos. Anyone still holding a grudge against the Gang of 14 is out of sync with America. We don’t want FL-2000-like confrontations. We don’t want to see people Borked. I sometimes feel the ‘true’ conservatives are simply jealous about the moderates who pulled off a solution that avoided endless litigation.
6. Harriet Miers was the poster child for moderates and ex-democrats to leave the party. She was inside Bush’s inner circle and someone he knew very well. She was an ex-democrat – like Reagan and many other leaders of the GOP in the 80′s and 90′s until the purity wars erupted. Harriet Miers illustrated how a few extreme (and in the case of David Frum vengeance driven) conservatives would tear down the impure moderates if they tried to attain leadership or positions of power. It was the universal signal to RINOS and Quislings that the GOP umbrella was shrinking and only the pure need apply.

As another example from this year’s election look at the circus of the Minnesota Senate race. I can see, just as everyone else can, how the Dems are trying to steal the election there. But the big question is how could the GOP brand be so screwed up that an honorable man like Norm Coleman (and recent GOP convert from a Democrat) could even be challenged by a screw up (screw lose) like Al Franken? How did Obama the neophyte beat McCain the wise man of the middle? How is Coleman the moderate in a fight with a TV Clown?

Let me be clear here on what is happening (and I would love to see polls to ponder this question). If McCain was a Democrat would he have won? If Coleman was a Democrat would he be safely still in office? This is a REALLY important question right now for the GOP. I suspect the answer to both is yes, which is why moderate conservatives are going Blue-Dog instead of RINO (note the respect one moniker has while the other is demeaning) and giving the Dems governing coalitions.

If an individual conservative wants to make a difference, and the voters are repulsed by the ‘true’ conservatives, and the ‘true’ conservatives are attacking other conservatives for not being ‘pure’, the answer is easy. Become a Blue-Dog and have the opportunity to make a difference.

‘True’ Conservatives are ironically proving how right Darwin was. They are not capable of adapting or being flexible enough to succeed, they are not demonstrating to the general population traits that will lead to the population’s success and are therefore being shunned and held back from success. They are showing why evolution is a force to understand and exist with, just like gravity. If you jump of a building in a refusal to accept the force of gravity you are no different than someone who continues down a path that produces more and more failures. The path to death and oblivion is just longer.

The ‘true’ conservatives’ drive to purity is now clearly rejected in ways that could ensure their extinction. Purity is not a force of survival and growth, it is just the opposite. Adaptation is the path to success and long life for your family, their offspring and your values that you instill in them down through time. Me, I am just an observer watching it all play out as it has many times before in our history. Those who went extinct never thought their solution to survival and growth would be the one to fall to the wayside. They never do.

I can point at some top issues like comprehensive immigration reform which took away a key voting block – Hispanics – when the far right trashed reasonable proposals on border security, temporary work programs, and a long path to citizenship (with back taxes due) for long term illegals. The emotional nativism which leapt out of the far right shocked many allies, no doubt since the initial salvo was a insane call for mass roundup and deportation. From then on the far right was (in my opinion rightfully) seen as nativist trying to find a way to force (either through laws or economic pressures) immigrants out of the nation.

It is no surprise McCain did not get the Hispanic vote – the GOP is not trusted or liked in that community now and McCain cannot honestly claim the nativist of the far right are any less strident in their ’cause’. When someone snidely calls immigration reform ‘amnesty’ (which is also legally wrong – since being an illegal alien is not a felony and therefore should only be punished by a fine and financial restitution) their words are being translated into the image of the mad conservative calling for mass deportation at gun point. People are not stupid, they saw McCain lose big time to the nativists. They know how his party can feel in some corners.

But let me also point to another problem that infected the conservative movement and repulsed a lot of people – the useless and idiotic fight against evolution. When Creationism hit the scene a lot of people where wondering whether conservatism was some sort of cult like Scientology. Intelligent Design I guess was an attempt to back pedal, but the flaw is not in believing in God, the flaw is trying to claim evolution is wrong. It isn’t wrong, it is proven science – just like it is now proven science that the Earth orbits the Sun and not the other way around. A lot of good people were punished and died bringing that little gem of reality to an overly religious human race.

