Bush's immigration speech tonight and the conservative voters who hate it

Mexican President Vicente Fox called to express concern over the prospect of militarization of the border, and Bush reassured him that it would be only a temporary measure to bolster overwhelmed Border Patrol agents, the White House said.

I'm glad everybody's aware the troops are purely cosmetic so that he can mention them in his speech tonight.

Wow, Georgia, u r a treat!

from that WaPo article linked above

xpost

not really, i was referring to the "civilian contractors" bit

xpost

the embattled mentality is really getting out of hand. it's starting to feel more and more like radical muslim "permanent state of emergency" where one's identity is attacked both from without and within

i go back and forth on what i think is worse. i feel like i should visit these parts of the country because the hysteria is something i absolutely cannot understand. (despite visiting a mcdonald's this morning where literally all the crew talk was in spanish)

then they aren't Catholics

I currently work for a "privatized bureaucracy". What is wrong with a "federalized bureaucracy"?

How are we going to stop Al Queda (and other terrorist) operatives from penetrating our borders?

You make it sound like there are thousands of Them out there waiting to get in. It only takes a handful, at most, and it will be virtually impossible to keep so few out -- no matter what the government does -- short of TOTALLY closing down the country.

Plus, hello! homegrown terrorists.

This is just people linking the two to bolster weak arguments and keep the nation scared.

mexican immigrants are generally more socially liberal than america's pre-existing population, not further intolerent & theocratic

...does not mention Arabic nations in any way?? And is a completely baseless statement?

And then I just ramble on for a bit:

Over 95% of second-generation Mexican Americans speak English as their first language. The majority of fist generation Mexican immigrants speak English in their homes. This is actually a better track record than that of my Norwegian ancestors (who settled in clusters and maintained many "foreign" traditions well into the second and third generations). The American government literally gave away portions of this country to my immigrant ancestors. Mexicans have been settling here since there was a border to move across. Almost universally, when a large Mexican population moves into a neighborhood, the crime rate goes down.

If the immigrant issue hasn't substantially changed much over the past two centuries, why is this such a hot issue?

I just worked on a campaign for a pro-choice, liberal Catholic from Columbia who didn't know English when she got here, who is about to become a state senator, and my whole point is that she's a liberal Catholic immigrant from south of the border.

And then I stop rambling.

Not to totally derail, but I could swear someone on ILE quoted (or linked to) a statistic that said that 2/3 of first generation Mexican immigrants spoke Spanish at home. I don't know if this is us being sloppy with our language, or them, or whether these issues are so politicized that the only survey worth trusting is the one you do yourself.

and what implies that all or most european muslim immigrants are committed to theocracy if not jihad.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0001UZZOU.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/05/conservatives-debate-bush-iimpeachment.html

I was working from memory. Just by browsing various stats and surveys via Google, I see that my stats on 1st-gen Spanish-speaking immigrants must be off.

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/05/conservatives-debate-bush-impeachment.html

Unfortunately, the electorate seems to be divded between a small group that wants unconditional amnesty and a large group that thinks we can actually round up 11 million undocumented workers and build an effective border fence without becoming a police state. Neither group appears willing to approach the problem rationally and humanely, and even if Bush wanted to do so, he has zero political capital, so we'll probably get some sort of Rovian pablum.

http://www.migrationinformation.org/Feature/display.cfm?id=282

High immigration levels of the 1990s do not appear to have weakened the forces of linguistic assimilation. In other words, the incentives to convert to English monolingualism by the third generation do not seem to have changed. Mexicans, by far the largest immigrant group during the 1990s, provide a compelling example. In 1990, 64 percent of third-generation Mexican-American children spoke only English at home. In 2000, the equivalent figure had risen to 71 percent. However, the level of English monolingualism dropped from 78 to 68 percent among third-generation Cubans between 1990 and 2000.

http://www.ericdigests.org/pre-9221/spanish.htm

With respect to immigrant children, 70 percent of those 5 to 9 years of age, after a stay of about 9 months, speak English on a regular basis. After 4 years, nearly all speak English regularly, and about 30 percent prefer English to Spanish. After 9 years, 60 percent have shifted to English; after 14 years--as young adults--70 percent have abandoned the use of Spanish as a daily language. By the time they have spent 15 years in the United States, some 75 percent of all Hispanic immigrants are using English every day (Veltman, 1988, p. 44).

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/JWcrawford/can-pop.htm

I don't think that most people would agree with that statement (Shakey's exception noted). And that's why I think that the Democrats are making a mistake to let the GOP own the enforcement issue. Controlling our borders is good policy and Dems should be for it.

This is a pretty persuasive argument for why Dems should be against illegal immigration by a former congressman:

Democrats Must Fight Illegal Immigration

First off, Carson and Lind and the radical center democrats love to go on and on about the overclass and out-of-touch-liberals and organic farms and New-York salsa. Ok Ok, I wish the overclass wasn't so out of touch, and since I don't travel in those high-falootin' circles, I'm willing to say let's ignore the limosine liberals. Now, we've just eliminated half the article and a lot of filler that is completely beside the point.

The main point, other than some sort of insipid in-fight amongst the ruling elite whose lives and conversations I can only dimly grasp, is that illegal immigration is driving down the wages of the poor.

As I understand it, the answer is yes and no. Yes, illegal immigration, like international wage bidding, lowers the market value of labor. However, the current minimum wage is already artificially above market value for low-end labor (that's why we had to pass the law in the first place). Even if we closed the borders, deported the illegals and tightened up our trade policies, the workers at the bottom would not see a dramatic increase in compensation.

I think there's good reason to be concerned about the impact of illegal immigration, but I don't think Carson is being much more realistic than his overclass buddies.

