Dick Morris Spins Mexican Election
07/07/2006
A+
|
a-
Print Friendly and PDF
The Mexican election has a winner—Felipe Calderon of Fox's PAN party, who barely squeaked out a victory over the PRD's Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. The margin of victory was only 243,934 votes, with 15,000,284 for Calderon and 14,756,350 for Lopez . Hardly an overwhelming victory, and not even a majority. However, it was a clean and transparent election, and in accordance with Mexican law, so Calderon is the winner.

The significance of this election for the U.S., and specifically for the U.S. National Question, has already been misread in the mainstream media. I plan to deal with that in an upcoming article.

But yesterday's outrageous piece of spin by professional spin doctor Dick Morris deserves an immediate reply.

Morris' "The Republican Base Backs 'Amnesty' ? assures us that "The Mexican people have just ...embraced free-market capitalism in a dramatic vote."

Once again, provincial Americans are seeing everything through an American lens. Felipe Calderon certainly has a more free-market platform by Mexican standards, but his platform does not correspond to that of a conservative American limited government free marketeer.

Furthermore, Calderon got 35.89% of the vote (vs. 35.31% to Lopez) so that's hardly an overwhelming victory.

It's highly likely that Morris was actually working for Calderon, just as he worked for Fox six years ago, so he has a vested interest in puffing Calderon's free market credentials.

Morris tells us that, in the Mexican campaign, Lopez Obrador "played on popular resentment against American immigration policies." However, as I documented in a previous Memo from Mexico all the Mexican candidates, including Morris' probable paymaster Calderon, support open borders. Calderon joked about the U.S. building a wall on the border and said "we'll jump over it anyway" and said he supports Mexicans in the U.S. "fighting for human rights, labor rights and political rights." Did Morris coin that line ?

I agree that Calderon has a better economic program than Lopez, but he has no more respect for U.S. sovereignty than any other Mexican politician. But then again, it's not the responsibility of Mexican politicians to look out for U.S. sovereignty - that's the responsibility of American politicians. And that's where our real problem lies.

Print Friendly and PDF