Science does not preclude the hand of God in the secrets of existence that science mines as ‘discoveries’. The same science of evolution and DNA that the right rails against is the one that proves without any doubt that life begins at conception and should be cherished and protected. The same DNA tests used in courts across this country to prove innocence or guilt will show that a human embryo is not part of the mother or father, but that it is a unique human being which, left to explore its own life path, will most likely follow the normal life cycle of embryo, fetus, baby, toddler, child, teenager, etc. Why some people, who would barely pass High School Biology, feel the need to attack evolution as proof of their God is beyond me. But evolution is THE science, with established law, which could end the attempt to harvest these young humans for spare parts.

I come to my respect of life from a Christian beginning, but it’s foundation is secured within the proven facts of science. My respect for life extends beyond just human beings to every creature on this planet. Gaining my BS in Biology normally required sacrificing a lot of animals to classroom exercises, necessary to train the next generation of scientists and doctors. I fought this whenever it was used to emphasize some point in the text. I did not need to sacrifice some animal every day for a week to see how digestion works, I could figure it out.

But I do know life must be sacrificed for medical progress to be made. And one of my biggest arguments with Embryonic Stem Cell Research (besides the fact it is mathematically a millions times harder to achieve success than going the adult stem cell paths – which has been born out by the myriad of therapies out from adult stem cells while nothing has been produced from research on embryonic stem cells) is the fact that there is/was a rule in research to never go to human trials before a procedure was proven in animals.

Everything that needs to be learned to ever hope to unlock some therapies from embryonic stem cells can be worked out on Chimpanzee and other primate embryos first. Why this simple and well established rule of biological and medical research is being bypassed had me confounded until I realized the inability to trademark and profit from human DNA does not apply to embryos, since they are not legally considered ‘human beings’ yet. Greed to make profits has once again led people to kill other humans, history repeats.

The fact is embryonic research should be limited to primate research until the proponents can show they can control the genetic code and translations required to transform the cells into a therapy (right now they produce chaos and cancers). Therapies proven in primates should be the gate prior to destroying human beings. Adult stem cell research doesn’t destroy the human being who provides the stem cells (which include skin, cells found in bone marrow and umbilical cord blood).  People need to peruse my posts on this subject to see the broad range of adult stem therapies now in progress. And people need to know that right now there is no need to harvest embryos at all for stem cells since adult stem cells (skin cells) can now produce unlimited supplies!

Evolution is the science that will provide a legal basis to ban embryonic stem cells. It is also the science that will convince most science novices that embryos are human beings at conception. It should be the area of science pro-life folks should be heralding in their fight to stop the Democrats from overturning Bush’s ban on this insane act which is akin to the ‘experiments’ the Nazis did on the Jews.

We are still too much animal and not enough higher being to see what we are doing and use the tools we created to stop ourselves from exploiting the youngest among us to prolong our own lives. Can conservatism regain mainstream support? Can conservatism end its fight against science and evolution to do what is right and save the life of young human beings? Are these actually the same question?

It is for conservatives to chose as a political entity. I know which is right and what science says and what science once mandated as prerequisites to human experiments. What I don’t know is how whether enough people are willing to admit their ignorance to champion the cause. Some refuse to accept science because they claim their faith requires it, some refuse to see the human being sacrificed on the alter of prolonging their own life (or someone close to them) because they claim a right to survive.

Too few see the full reality and the potential to save lives and prolong them all at once. Divided we fail, and we are divided.

When communities are terrorized by ICE immigration raids, when nursing mothers are torn from their babies, when children come home from school to find their parents missing, when people are detained without access to legal counsel, when all that is happening, the system just isn’t working, and we need to change it.

Emphasis mine (and Ed Morrissey’s). Enforcing our laws is not terrorism, but for those radical elements who want to violently resist law enforcement the Wunderkid just gave them a green light to do so.

