Immigration: Growling even at NRO!
07/13/2005
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Last week, John Derbyshire maintained his standing as the main intellectual content provider writing on NRO's The Corner blog by raising the issue of the "birthright citizenship" misinterpetation of the 14th Amendment. This of course is the jugular of the effort to transform America. That is why VDARE.com carried what still appears to be the definitive discussion of the matter almost four years ago, and why NRO's Neocon Commissar John Podhoretz immediately rushed to repress the discussion.

A reader today takes encouragement from the primitive nature of the Podhoretz response, which has also been ably satirized by Steve Sailer. But the resulting interchange did produce a couple of noteworthy postings. Mark Krikorian seems to be forgetting the cosmetic nature of his position as the magazine's immigration writer:

Donations to the GOP may well not be down, but the rank and file remains really, really PO'ed over the president's immigration policies. Several kids working in the RNC's phone banks calling existing donors tell me that the number-one gripe they hear from donors — by far, day after day — is immigration. The RNC has even prepared a helpful script, telling the phone workers to blame the "liberal media" for obscuring the president's genuine opposition to illegal immigration...An important role for a conservative party is to constructively articulate and channel public anger over policies imposed on them by the elite — like busing, affirmative action, abortion on demand, etc. Part of the reason for the vitriol of John Pod's correspondents may well be that on immigration, the national organs of the GOP are part of the problem.
(My emphasis)

John Derbyshire supplies some more evidence:

The Republican faithful ...have a high threshold of tolerance for abuse, but there comes a point where they growl.

I witnessed this in person at a panel debate last year on an NR cruise. I was up on the stage with, among others, Dick Morris, at that time an Open Borders guy (he has since turned his coat, I think). The audience were all NR fans. The immigration issue came up, and Dick launched into some Open Borders boilerplate. Up from the audience, for the first and only time in that session, came a low growl...

Podhoretz needs to work harder!

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