He poo-poos minimum wage increases, education and unionization, but he doesn't deal with the fact that we still have a large enough population to compete for low end labor that is not considered to be worth a livable wage.

Perhaps I'm worrying about semantics too much: I just don't like framing the debate in those terms ("controlling our borders"). It plays into fear.

I think it's better to start moving in the right direction than to sit back and point to abstract economic arguments that say we'll never be able to solve our problems. I think that working class voters instinctively understand this, and they would respond to a party that understood it as well. In this case, moving in the right direction means creating a labor market in which workers at least are on a level playing field - ie., legal citizens with voting rights and rights to organize.

If we want to let the market set wages and do away with the minimum wage, then we need a government which is going to pick up the slack for people who don't receive enough from the market to meet their needs. I believe this becomes more politically viable if we stem the tide of low-wage, unskilled, illegal labor into this country.

If we are going to talk about market forces and unskilled labor, then we need to understand what the market really is.

Cracking down on cheap immigrant labor is going to have very little effect on the quality of life for most of our more desperate citizens.

Sometimes we have to interfere in markets. We can interfere in these markets in a couple ways. We can eliminate the competition by shutting people out of the market (a.k.a. imigration reform), or we can declare a minimum standard of living, which is primarily re-distributive in nature.

I just don't want our safety net to be replaced with xenophobia.

t/s: funny vs scary

HAHAHAHAHA! Oh man....

This dark side, presumably the 'it's all about the VOTING NUMBAZ' concern, would be just as much a concern on a theoretical "bluestate.com" site where the parties reversed.

(This isn't meant to counter Ned's point at all, only fortify it actually.)

It's part of the equation (and yer point is indeed worth noting), but the amount of vileness throughout is kinda horrifying.

Top presidential adviser Karl Rove asserted today that the Bush administration is "doing a heck of a lot better job" in controlling the U.S.-Mexican border than most Americans realize

*Just* the word choice I would have recommended. It won't remind anyone of anything else in this recent adminstration's history at all!

http://www.wnd.com/images2/voxday.jpg

Fuckin' World Net Daily

http://freaks.cinephiles.net/images/freaks_cast_shot.jpg

President Bush is being destroyed by vicious people who hate him. So far, he hasn't seemed to notice. Apparently, he doesn't think he needs any allies.

Poor wounded lamb.

It's pure obsession. Seriously, the amount of comments out there that regard it as make-or-break, lemme tell ya.

The Anchoress's comments are interesting to read.

Look out! Baseheads run amuck!

http://www.drudgereport.com/or.jpg

XXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX MON MAY 15, 2006 20:37:17 ET XXXXX
CNN AIRS BUSH REHEARSAL LIVE; NETWORK CALLS MISTAKE
CNN aired President Bush rehearsing his immigration speech from the Oval Office on Monday night! 
The embarrassing images and audio [16 seconds total] captured the president starting and stopping his message, then looking at the White House media advisor for direction. 
[Click for video capture] 
"The president is rehearsing and the network pool inadvertently went to the president as he is rehearsing," anchor Wolf Blitzer explained. 
FOXNEWS, MSNBC, CBS, ABC and other outlets did not air the rehearsal. 
The slip comes just six months after CNN mistakenly placed a bold black 'X' mark over Vice President Cheney's face as he gave a speech. 
Developing...

wooop wooop woop!

This inability to stomach disagreement on a hot-button issue should be troubling to anyone and everyone who has found an intellectual home on the Right — in part to avoid the kind of crippling self-censorship that has afflicted the P.C. Left...We are moving into very dangerous territory here — territory in which it has been declared that there is to be no debate, no discussion, and no heterodoxy any longer. This is how political-intellectual movements become diseased and sclerotic. This is how they die.

The elites — Dem, GOP, Prez — are determined to pull a con job on us. Don't fall for it. Let's have something we can see, plain, clear, and indisputable. A wall! A wall!

This message was sent to me from my brother. He is a retired California Highway Patrol officer. I thought you'd be interested in what he has to say.

I just got these stats from CHP and LAPD. They are statistics from the day of the great Illegal immigrant protest. They were taken from SWITRS which is a police reporting data base for gathering stats. I listed some of the highlights.

CHP... record low accident reduction -73%
record low auto theft reduction -82%
record low citations issued -69%

LAPD... violent crime reduction (murders, assaults, robbery) -48%
malicious mischief (tagging, theft, vandalism) -88%
domestic violence -77%

They should protest every day!!!!!!!!!

http://snopes.com/politics/immigration/shoplift.asp

Fuck off "and what", you creepy, lying, racist sack of shit.

Tom, I'll give you a heads up next time I'm in Annapolis.

xpost thanx :D

this reads even better in the whiney, mewling, Knights-of-Ni voice: "A path! A path!"

Admittedly, I haven't focused on this debate much till now. Ideally, I'd like to see all illegals blocked. Why? Because they're illegal.

Ah, sweet simplicity.

Just out of curiosity, what do people think about the idea of forcing "enforcement" more on punishing people who employ illegals, as opposed to the wall building and all that.

Therein the problem. (Malkin, for instance, wrote off the entire speech as uninformative platitudes, which is a bit rich coming from her but there we are.) The transcript of the speech is here.

My cab driver was completely disoriented by this. I could tell he didn't believe it. Like nearly all African cab drivers, he listens to public radio all day long. Twenty minutes with me wasn't enough to overcome years of liberal indoctrination. He simply wasn't able to absorb the idea that President Bush might not be a racist who hates immigrants. I'm sure he'd forgotten everything I said by the time he left my driveway.

yum! http://powerlineblog.com/archives/014092.php

ned do you expect balloons to fall from the ceiling when you read the 10000th rightwing blog response to bush's speech

The hive mind is breaking up and the worker ants are confused. What sport!

it's been suggested by many that one of the things keeping food prices low-ish is to the very lowly-paid labor(in both agriculture, livestock/poultry/fish processing, etc).

