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December 05, 2003
 Dispossessed
Democrats And Rejected Republicans Unite!
By
Joe Guzzardi
My single-issue
anti-immigration candidacy for
California Governor in the recent
Recall Gray Davis election ran into one unanticipated
problem.
I ran as a
Democrat. I am a (moderate) Democrat.
But many Republicans—although they
applauded my immigration stance—recoiled in disgust.
I was immediately lumped in with the
“crazy tax and spend liberals.”
On immigration, Republicans were
quick to add: “You think
Bush is bad. He’s a hundred times better than any
Democrat would ever be.”
To which I repeatedly replied, “Maybe
yes and maybe no. We only know for a fact that
Bush is terrible.”
(Anyway, what did that have to do
with the
California governor’s race? That was another problem
I ran into: people just don’t understand
symbolic voting—yet.)
I’m no wild-eyed liberal. I like to
keep my money as much as the next fellow. And my
affiliation with the Democratic Party can best be
described as loose—and local.
At the federal level, since coming
of
voting age, I have voted for
Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon (twice),
Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan (twice) and
George H. Bush (once).
I voted for Bill Clinton once. When
he ran for re-election against
Bob Dole, I voted for an independent whose name I
forget. (I didn’t want to waste my vote.)
But since my experiences in the
California governor’s race, I’ve spent considerable time
thinking about
Democrats and immigration reform.
Not all Democrats are hopeless on
immigration. Two Democratic VDARE.COM contributors,
Brenda Walker and
Linda Thom, have written for years about the
importance of reducing immigration.
Other high profile Democrats well
known to VDARE.COM readers are solidly on our side. Among
them are former Colorado Governor and FAIR Advisory Board
Chairman
Richard Lamm,
Eugene McCarthy, one-time Minnesota Senator, 1968
presidential candidate and member of the FAIR Advisory
Board, and radio talk-show host
George Putnam (who describes himself as a
“conservative” Democrat).
Among grassroots Democrats, positive
signs of immigration realism abound. According to a study
titled
“Evenly Divided and Increasingly Polarized: 2004
Political Landscape” and released in November by
the Pew Research Center for The People and The Press:
“About eight-in-ten
Republicans (82%) and somewhat fewer independents and
Democrats (76% each) [Joecomment:!!]
agree with the statement ‘We should restrict and
control people coming into our country to live more than
we do now.’”
Whatever disagreements rank and file
Republicans and Democrats may have, everyone concurs that
the need for immigration reform is urgent.
According to Americans for Better
Immigration, the United States Senate has 12 Democrats
with career grades of C or better on immigration
reduction. Only 17 Republican Senators get C or better.
Georgia’s
Saxby Chambliss, Chair of the Senate Immigration
Subcommittee has a
career voting record of A-. Only one Republican
Senator is above him—Kentucky’s
Jim Bunning, with an A.
Chambliss is joined by Senators
Robert Byrd of West Virginia (A+);
Zell Miller, Georgia,
Ernest Hollings, South Carolina and
Harry Reid, Nevada (all with B);
Blanche Lincoln, Arkansas and
Tim Johnson, South Dakota (B- for both),
Bill Nelson, Florida and
John Breaux, Louisiana (C+) and
Dianne Feinstein; California,
Kent Conrad; North Dakota and
Mark Dayton; Minnesota (each with C).
A recent hopeful sign: There was no Democratic opposition
when
The Basic Pilot Extension Act of 2003, to prevent the
hiring of illegal aliens, passed both the Senate
Judiciary Committee and the Senate on voice votes. Bush
signed the bill into law on December 4th.
Despite these rays of hope, however, the fact remains
that most Democrats have adopted
mass immigration and
pandering to
illegal aliens as their salvation.
But opinions differ on the wisdom of that strategy. I
asked two astute political observers, Governor Richard
Lamm and NumbersUSA.com Executive Director Roy Beck, to
share their views.
Said Lamm:
“I am
not sure that the Democrats are doing the wrong thing for
them in the short term….Politics is about where the new
constituencies are, and who has the energy and
enthusiasm, the new money. The
Christian Right and
Neo-Conservatives are bringing this to the Republican
Party and the only new energy into the Democratic Party
is the
Gays.
“The old
Democratic constituencies of women, environmentalists,
Blacks, Hispanics, is seen as the group to build upon.
The Democratic Party thinks they pay no price for
immigration and want to out-demagogue the Republicans on
the issue. Having lost a lot of the
Southern Whites, and the Ethnic blocks, they see
immigration as bringing them
new voters. The fact that it is against the long
term well being of the country doesn't seem to count….The
organized passionate minority will almost always beat the
distracted majority.”
But
NumbersUSA.com’s Roy Beck sees the Democrats as
shooting themselves in the foot over their failure to
respond to America’s demand for immigration reduction.
According to Beck:
"Democrats may guarantee their minority party status for
the next decade or so if the national party leaders
continue to convey the sense that they side with
extremely narrow
special interests that favor
open borders over the broad public interest of
controlled borders. Recent polls finding that around
three-quarters of Democrats, Independents and Republicans
want less immigration shows just how
out of touch Democratic presidential candidates and
House and Senate leaders are.
“Their
pro-amnesty, pro-high-importation-of-foreign-workers
stance drives off the independent voters they have to
have to win and is accelerating erosion among core,
culturally conservative blue-collar Democrats who already
are becoming swing voters. The latter group's desertion
of the Democrats was one of the reasons why Gray Davis
was booted from office and why
Cruz Bustamante couldn't
come close to carrying the Democratic banner to
victory.
“Democratic leaders' embrace of immigration policies that
drive massive
urban sprawl, threaten the
environment and depress wages particularly of the
working class and
minorities is a violation of core Democratic
principles.
“And
what constituency of votes does the open-borders position
appeal to? Polling of Hispanics, for example, has shown
that immigration stances play very little role in
how Hispanics vote. Of the few Hispanics who are
inclined to vote based on a candidate's immigration
position, more are likely to vote against an open-borders
candidate than for one."
Sadly for the common sense crowd,
none of the dozen enlightened Senate Democrats listed
above is currently a candidate for President of the
United States.
So with November 2004 looming, an
ugly choice may await us—George W.
“Family Values Don’t Stop at the Rio Grande” Bush
or one of the nine Democratic candidates/traitors.
But politics is an unpredictable
game. The immigration issue may well surface anyway. I
continue to think, and hope, that a Democrat might do it.
But right now the message that the
party bosses are sending is very clear: if you want
immigration reform, you will have to forget traditional
party loyalties.
As a beneficiary of the last great
party realignment said in his 1862 State of the Union
Address,
“As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.”
Dispossessed Democrats and Rejected
Republicans unite!—you have nothing to lose but the
contempt of your leaders.
Joe Guzzardi [email
him], an instructor in English at the Lodi
Adult School, has been writing a weekly newspaper column
since 1988. This column is exclusive to VDARE.COM. |