Immigration is a hot button issue, one which I tend to lean towards the McCain-Bush solution of a comprehensive approach that includes border security, a guest worker program (with background checks and tamper proof IDs and continuous monitoring that ensure people leave when their time is up) and some sort of solution to the long term illegals who stayed out of trouble and set down long term (more than 3 years) roots in our communities. But while this moderate position bugs the hell out of the Amnesty Hypochondriacs on the right (see my posts here) it is not a position that supports anarchy.

Large majorities of this country want a fix to the illegal immigration problem. Large majorities support legal immigration and dealing humanely with the problem. But large majorities also want the laws enforced. Obama has clearly come out on the opposite side of these large majorities, and in the process made John McCain’s positions much more palatable than raising the revolutionary cry of oppression when all there is are actions to enforce the rule of law.

Is anyone being beaten or bombed? Is anyone being oppressed because they broke the law? Hell no. And to insult those who are doing what they can to stem the tide of illegals by equating them with al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Hamas and others who really do ‘terrorize’ people just shows what a panderer Obama is. I cannot also help but note how much these comments echo those of the Weather Underground from the 60′s, who decided to use violence against America. Obama is clearly having a “Bill Ayers moment” here.

Stick a fork in this fool – he is toast.

I am getting the feeling this country is at a breaking point with hyper-partisan dribble. I know I am. Not everyone is worked up to a fevered pitch, but those who are too many times run on a nasty combination of arrogance and ignorance. Needless to say they are also running low on respect and tolerance.

I recently had it out with a conservative friend on the issues of science and politics. We were discussing how the green liberals have latched onto the mythology of global warming and denigrate those who simply note the data, the reality, is not supporting their theories (they are not facts by any stretch of the imagination). The reason we had it out is in the middle of this common ground debate they guy went off and hoped the ‘science’ of global warming would be an example for the demise of the true science of genetics and evolution. Needless to say this guy supports the unproven mythology of Creationism and Intelligent Design (something I addressed recently in this post).

When did a lack of education become the badge of expertise? I ask that because my friend has no clue what biology or genetic or evolution is about, yet he thinks science is all ‘opinion’ so therefore his ignorance is equal to everyone else’s ‘opinion’. You can probably tell this was a major dust up, but I use it as the conservative mirror image of the same crap coming from the Church of Al Gore. After a decade of flat or falling global temperatures, after two decades where temperatures maybe increased 0.2° C instead of the 0.6° – 1.0° C predicted by the Church of Al Gore, we have a similar combination of ignorance and arrogance ignoring reality on the far left.

As someone who knows a lot about science and the scientific method it saddens me to see so much ignorance being given credibility. It seems everyone needs a religion of some kind to wail against established facts for some reason. Why? I haven’t a clue.

For the left it is Global Warming. The Earth’s temperature has not been rising, and even the Priests from the Church of Al Gore recently admitted the current data shows another decade of falling temperatures to come. Yet ignorant and arrogant people run around with C+ High School science backgrounds and claim the science is settled!

For the far right, instead of seeing God’s hand and plans in the code he established to create life on this planet, people with C+ High School backgrounds in science and biology run around and claim evolution and genetics don’t really exist. Too bad they spent all those years with their mind’s eye closed to see the reality, but I can point to the common cold as proof of genetic evolution – those little viruses evolve each year. And there are millions of studies proving the force of evolution. The problem is most people run around with a cartoon level grasp of evolution, not a deep understanding to see the reality.

OK, enough on these two matters. Again, being someone with a science and engineering background the political fringes on matters of science are as silly to me as those who claim NASA faked the missions to the moon. Just another group proudly and arrogantly displaying their ignorance.

I understand most of these people have the best of intentions. But so did medieval ‘doctors’ who tried to bleed out the evil in patients or use slugs to suck it out. These people back then really, really wanted to save the sick. These people were trying everything they knew to save the sick. But the fact remains they were ignorant. They did not know that the blood carries the antibiotic forces to fight off illness, and in fact they were making things worse and killing patients who may have been able to tough it out. You don’t send surgeons to repair passenger jets, and you don’t ask a rocket scientist to do brain surgery. Even the most accomplished need to realize their limits, best intentions are not enough.