I almost feel like I should be wearing a monocle.

I can't stop laughing. Thank you for that.

"I find deez dee-bate FASS-inating..."

http://www.campuscircle.net/projections/Stroheim.jpg

can't you SEE?! he's just ONE MAN!

Here is a new slogan for the right: "Draft all the illegals into the army and send THEM to Iraq!"

What kind of a fucking ridiculous country is this, anyway?

A Republican strategist with close ties to the White House, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly about the president's problems, blamed Bush for not standing up forcefully to supporters of a House bill that would make felons of the 12 million illegal immigrants in the country as well as anyone who tries to help them. "The president responded to that House bill rather passively," he said. "Leadership is standing up to demagoguery." This strategist said last night's speech was less about immigration than "about the total collapse of the president's numbers among conservatives."

It seems the rats are jumping ship. I will enjoy watching his ignominious decline into the briny depths.

http://thefunshop.net/costumes/halloween/Comical/MrPeanut-01.jpg

The "Mexicans be better immigrants than A-rabs" post threw me off. Also I'm a dope.

What do you think militarizing the border means? Unlike you liberals, I understand the purpose of the military: to fight and win wars. They’re not police officers and they’re not border control agents. They’re funtion is to kill the enemy. Mexico and Mexicans are not our enemy. Terrorists and drug dealers are. Why is this so hard for you to understand? Is Pat Buchannan making you take stupid pills before you join his cult?

infra172 on May 15, 2006 at 11:49 PM

infra172: I know many Mexicans most of whom are illegal. They are all fine hard working people, but they are ILLEGAL, and this is WRONG. We the people here do not want to shoot the illegal Mexicans. We are rational indivduals and we only want A sound immagration policy. You Sir/Ms. do not seem to be A rational person. Therefore you must have voted for John F’n Kerry.

birdman on May 15, 2006 at 11:51 PM

Actually, I'd read her blog then.

In the snap poll of 461 people who watched Monday's speech, 42 percent said they had a positive opinion of the president's immigration policies before they heard him speak. Afterward, 67 percent said they had a positive view, a jump of 25 percentage points.

The polled audience was 41 percent Republican, 23 percent Democratic and 36 percent independent. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.

Zogby Poll: Nearly Half Of Americans Believe Pot Should Be Regulated Like Alcohol

"what's that, john"

"it's my lawnmower"

"how come it aint cuttin nothin"

"who cares as long as i get paid"

BRNNNNNNN DTNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

I am sunk in gloom. Our politics is, and apparently can only be, reactive. Nobody will do anything about our borders, or about our rules for residency and citizenship. Soon — I'd say in the 5 to 10 years ahead window — we'll lose a couple of cities to terrorist nukes. Then something will be done, fast and fierce and probably not very nice. Until then nothing will be done. The President is clueless; the Senate is a joke; the House has some stalwarts, but it will have fewer after November. - John Derbyshire

what universe do these people live in where the House (the HOUSE!) is the most "stalwart" and reliable govt'mental institution....?

oh ROFLpaws

A gold coin to the first man wot spots a blogger so despair'd nought but quoting Shakespeare(or Morrissey) can convey feelings so dire.

etc.

lol irony

Bengali in platforms
He only wants to embrace your culture
And to be your friend forever
Forever

Bengali, bengali
Bengali, bengali
Oh, shelve your western plans
And understand
That life is hard enough when you belong here

A silver-studded rim that glistens
And an ankle-star that ... blinds me
A lemon sole so very high
Which only reminds me; to tell you
Break the news gently
Break the news to him gently
Shelve your plans; shelve your plans, shelve them

Bengali, bengali
Its the touchy march of time that binds you
Dont blame me
Dont hate me
Just because Im the one to tell you

That life is hard enough when you belong here
That life is hard enough when you belong here
Oh...
Shelve your western plans
Oh...
Shelve your western plans
cause life is hard enough when you belong
Life is hard enough when you belong here
Oh...
Shelve your western plans
Oh...
Shelve your best friends
cause life is hard when you belong here
Oh...
Life is hard enough when you belong

meanwhile the democrats will be picking their nads.

xpost hahaha man, i really want to see "blaze" again.. "and my opponent.. my opponent uses STICKY STUFF under his ARMS!!" *crowd gasps*

Well, there was this year called 2004. Granted, the lever just kinda activated by itself that year, granted. But it's not as if anyone in control of the lever cared to move it back.

Actually, I'm pretty sure the immigrant stuff IS the "gay marriage" of the midterm elections.

"John F'n Kerry"!

I guess it was naive to be shocked by it. But he did it. I know McCain was hardly perfect even when he had nuts, but there was hope of somebody who could galvanize some whiff of Goldwaterisms back in the GOP, which is [retty paramount at this point, although not without risks but a risk worth taking if I were a GOP strategist... but that's not gonna happen now.

Heh. Chavez represents the "Center for Equal Opportunity," so you can guess REAL quick their leaning...

According to the lefty zealots, the white Christians who hold power must be swept out by a new multicultural tide, a rainbow coalition, if you will.

and "the browning of America", etc

as for the actual issue itself, it seems that there's only been a limit # of solutions proffered to both deal with the amount of folks coming across and the number of folks here.

but hell, they needed an issue to run on and drive folks into a votin' frenzy like some antebellum social crusade. They couldn't use the war or 9/11, and won't get as much mileage out of gay folks or flag-burnin'(even tho they're gunna try to this summer). the old foes of Hate Week ain't workin' so well, so gotta get some new ones.

