Riffing on Dave Weigel’s post-mortem on the Paul campaign, in which Weigel suggests that Paul should have spent less time talking up his restrictionist position on immigration, Matt writes:
Time and again, I think you see that the issue of immigrant- and immigration-bashing just doesn't carry the political force that its advocates are constantly claiming and that all-too-many of its opponents seem to fear. I recall when it started to seem like maybe Mike Huckabee could be a serious contender and he, notwithstanding a sensible record on immigration, decided to go hire hard-core restrictionist Jim Pinkerton. Just before going to work for Huckabee, Pinkerton was going around Washington talking about how despite Iraq and the economy, immigration was going to deliver the election to the GOP. It turned out that restrictionism couldn't even win a Republican primary.
I don’t think there’s any question that many immigration restrictionists overstate the salience of the issue. (That’s what single-issue activists do!) But one reason that “restrictionism couldn’t even win a Republican primary” is that every single candidate – including John McCain, in rhetoric if not reality – ran as, well, a “secure the borders first” restrictionist. Now, some of them were more plausible in this role than others, but if you were a GOP voter following the race casually rather than obsessively, I think you’d be forgiven for assuming that all of the candidates were more or less on the same page on the issue. It’s not as if John McCain swept to an easy victory while promising to immediately revive comprehensive immigration reform; he limped and stumbled to a plurality victory while promising that he’d learned the error of his ways on the issue. This suggests that immigration may not matter to GOP primary voters as much as Jim Pinkerton thinks it does, but not that it doesn’t matter at all.
Likewise, I tend to think that immigration restrictionism could carry a great deal of “political force” in a general election – but only if it were handed with finesse and moderation, rather than the sort of “Death of the West” hysteria that seems like the default mode for too many immigration opponents. Americans want border security and they want a lower immigration rate; what they don’t want is to feel like they're being asked to vote for “Operation Wetback, Part II.” Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like there are any Republican politicians who actually believe in the moderate-restrictionist position. Instead, there are politicians who make restrictionist promises they don't intend to keep in the hopes of keeping the yahoo vote appeased, and politicians who sound like, well, yahoos themselves. Campaigning on a moderate-restrictionist position hasn’t been tried and found wanting; it’s been left more or less untried.
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Just as so many other pundits before, Ross has neglected the possibility that he might be wrong. Not being a pundit, I really have no dog in this fight, other than the obvious. The obvious being that thus far nobody has made a sound case in favor of "more people chasing fewer resources".
Overpopulation, congestion, urban sprawl, crumbling infrastructure, overcrowded schools and emergency rooms, crime, pollution, lack of affordable housing, depressed wages, diminishing resources, increased tax burdens, vanishing farm land and green space, the balkanization of our communities, the overall decline in quality of life, are to a lesser or greater extent, the result of unconstrained immigration. There is no issue confronting America's Citizens and tax payers that would no be measurably improved by securing our borders and enforcing our immigration laws.
Indeed, no valid argument can be made in favor of "more people chasing fewer resources" being sound economic, social or cultural policy.
Agenda based analysis and focus groups aside, America's Citizens are not the mindless, partisan, lock-step morons that the media and punditry think us to be. To be blunt, Pandering and Political correctness (and not the will of the people) is the vehicle that got us here! Both parties share concerns about unconstrained immigration and the ability of our geography and our economy to sustain more people.
The egregious Senate Comprehensive Immigration Reform legislation failed, not through lack of effort by this administration and Senate elitists to force it down our throats. It failed because it sparked a near revolt among (we,) the people.
Plain and simple. American's do not, and haven't had, much to choose from with regard to candidates. This is the result of our arcane primary system, the meddling of business and bureaucrats, and the self interests of partisan elites who do not share the views, values and interests of America's rank and file Citizens.
Given how often pundits and analysts have missed on recent issues and candidates, I tend to believe that on this issue, they might want to recalibrate.
Virtually every industrialized nation, even China, has taken steps to eliminate illegal immigration, and to curtail legal immigration to only that which is prudent, demonstrably necessary, and above all other concerns, in the best interests of their native populations. Its dangerously misguided to assert that America should not do likewise!
Politicians who fail to recognize this growing public sentiment run the risk of being disempowered by the publics growing anger at seeing their will usurped and their interests undermined.
Posted by Ed Weirdness | March 12, 2008 12:43 PM