May 23 2008
The Fight Over The Future Of Conservatism And The GOP Is On
See Update Below
Well, it started back in 2006 when Bush nominated ex-democrat (wasn’t Reagan an ex-dem?) Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court and the far right went ape. Â The far right rose up again on Dubai Ports World’s selection to run some US docks. Â Even though the UAE, home of DPW, hosts the largest US naval port in the Middle East, some felt those Ayrabs were too much of a threat to be allied to have majority ownership (no dock hands of course) in a company that loads and unloads ships. Â The ignorance on how things work demonstrated at the time was stunning – and ugly.
Then came a real issue, a national issue. Â Then came comprehensive immigration reform and the far right went ballistic and called all who disagree with them traitors, un-American and worse. Â Compounding their disgusting behavior towards political allies (acting like Sadrists to Maliki’s Shiites) they basically started lying to themselves and America about what was in the bill, what was the utility of existing laws, and equating all immigrants with the few bad apples all populations have. Â In the irony of all ironies the bad apples they held up as examples of the evils of immigration were the very ones they insured would stay around as they stopped a bill that would deport criminals! Â Great thinking there.
Now that issue is back because all those who opposed comprehensive immigration reform have fallen by the wayside since 2006 and 2007. Â The standard bearer of the hard line crowd on immigration, Tom Tancredo, lost his bid for President and his seat in Congress. Â Many others followed his example and the one left standing is John McCain. Â McCain, like Bush and many other republican conservatives (as opposed to ‘true’ conservatives), supported the comprehensive bills proposed in 2006 and 2007. Â He supports it now. Bush has done more than any other President to seal our borders, turning back 1.3 million illegals last year alone. Â There is no more catch and release plan. Â Caught and sent home.
Now is the time to deal with registering workers and those who have been here a long time making a living as undocumented workers. Â Now is the time to register foreign workers and remove the underground economy that can not only hide 20 million illegal immigrants for decades, but hide cells of terrorists. Â It is time to step away from the fringes on the right and left (who have unrealistic desires with no public backing) and deal with the problem realistically. Â And that is what McCain is going to do:
In yet another sign of his pivoting toward the general election, Senator John McCain said at a roundtable with business leaders here today that comprehensive immigration reform should be a top priority for the next president.
Mr. McCain’s willingness to address the issue was striking given how the topic became something of a third-rail for Republican presidential candidates during the primary.
The response by the far right was predictable and swift – and signaled the final chapter in the purity wars of the conservative movement. Â Either the purists win and the GOP goes into terminal minority status or the broader coalition wins and progress is made through compromise and teamwork. Â Personally I already know the answer because politics in a democracy only divvies out power to those who make broad alliances and who can compromise. Â Ideologues who demand everyone bow to them always end up on the margins.
If McCain wins he will have made clear that the GOP and conservative movement can achieve success without the ‘true’ conservatives. Â I am an independent conservative. Â I have resisted joining the GOP for decades because of the purists. Â It is a combination of being repulsed by their arrogance and completely unimpressed with their solutions. Â Arrogance needs to be backed up with something, and there is not a lot there in many cases (not all of course, and I am focused on leaders and leading voices). Â I actually have no dog in this fight accept to find the best opposition to liberal policies. Â I don’t look for the purist conservative because the world changes to much and too fast to lock into one concept. Â It is a false sense fo security some seek in defining rigid dogma. Â
It is not my path, nor the path of many. Â Who will win? Â In the long run the ‘true’ conservatives will lose. Â the question is whether a short term success can be won when fighting the liberals on the left and the fringes on the right. Â I think this is the year of the centrists where America shrugs off the fringes and marches to the center to get some problems solved. Â
Update: Â Some other folks people should be listening to on this matter of whether there is a conservative GOP (big tent) or only ‘true’ conservatives (pup tent). Â The Anchoress, who is leaving the GOP, and Harold Hutchison, who links other voices who have decided the purists are not the future.