(and by the way neither Boxer or Lieberman can be counted on to be anything more than cynical careerists)

this is brilliant!

ding ding ding

Paranoid manichean mindsets need the enemies within or without to freak about. Look out--Romulans are getting all up in my daughter's area! Better get my gun!

It reminds me of the very-late-era(1988?) Bloom County cartoon where Opus laments that "there's just no enemies anymore," after Milo/Binkley point out that the injuns, germans, and russkies are our friends, and that even klingons are "now" serving as starfleet officers.

LMAO

when Dem X votes for the wall, they can't do that. is this hard for you to understand?

I could care less about afraid-of-loserdom people calling me spineless if it means I actually win in the end. Which one of us is "scared" here?

And hey, maybe some of those Dems who voted for the fence thought it was, you know, a good idea?

and tell me again how this fence will get thousands of people killed and maimed. if anything, it'll be the reverse, no?

xpost: hard to say

Some analysts believe that Perot acted as a spoiler in the election, primarily drawing votes away from Bush and allowing Clinton to win many states with less than a majority of votes, polls later showed had Perot not been in the race his vote total would have spread equally between Bush and Clinton, and a large amount would have abstained from voting at all.

Some analysts believe that Perot acted as a spoiler in the election, primarily drawing votes away from Bush and allowing Clinton to win many states with less than a majority of votes, polls later showed had Perot not been in the race his vote total would have spread equally between Bush and Clinton, and a large amount would have abstained from voting at all.

As for Gore, that's just a bit of semantic dissembling that means nothing to nobody. In case you haven't noticed someone NOT named Al Gore has been sitting in the White House for the last 6 years.

Al Gore Sr. (Vietnam)

my gut tells you're right (and whispers that anyone who disagrees has forgotten the prevailing mood at the time, although i wasn't in the US then so how would i know?)

prevailing being the operative word: i have a very low, but i think accurate, view of the average american. i think the republican party would've gone to town in elections had the iraq vote gone along party lines.

Abotrion, contraception, gay rights, immigration,taxes, welfare, unions, minimum wage, trade, de-regulation, the commons...

What, pray tell, has been the result of Democratic neutralization? Democrats have been courageously neutralizing our opponents for over a decade.

Look at our amazing ascention into the stratosphere, from the lowly ebb of our power in the 80's.

You're a fucking Machiavellian genius, gabbneb.

How unusual. How unique. What we need is for neutralizers like yourself to gain control of the party and the left-of center punditry. Kick out all the crazy socialist radicals that have been running things out of the party. And won't somebody please tell Conners to shut the fuck up, before he makes us lose again? He's getting in the way of us neutralizing ourselves into the halls of power.

no, the fence is just emblematic of a larger capitulation - one which I already mentioned having to do with the Dems rolling over and letting the Repubs make an issue out of thin air, and then not offering any kind of serious alternative proposal. to say nothing of the fact that they can't even present a unified front (Boxer and Lieberman's voting perhaps being representative of this problem as well)

which means they will just go through new mexico and texas. the wall is stupid.

Not sure if that link works, but it shows where the new proposed fences would be constructed - some parts would be in Texas and New Mexico. I agree that a fence by itself is not a solution. Ideally, it would be combined with better enforcement against US employers that hire workers without the proper documentation. However, that's unpopular with the business community that makes up an important part of the GOP base, so it's less likely to happen.

I mean, there were a lot of ideas that seemed completely radical a few years back, and now they're being normalized and we haven't neutralized them at all.

haha, which is going to be enacted by whom?

Abotrion, contraception, gay rights, immigration,taxes, welfare, unions, minimum wage, trade, de-regulation, the commons...

uh, the last time I checked, abortion was still legal, contraception was still legal, gays had the same rights they've always had, immigration proceeds unabated, Dems passed tax increases and opposed tax cuts, welfare I'm not going to argue here because I'm tired of it but there are arguments on both sides, Democrats are not responsible for unions but unionization is on an upswing at the moment, Dems passed min wage increases, and opposing trade agreements is far from universally agreed-upon in the Democratic party (and Dem support of trade is arguably a big reason we've gained ground and held on in the Northeast and West)

What, pray tell, has been the result of Democratic neutralization?

8 years in the White House, and 12-16 if Bush hadn't stolen it (and we had better candidates)

Kick out all the crazy socialist radicals that have been running things out of the party.

there aren't any, or more than a handful of, crazy socialist radicals in the party, at least among reps elected at the fed and state levels. the party is however composed of a lot of liberals who have become convinced by the echo-chamber effects of changes in media (most notably the rise of the internet) that they represent a larger portion of the electorate than they actually do. what they fail to get is that they represent only half of Democratic loyalists, and that Democratic loyalists are only about 44% of the electorate. they think that if they make themselves loud and angry enough they can convince and/or shame the people they need on their side to do what they want to do. they are 100% wrong, and i'm tired of 6 years of a dangerous, right-wing administration that might have been avoided if they got it.

does appealing to the center shift the party to the right? yes, to some extent. but it's a whole fuck of a lot better than installing a right-wing party because half of us want a liberal administration or nothing.

as for the fence, who came up with the idea that we can't simultaneously neutralize a dumb electoral issue, make good public policy (as far as some people are concerned), and deal separately with racist public discourse (which has exactly what ill effect? did it occur to you that allowing these morons to talk might help us at the polls? we have 5% of the hispanic vote that we have to win back next time. letting the other side show its true face can only help us)

You mean things like Samuel Huntington's new book?