But this completely lost perspective on science seems to be evidence of a more universal problem. People are running around telling everyone else what to do, as if freedom of speech is freedom to nag and control others. You get these purity putsches on the left and right, running amok on wild theories and simpleton solutions to nagging problems generations have failed to fix.

We have the far left claiming democracy and freedom in Iraq and the Muslim world is impossible to achieve, while the far right claims we are being attacked through our southern border and all illegal aliens must be deported or forced to leave. Neither of these views is accurate or useful. But boy, do people scream a lot about how they will save America and world with this garbage.

Maybe it’s just me, but this election is turning into a real downer, a rehash of all the same liberal and far right paranoid delusions and fears we have been hammered with for decades now. We will lose the world’s respect by winning in Iraq, we are being overtaken by hispanics, the Earth is warming, evolution is a lie, we did not go to the moon and the Earth is flat. Ugh!

We need some fresh new ideas and we need to end the hyper-partisan dribble. And no, Barack Obama is not the answer. He’s just a smooth talking politician, real good at hiding his intentions and shifting his speeches to tell audiences what they want to hear. We need “genuine change“. We need the change in tone Bush has tried to impose and he himself has followed through 8 years of yapping idiots. We don’t need a smooth delivery, we need sincere respect and tolerance and pride in our country.

Well, it started back in 2006 when Bush nominated ex-democrat (wasn’t Reagan an ex-dem?) Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court and the far right went ape.  The far right rose up again on Dubai Ports World’s selection to run some US docks.  Even though the UAE, home of DPW, hosts the largest US naval port in the Middle East, some felt those Ayrabs were too much of a threat to be allied to have majority ownership (no dock hands of course) in a company that loads and unloads ships.  The ignorance on how things work demonstrated at the time was stunning – and ugly.

Then came a real issue, a national issue.  Then came comprehensive immigration reform and the far right went ballistic and called all who disagree with them traitors, un-American and worse.  Compounding their disgusting behavior towards political allies (acting like Sadrists to Maliki’s Shiites) they basically started lying to themselves and America about what was in the bill, what was the utility of existing laws, and equating all immigrants with the few bad apples all populations have.  In the irony of all ironies the bad apples they held up as examples of the evils of immigration were the very ones they insured would stay around as they stopped a bill that would deport criminals!  Great thinking there.

Now that issue is back because all those who opposed comprehensive immigration reform have fallen by the wayside since 2006 and 2007.   The standard bearer of the hard line crowd on immigration, Tom Tancredo, lost his bid for President and his seat in Congress.  Many others followed his example and the one left standing is John McCain.  McCain, like Bush and many other republican conservatives (as opposed to ‘true’ conservatives), supported the comprehensive bills proposed in 2006 and 2007.  He supports it now. Bush has done more than any other President to seal our borders, turning back 1.3 million illegals last year alone.  There is no more catch and release plan.  Caught and sent home.

Now is the time to deal with registering workers and those who have been here a long time making a living as undocumented workers.  Now is the time to register foreign workers and remove the underground economy that can not only hide 20 million illegal immigrants for decades, but hide cells of terrorists.  It is time to step away from the fringes on the right and left (who have unrealistic desires with no public backing) and deal with the problem realistically.  And that is what McCain is going to do:

In yet another sign of his pivoting toward the general election, Senator John McCain said at a roundtable with business leaders here today that comprehensive immigration reform should be a top priority for the next president.

Mr. McCain’s willingness to address the issue was striking given how the topic became something of a third-rail for Republican presidential candidates during the primary.

The response by the far right was predictable and swift – and signaled the final chapter in the purity wars of the conservative movement.  Either the purists win and the GOP goes into terminal minority status or the broader coalition wins and progress is made through compromise and teamwork.  Personally I already know the answer because politics in a democracy only divvies out power to those who make broad alliances and who can compromise.  Ideologues who demand everyone bow to them always end up on the margins.

If McCain wins he will have made clear that the GOP and conservative movement can achieve success without the ‘true’ conservatives.  I am an independent conservative.  I have resisted joining the GOP for decades because of the purists.  It is a combination of being repulsed by their arrogance and completely unimpressed with their solutions.  Arrogance needs to be backed up with something, and there is not a lot there in many cases (not all of course, and I am focused on leaders and leading voices).  I actually have no dog in this fight accept to find the best opposition to liberal policies.  I don’t look for the purist conservative because the world changes to much and too fast to lock into one concept.  It is a false sense fo security some seek in defining rigid dogma.  