This reminds me of an argument I had with a friend a few months ago re: Pennsylvania. I asked her what she'd prefer: re-electing a nutcase like Santorum and thereby giving succor to his dreams of national office, or electing Casey, who is pro-life but otherwise pretty agreeable. She said she'd never support Casey.

I like your diatribe, gabbneb.

single-issue stuff like this is stupid & short-sighted. It's akin to all the shit that goes on with NARAL supporting Chuck Hagel, who, while personally being pro-choice, votes along with the rest of his party on shit that actively works against pro-choice causes(e.g. Alito, Sam).

Who the fuck are you talking to?

I'm talking about strategy. Seriously, can someone explain how this process of "neutralization" works?

I agree that NARAL was short sighted. I believe in coalition-building.

And can you tell me what the fuck the "center" is? Because I'm pretty sure I'm there, and all I see is a bunch of pussies who may just win some senate seats because their opponents are in jail.

Dude, it has been harder and harder to get an abortion, and the window of opportunity continues to shrink. Yeah, abortion is still legal, and so is giving emergency medical aid to illegal immigrants. No sweat.

You may think you're having an argument with a leftist, but you are not. The Republicans have been creating the arena in which we fight. They have been doing this for many, many rears. Democrats react.

Anyway, just explain how this will "neutralize" the immigration issue?

Anyway, real winners in this debate: Obrador, Chavez, Lula, etc.

I like how the immigration debate has become framed as one of two extremes, like every other issue, leaving poor bungled and botched inbetweenies to sniff around for the mythical middle. Whatever.

How about the sensible-people-for-understanding-and-reason-who-want-to-discuss-the-consequences voting block. Because I'm pretty sure this voting block is wondering why we're building a giant wall across our border.

Do it, dude.

i don't think i'm arguing with a leftist. i do think i'm arguing with a liberal like myself. I am well left of center in certain or many respects, and more mdoerately left of center in others, but I want a presidential candidate who is only moderately left of center (at best?), or understands that regardless of his personal feelings he has to govern an ideologically-diverse nation and can not promise to govern more than moderately left of center, because i want a candidate who will win.

in my conception, the center consists of, in part, the easily-led and ill-informed, and in larger part those whose instincts place them in between the parties, neither mostly right nor mostly left. one identifiable group in the center consists of suburbanite (and especially exurbanite) families who aren't necessarily right-wing, but whose often necessarily family-centric worldview results in a relatively selfish view of the commons, susceptible to appeals to fear and exercise of authority. Clinton played brilliantly to these key swing voters' fast-food-menu-like vision of government. Bush and Gore basically tied, but 9/11 allowed Bush to emphasize the fear and authority and he played a lot better to them than Kerry did. another identifiable group are rural denizens who aren't necessarily right-wing, but are far enough removed geographically and culturally from others that they see only their own problems (and the extremes of those who are different from them). they've long been persuadable that their problems are caused by urbanites both rich and poor, and susceptible to whomever seems (more) authentically rural. it's obvious how they've played out in the last few cycles, right? if we get candidates who can appeal to these groups by serving and not threatening the suburbanites while convincing the ruralites that if not one of them he's not against them either or unconcerned about their problems, we can win.

these groups are going to be unconcerned with, or turned off by, the issues you reference above. my ideal candidate appeals to their lack of concern by not talking about those issues, and 'neutralizing' them when the other side does talk about them. the way i would neutralize them, which might be a little sharper than what a smart candidate would do, would be to say, this isn't one of the important issues we're facing as a nation, and i'm not going to do anything about it because my attention is better focused elsewhere, but if your little hobby is to spend time going around hating people, you're not contributing to our progress as a nation and you don't deserve to call yourself an American. not talking about the issues doesn't mean you won't do something about them, of course, but you can't entirely abuse peoples' expectations. that may lock you into a centrist model of governance, but on many of these issues it would not because we would merely be preserving the status quo or making changes at the margin that would be unobjectionable as a policy matter (even if they would have been objectionable as a political matter).

The only reason people bother arguing with you, g, is that your insane, self-satisfied, and barely rational view of American politics is shared by too many Democrats -- the label "liberal Democrat" is worn proudly as signifying a sort of class privilege devoid of any coherent political philosophy. Folks like y'all deserve to lose forever, but you don't get to take the moral highground and accuse others of not being real Americans. It's fucking TREASONOUS, ARROGANT, ELITIST and ANTI-DEMOCRATIC to abandon principles any hope of moving the common political debate in any sane direction for the sake of your buds (and not your Republican bud's buds) to finally inherit the power to which, by dint of proper education, good Party participation, sacrifice and the kissing of all the right asses, the Democratic Party's True Faithful have been enititled all along.

I think it's more interesting and enlightening to talk ABOUT gabbneb and his ilk than TO them.

No it won't. Dude, we could run TV spots of Democratic candidates running down illegal immigrants on foot, killing them, and eating their still-beating hearts. Then the Republicans would just recycle their "Wolves" advert.

Now, I will finish reading your post.

Do it, dude.

I am a question-asker by nature, not to mention the fact that my liberalism is grounded in faith (albeit not religion) more than logic, ergo I never convince anyone of anything.

Let gabbneb or nabisco or tracer or tombot or you or whoever the ILE brains take up the cause.

Both probably have a grain of truth to them, but I get asked this question all the time and the conclusion I've come to is this: The president is morally and emotionally opposed to immigration enforcement, especially on the Mexican border. He sees it as uncompassionate and un-Christian, at best a necessary evil that must be entered into with the greatest reluctance and abandoned as soon as is practical. And this is especially true with regard to Mexico because he sees it as a "cousin" nation, like Britain or Israel, and thus enforcing immigration laws against Mexicans is even worse than doing so against Chinese or Pakistanis.

I don't say this to hurl epithets — President Bush is a conviction politician and sincerely believes this, which is why he sticks to his anti-enforcement guns despite potentially catastrophic political damage. This is unlike President Clinton, who was actually better on immigration in many ways precisely because he was (is) completely amoral and willing to embrace almost any position.

This is patently ridiculous. The center is left of the right, no?

haha, Colin - I have "buds"? who are political operatives? dude, man, sweet.

yes, this is a very naive position - it posits that all the racist/homophobe/misogynyist voters are old ppl, which unfortunately is not the case. The recurring myth of Belonging To The Enlightened Generation is as old as western society.

It reminds me of the very-late-era(1988?) Bloom County cartoon

How about Pogo? "We have met the enemy and they is the help"?

I could care less about afraid-of-loserdom people calling me spineless if it means I actually win in the end.

I think for gabbneb "the end" is Chelsea Clinton's first term in 2029.

everyone likes a game. I just like this one a lot better than baseball

Now I'm really offended!

dude, we have those. they mainly take the form of me/tracer/shakey/gypsy and a few other folks arguing with gabbneb.

gabbneb, I would change the "easily-led" part, but otherwise, let's agree that this population exists and is essential to electoral politics.

I think the major problem, here, is that politicians are largely contained by concensus thinking, a.k.a. common sense. For a very long time, when it comes to consensus thinking, Democrats have been reactive, while Republicans have been creative. That is why I do not believe we can neutralize an issue by keeping quiet.

Other than likeability (or whatever passees for charisma these days), comes leadership. People want a decisive, straight-forward, independant thinker as their leader. I would like our Democratic leaders try to be more like this.

http://www.deseretnews.com/photos/2029002.jpg

http://subintsoc.net/images/sr_20041119_bushclinton.jpg

http://www.theage.com.au/ffximage/2004/11/19/20CLINTON_wideweb__430x218.jpg

yeah, I think this is just wishful thinking, along with the age-old lefty conviction that youthful=left-leaning. It's not without a smidgen of truth, but note that political culture went MORE conservative in the eighties after the seventies: how do you account for that? "Old people taking over"? Not so: Reagan rode to office twice on support from young Republicans, who liked the idea of being young wealthy & in control, even though most of 'em only really had possession of the first quality.

I was just about to say this: I think in many ways there's been a regression in American culture especially in terms of racism and sexism since the 70s.

Tracey, I don't disagree with you.

My point is that we do not lead on the issues. The Democrats need to change consensus. This affects the narrative of the press as well as that of the electorate.

It's just that I fail to see how making vague appeals to a heterogeneous "middle" promotes an image of Democratic leadership.

I'm just waiting for the day that left-leaning folks finally realize the need for funding similar efforts and building that much long-term infrastructure. Some of them are beginning to get the idea, but this will take another decade plus to come around.

note that political culture went MORE conservative in the eighties after the seventies: how do you account for that? "Old people taking over"?

yes, pretty much. the generation that lived through the depression was dying off and/or voted for Reagan because he was one of them (nearly 14 years older than Carter, 17 years older than Mondale).

Reagan rode to office twice on support from young Republicans, who liked the idea of being young wealthy & in control, even though most of 'em only really had possession of the first quality.

There may or may not have been a lot of Alex P Keatons in the '80s (which I think had more to do with suburbanization than anything else, plus are Alex P Keatons still Republicans?), but I think Reagan's success had more to do with nationalism-filling-the-economic-insecurity hole.

Actually , there are wealthy Democratic donors. Democrats actually got hurt worse by campaign finance reform than did Republicans.

Republicans have a lot more people who can afford $1000 donations, but Democrats used to get huge chunks of money from wealthy patrons.

As with the post-Goldwater repubs, once you realize that you do all share a set of values, it's a lot easier to understand that these values need to be promoted. Oh yeah, and strength comes in consolidated numbers, not letting this narcissism of small details shit get in the way(like the NARAL thing above).

xpost
kingfish, people realize the need, but it's harder to do fundraising when your base is the dispossessed instead of oil companies.

yes & no. i think it's a matter of stirring the passions and motivating folks(which is beginning to happen), and the funds will flow(e.g. the highpoint of the Dean campaign). As guys like Lakoff have pointed out, one of the reasons that the other side has poured so much funds into it is that they had a higher mountain to climb(i.e. convincing citizens of an open democratic country to enact very undemocratic & closed things).

yeah, and how much cash did they raise again? as donald "duck" dunn once said, "if the shit fits, wear it!"

which is where I part with you, kingfish, sorry. I think most people don't share all of the ideals & values that we do, and promoting and furthering them, at least in the way Lakoff would have us do, is not going to help us. yes, there are some ideals and values that we share with most people, and that the other side doesn't, and yes we have to brand ourselves with those. but we can't simply say do that and hope for the best. we also have to emphasize that we share certain ideals and values that the folks in the middle associate more often with the other side.

$14.8 M / 20 = $74,000.00

Somebody call the elections commission, that was just 3rd quarter, 2003!

Ok, Dan. I know what you were getting at, but the Dean campaign is not all hype.

Gabbneb: you wanna actually say what those values ARE? Thanks.

Amt of cash != amt of votes, otherwise he would have won at least one primary.

I don't mean to trot out old chestnuts but http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A10736-2003Jul4¬Found=true and also who was the Democratic nominee again? (HINT: It wasn't Dean.)

I love when that happens.

support against the war, stem cell research, raising the minimum wage, for NOT torturing folks, for a complete revamp of the health system, for NOT having the congress get involved in teh end-of-life situ for one brain-damaged floridian, etc

these are majority positions. it's one of the reasons they have to scramble every election to fuck with people voting.

dude, that's already happened. Who was it, the NYT? went to some Long Island republican's house and interviewed his illegal groundscrew.