It is not my path, nor the path of many.  Who will win?  In the long run the ‘true’ conservatives will lose.  the question is whether a short term success can be won when fighting the liberals on the left and the fringes on the right.  I think this is the year of the centrists where America shrugs off the fringes and marches to the center to get some problems solved.  

Update:  Some other folks people should be listening to on this matter of whether there is a conservative GOP (big tent) or only ‘true’ conservatives (pup tent).  The Anchoress, who is leaving the GOP, and Harold Hutchison, who links other voices who have decided the purists are not the future.

If I may be so blunt as to remind those on the right that we are at war with religious fanatics who demand purity to their views at gunpoint.  I am not equating Islamo Fascism with ‘true’ conservatives.  I am only pointing out that a country which is tired of the war on fanatics, but sees no path out except to keep soldiering on, may take its frustrations out on the next best example they can find and impact.  

There is too much demand to toe-the-line on ideological grounds for this nation to stomach anymore.  By far the most cancerous and destructive variant comes from the Jihadis.  But the endless griping between far left and far right is not earning respect or support either. At some point America is saying enough to the purists, we are going back to the respect on peaceful coexistence of diversity and impurity.

The reason the far right is losing so badly is they have not given up their purity wars.  We are a war weary country and would trade diversity and peace over anger and fighting any day of the week.  Just as the Iraqis are settling into their diverse, common ground to end the real fighting there, America is doing the same. With or without the fringes.

In a major blow to national Republicans, a Mississippi congressional seat that once voted for President Bush by a twenty-five point margin elected a Democrat on Tuesday. Prentiss County Chancery Clerk Travis Childers beat out Republican candidate Greg Davis, the mayor of Southaven, by a 54%-46% margin, a spread that several Republican strategists on Capitol Hill characterized as a startling wake-up call for a party in dire straits.

I have been one of those staunch (yet ‘impure’) conservatives who has been completely repulsed by the far right on Harriet Miers, Dubai Ports World and immigration. The clammer from the one-time sirens of conservatism is all about purity, and how they are pure and those who disagree with them are traitors, quislings, RINOs, etc. If the GOP wants to lose elections listen to the caustic talk radio of Savage, Levin and Hannity and believe the crap they spew about Americans (not America, which they wrap around themselves like some cloak of correctness) is going to entice those same Americans to create a broad movement of support. It won’t. If you like losing keep going over that cliff.

Note I have not included all conservative talking heads – many are fine and respect the diversity of opinion that makes up the conservative right. But there is a segment of the party that decided it had to wage a war and move so far right they lost common ground with not just the country, but a majority of the conservative governing coalition. They are so far gone they think losing is winning, and letting liberal ideology creep back into our society will be good, it will teach us all a lesson. They want to remove the ‘dead wood’ from the GOP.

“…Viguerie’s stance is not new. It is, however, getting a lot more play than it did two years ago when, in an interview on PBS’s “Now” less than a week before the November 2004 election, Viguerie told then-co-host Bill Moyers that after Bush won, “somewhere around … the morning after the election … the war starts for the heart and soul” of the Republican Party. “It’s gonna be a war,” Viguerie said. A war “between the traditional conservatives, those who identify with Ronald Reagan, people like myself. And, the big government Republicans. And then also maybe the Neo-cons.”

While admitting that he was supporting Bush and would vote for him, Viguerie, the undisputed king of conservative direct mail, added: “When the voting is done and the ballots are counted, then we’re going to choose up sides and fight for the heart and souls of the Republican Party.”

“It would be on our side, the traditional conservatives [against] the other side, people like Rudy Giuliani, Governor of New York, Pataki, Arnold Schwarzenegger. It’s going to be an interesting battle. Normally Bill, it wouldn’t be a fair fight,” Viguerie told Moyers. “Cause we’ve got the troops, we’ve got the organization…the resources, the issues. One thing we lack, a horse. We’ve got no horse. Hopefully, someone will come on the scene soon. But, but we had a lot of advantages when we came along.”