Of COURSE you do -- and my understanding of your entire argument here, basically, is that you think the Democratic Party needs to do more of it. And so do I, or I'd never post on a single thread you post on.

except that that's not true, at least on a state/local level, e.g. Montana

He failed to get the nomination. this is not the same thing as 20 bloggers. I think the historical record supports the claims I've made here, duderator.

And if the Repugs lose in '06 and '08, it'll be because "we were humiliated in Iraq" sticks in the prideful craw.

I would totally vote for Mitch Kramer!

My response has always been that a liberal is a conservative who stopped whining about getting mugged that one time.

Didn't somebody say something about immigration?

not that i agree with his current schtick, mind you.

Article contains this classic:

"The overwhelming majority of those that I talked to who were at the conference believe that he dissed the House Republicans," Sensenbrenner said.

Nice try of the first attempt. I wish you hadn't swallowed the hype and invested more in more traditional campaign avenues because that appears to have been the big thing that did you in and you were light-years above everyone else running in my cursory investigation of your platforms other than Wesley Clark. Clark/Dean or Dean/Clark would have been a very entertaining ticket to support. Does anyone have a time machine?

i have no idea whether or not the Gephardt ads were a "hit" on Dean or not, and neither does any of us. but the quickness of his fall was a product of the fact that the bullshit media story that came out of the "scream" connected strongly with something felt by a lot of primary-voting Dems. we had our doubts, and they were confirmed.

but all this what-if action is pretty pointless.

I think that a lot of Republican Congressmen are going to be distancing themselves from Bush. Any port in a storm. Although, being scared and whiny is a factor, too.

$7 a head, students & vets $5, free for active military and school groups

i dunno. thing looks more like the SDF crashed in little rock & they just repurposed it.

xpost: Tom/Ally, please remind the boy what the SDF is(was)

President Bush, left, waves as he rides a dune buggy driven by Rocky Kittle, right, as he tours the Yuma Sector Border along the U.S. Mexico International Border Thursday, May 18, 2006 in San Luis, Ariz. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

http://us.news3.yimg.com/us.i2.yimg.com/p/ap/20060519/capt.b61184a6c3db40d4950b41455d1cacbb.arizona_border_azmy108.jpg?x=380&y=132&sig=9reeSXsdfRx.WVeZTCYKcA--

http://us.news3.yimg.com/us.i2.yimg.com/p/ap/20060518/capt.240d1e5d3713470bb93e0153e9860aa0.bush_wxs116.jpg?x=380&y=253&sig=.PiKczkECZv3G1WE.8HXLA--

HAR. He even has the executive "sleeves rolled up = SERIOUS BUSINEES IS BEING MEANT" thing going on

http://us.news3.yimg.com/us.i2.yimg.com/p/rids/20060518/i/r2732140906.jpg?x=380&y=300&sig=bqMorUja3z1zLExNr37LEw--

http://us.news3.yimg.com/us.i2.yimg.com/p/rids/20060518/i/r1522846912.jpg?x=380&y=313&sig=XbRz2qBHEmYuS4X7zg6cIA--

http://us.news3.yimg.com/us.i2.yimg.com/p/ap/20060518/capt.c4bcafcca27e41738c0190ffd147a238.bush_immigration_azpm111.jpg?x=380&y=296&sig=5i11A1e0c_pi8USPEvo8WA--

WTF - they brought their own backdrop with them?

http://us.news3.yimg.com/us.i2.yimg.com/p/ap/20060518/capt.45e9348b867a4c8884396bc9b1781123.mexico_us_immigration_mexgb106.jpg?x=202&y=345&sig=OY9VklSnZVDqF13J6WYayQ--

http://us.news3.yimg.com/us.i2.yimg.com/p/ap/20060518/capt.a38ef6605a184d978716f1e0abe10f01.mexico_us_immigration_mexgb104.jpg?x=380&y=212&sig=teUYJcuSXWcPhPJe3dwDsg--

http://us.news3.yimg.com/us.i2.yimg.com/p/afp/20060518/capt.sge.syq62.180506080401.photo02.photo.default-512x341.jpg?x=380&y=253&sig=Rljw.rB1DqsX5bVHRzvHOw--

"Fuck it; we're out here, let's get some panorama shots in."

http://us.news3.yimg.com/us.i2.yimg.com/p/ap/20060516/capt.c8f679fa05f4455aa7b819c53038344f.mexico_border_wall_tij114.jpg?x=380&y=251&sig=TuEGnoftoGl5IaMs6kuenw--

http://us.news3.yimg.com/us.i2.yimg.com/p/rids/20060517/i/r1502375764.jpg?x=380&y=303&sig=ocVAEp.8XDzcHg7468H5Sw--

http://us.news3.yimg.com/us.i2.yimg.com/p/nm/20060517/2006_05_16t015729_450x299_us_usa_immigration.jpg?x=380&y=252&sig=pWsGpmuYxrauYZv1rnGyWQ--

http://us.news3.yimg.com/us.i2.yimg.com/p/rids/20060517/i/r1735271395.jpg?x=230&y=345&sig=m0YWZfyVh9F1m4gPy2U2oQ--

"Brrmmmmm! BRRMMMMM! We're 4-wheelin' 4 AMERICA!"

http://us.news3.yimg.com/us.i2.yimg.com/p/rids/20060518/i/r3216114891.jpg?x=380&y=246&sig=rQtV2QO9BwV9cCNTNuUt0A--

Hey, teen gang! Let's try and figure out what's being said in this shot!

(and the suited dude in the chair in the photo upthere is Gov. Arnie)

http://us.news3.yimg.com/us.i2.yimg.com/p/rids/20060518/i/r2732140906.jpg?x=380&y=300&sig=bqMorUja3z1zLExNr37LEw--

http://theunderweardrawer.homestead.com/files/bush_with_hammer.jpg

and

http://www.cah.utexas.edu/db/dmr/image_lg/e_wm_4Y65_f2b_0328_pub.jpg

that remind me that for all of their world-shaking power, American presidents are still goofy middle-aged dads.

(likewise for First Ladies, e.g. the AP photos of Laura Bush in mom jeans from Oct 2005, "helping" out with Katrina rebuilding)

And it's a bipartisan issue, according to the poll, which found that 92 percent of Republicans and 82 percent of Democrats approve making English the country's official language.

So, 82% of Democrats approve, yet 3 out of 4 Democratic Senators voted against? What gives?

Er what other language should the government use? COBOL?

What, are you trying to keep the oldsters in duckets? Wasn't Y2K gravy enough for you people?

(also for the record, I ain't an Arnie supporter but he was against the fence and said so publicly)

I'm sure the actual effects of the bill will be negligible -- but it really disappoints me that people thought it was necessary in the first place.

eh, I stand by my statement. but we can split hairs if you want to.

Huckabee Defends President's Immigration Plan

Embracing Illegals: Companies are getting hooked on the buying power of 11 million undocumented immigrants

I didn't know for instance that it's now often possible for undocumented immigrants to get things like mortgages, insurance, loans, bank accounts and other services that used to require a social security number.

Kudlow (last week) wonders at the fuss. Cella at RedState attempts to wonder back. Winner: nobody.

Malkin despairs, Levin cries, Hewitt whistles past the graveyard and probably is giving cause to just about everyone to strangle him further, which wouldn't surprise me.

The real gem this weekend, though, was from Sensenbrenner, your friend and mine. Thus RedState:

Sensenbrenner referred to those who hire illegals as "21st century slave masters," and he called them "just as immoral as the 19th century slave masters we had to fight a civil war to get rid of."

Of course.

http://progressive.org/mag_danticat0606

not on teh gays. John Harwood of WSJ said on MtP today that
1. the issue is being raised to drive turnout of old people and rural voters
2. Republican polling shows that people under 40 don't care, and
3. they know the issue is dead in "5, 10, 20 years"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/5044428.stm

Last Updated: Saturday, 3 June 2006, 14:14 GMT 15:14 UK
Bush calls for gay marriage ban

US President George W Bush has called for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages.

Mr Bush used his weekly radio address to deliver a plea for the US Senate to formally define marriage as the union of man and woman.

He said the measure was needed because "activist courts" left no alternative.

An amendment stands little chance of being passed but analysts say Republicans see the issue as a vote winner in November's mid-term polls...

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/41721000/jpg/_41721690_gap.jpg

demonstrating that even patriotic software engineers can form loving relationships, i guess.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A growing number of Minuteman Civil Defense Corps leaders and volunteers are questioning the whereabouts of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of dollars in donations collected in the past 15 months, challenging the organization's leadership over financial accountability.
Many of the group's most active members say they have no idea how much money has been collected as part of its effort to stop illegal entry -- primarily along the U.S.-Mexico border, what it has been spent on or why it has been funneled through a Virginia-based charity headed by conservative Alan Keyes.
Several of the group's top lieutenants have either quit or are threatening to do so, saying requests to Minuteman President Chris Simcox for a financial accounting have been ignored.
Other Minuteman members said money promised for food, fuel, radios, computers, tents, night-vision scopes, binoculars, porta-potties and other necessary equipment and supplies never reached volunteers who have manned observation posts to spot and report illegal border crossers.
Gary Cole, the Minutemen's former national director of operations, was chief liaison to the national press corps during the group's April 2005 border watch in Arizona. He was one of the first to raise questions about MCDC finances. He personally collected "tens of thousands of dollars" in donations during the 30-day border vigil. But despite numerous requests -- many directly to Mr. Simcox -- he was never told how much money had been collected or where it went.
"This movement is much too important to be lost over a question of finances," Mr. Cole said. "We can't demand that the government be held accountable for failing to control the border if we can't hold ourselves accountable for the people's money. It's as simple as that."

Reported, I should note, in the Washington Times, so the usual 'that liberal MSM!' reaction which would have otherwise followed hasn't. The Times put up a further editorial and even Malkin's been forced to whimper.

PS. I hope no one here thinks that this issue isn't squarely
about race. I live in Boise (projected to be one of the
nation's largest cities in 10 years) and brown people seem
to be widely despised and viewed as a "drain" on the economy,
by the same cross section of society that benefits from
their exploitation.

And I hope you realize that ALL undocumented immigrants
are victims of exploitation. They're basically a second
class of citizens who are lacking a lot of basic rights,
like access to police or hospitals.

“As Rome passed away, so, the West is passing away, from the same causes and in much the same way. What the Danube and Rhine were to Rome, the Rio Grande and Mediterranean are to America and Europe, the frontiers of a civilization no longer defended.”

So begins a new work of warning from Pat Buchanan.

And this time Buchanan goes all the way.

STATE OF EMERGENCY: THIRD WORLD INVASION AND CONQUEST OF AMERICA streets this week and is designed to jolt readers with stats/analysis of illegal immigration gone dangerously wild.

Buchanan warns: “The children born in 2006 will witness in their lifetimes the death of the West."

One in every twelve people breaking into America has a criminal record.

By 2050, there will be 100 million Hispanics concentrated in the U.S. Southwest.

Between 10 and 20 percent of all Mexicans, Central Americans and Caribbean people have already moved to the United States...

Good thing he juxtaposes those facts together like so.