The war these nut jobs wanted has been waging since 2004. And since that time a lot of conservatives, good and not so good, have been outed from Office. The good ones are like Rick Santorum and George Allen, who allied too closely with these toxic and overbearing firebrands on the right. The one’s no one will miss are like Tancredo. I did not know exactly where Greg Davis stood on immigration, I went to his website and predicted he was from he must be a hardliner on illegal immigrants because he was having so much trouble. I only confirmed his status as an Amnesty Hypochondriac this morning, in the aftermath of his fateful loss. Here is Davis waging his purity war on immigration:

Here’s what Greg Davis’ new mud-bomb smear commercial says:

“He’s soft on illegal aliens and hard on us.” Davis Ad, WREG, Mar.
25, 2008

Here’s what the actual quote from Glenn McCullough that Davis cites
says:

Additionally, McCullough shared his thoughts on dealing with illegal immigrants. “We need to secure the borders,” he said. “Immigration is really a question of treating our hardworking tax payers fairly. We need to identify these people (who illegally cross the border) and deal with them in a way that’s compassionate and within the law. I want to work so people can become citizens of the United States, but in a way that protects your tax dollars,” he added. “We have to deal with the problem in a way that protects the taxpaying citizens. A bipartisan solution is needed and I’m a team builder.” – Columbus Dispatch, Jan. 26, 2008

And another quote from McCullough which has appeared in most of the state’s major newspapers:

“I believe the basic responsibility of government is to protect and provide security for all law-abiding citizens. It is clear that our nation’s borders are not secure, a failing of this basic responsibility.
Therefore, it should be the federal government’s immediate priority to secure our borders using a combination of traditional methods, more immigration agents, and the latest technology.” – Daily Journal, March 3,
2008

Don’t go speculating I support McCullough’s view people. I don’t think we need to work to make immigrants citizens. I liked the last bill because it allowed for short term immigrant workers to come, do a job, make some money and go home. I am just observing the factors that probably led to Davis’ demise.

More here on how Davis pummeled a moderate GOP candidate in the primary, simply to be promptly beaten in what should have been an easy special election for a Republican. The fact is when the GOP candidate goes “Tancredo” on immigration they get dumped. The poison spewed by the crowd who called President Bush “El Presidente Bustrada” and who called those who supported the comprehensive immigration bill traitors, quislings, anti-Americans (whatever, the list is endless and repulsive) sent a signal to everyone else in the party. You are with us or we stab you in the back.

Well, the good news is Americans know exactly how to deal with people like that – don’t elect them. I am not surprised to see a conservative democrat pick off the far right conservatives when a firebrand like Davis does his Malkin routine. It is poison! How many lost elections and seats will it take to get the message? I guess it depends on how wedded the zealots are to a bad cause. A cause that has ignored the fact the borders are very secure and 1.3 million potential illegal aliens were turned back and deported last year. Also ignoring the fact almost none were under Clinton.

The same cause that has let myths and lies risk our war effort in Iraq, and the cause over 4,000 brave men and women died for, by allowing a liberal defeatist into the White House. The same cause that destroyed the opportunity to protect all life, no matter how young, in order to chase down maids and landscapers who don’t have proper work papers. The immigration mythology has become an obsession for the far right, and the Americans aren’t buying it – so ALL conservative values are now being consumed and at risk over this BS.

The only way out is for the Amnesty Hypochondriacs to Mea Culpa or be painfully pruned from the GOP. Admitting a mistake and fighting for all the other good conservative causes seems like a no brainer for me. But then I know I will make mistakes and I don’t sacrifice the general goals over the minor battles. But it has become clear that for many, hung up on the fact we will find a way to absorb the long term immigrants who have been here for years, the only path for them is the exits from political power. Tom Tancredo learned that lesson, many of the GOP presidential contenders who tried to shore up their prospects by aligning with Tancredo learned that lesson, and now Greg Davis has learned that lesson.

Who wants to be next, the exits are always open for business?

More here