If I may be so blunt as to remind those on the right that we are at war with religious fanatics who demand purity to their views at gunpoint. Â I am not equating Islamo Fascism with ‘true’ conservatives. Â I am only pointing out that a country which is tired of the war on fanatics, but sees no path out except to keep soldiering on, may take its frustrations out on the next best example they can find and impact. Â
There is too much demand to toe-the-line on ideological grounds for this nation to stomach anymore. Â By far the most cancerous and destructive variant comes from the Jihadis. Â But the endless griping between far left and far right is not earning respect or support either. At some point America is saying enough to the purists, we are going back to the respect on peaceful coexistence of diversity and impurity.
The reason the far right is losing so badly is they have not given up their purity wars. Â We are a war weary country and would trade diversity and peace over anger and fighting any day of the week. Â Just as the Iraqis are settling into their diverse, common ground to end the real fighting there, America is doing the same. With or without the fringes.
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It’s good to see some people standing up for what is right.
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Looks like AJ’s worrying about his “Centrist Movement” again. We haven’t seen someone push a bogus position this hard since OJ’s tireless efforts on the golf course looking for Nicole’s murderer.
😉
I hear so many people twisting Reagan. Yes, HE had conservative values BUT he didn’t criticize others for NOT having them. He never campaigned to shove those values down people’s throats. THAT is why so many Democrats crossed over and voted for him. He campaigned on conservative economic and defense values and left the social issues alone. He campaigned on a platform of getting government’s hand out of our pocket and being proud to be American again and that our values were a good thing. Reagan signed off on the largest immigration amnesty ever and people should read his shining beacon on the hill speech.
Reagan was TOLERANT of other social values. But he was NOT tolerant of the government thinking that the people’s money belonged to government or that America was to blame for the world’s ills.
The worst distorter of the Reagan legacy that I hear daily is Hannity. I wish he would go back and read the papers from that era and recall what OTHER Republicans were saying about Reagan. They pretty much hated him. George HW Bush ran for President against Reagan in 1980 and called Regan’s economic plan “voodoo economics”.
People … we are not going to become a fascist state. It is a physical impossibility to rip literally millions of people out of the workforce and ship them out of the country. It just isn’t ever going to happen and the harder one words toward that end, the more likely the OPPOSITE will happen.
If anything, I think PoliBlog’s on to something.
http://www.poliblogger.com/?p=13698
If there was truly support for the hard line that Malkin and Hawkins demanded, why is McCain the nominee? Why has Chris Cannon managed to survive two attempts to primary him (2004 and 2006), winning by pretty decisive margins?
If anything, it seems a majority of Republican primary voters back President Bush on this issue over Malkin, Hawkins, and Tancredo.
CP, Just playing Devil’s advocate here:
Immigration is a big social issue,
Reagan never shoved anything down anyone’s throat because he knew how to sell the conservative viewpoint but he was no compromising with any leftist idealogy,
George HW Bush was a centrist,
McCain is a centrist,
Enforcing one’s laws and protecting one’s sovereignty is hardly fascist,
Reagan may have been tolerant of other’s positions but in no way did that mean he would accept them,
Some of us lived through the Reagan era and certainly don’t need the media archives to tell us what actually happened. I assume Hannity lived through it as well.
Just some food for thought.
“Enforcing one’s laws and protecting one’s sovereignty is hardly fascist”
Agreed, but entering the US without following proper procedure isn’t a criminal offense. It is a breech of regulations but not a crime. Now, if you are deported and return, THEN you have committed a crime. The first time you are found here you have a right to a hearing and the judge can agree to allow you to stay. There is no requirement in statute that you MUST be deported.
The simple fact is that if a migrant has been here, learned english, has held a steady job, has stayed out of trouble and payed his taxes, I don’t have a problem with them staying. Those are the kind of people I WANT in the USA. You know what the fastest growing population of illegals currently is in the US? People from India who come here on a legitimate visa and stay. Where are you going to place THAT fence?
I was in the military during both the Carter and Reagan administrations. I was paying close attention.
CP, conservatives have no problem with “legal” immigration.
Your Indian analogy is a good one in that it points out the very flaw in the amnesty crowd that wishes to change the laws favoring one nation’s immigrant from another. Conservatives believe all immigrants should be treated the same…legally without any preference to their race, country of origin, or numbers.
since I’m too busy all day to note the “distortions” in your first paragraph alone…I will have to wait. But here’s a little tidbit on McCain’s “poorly worded immigration statement.”
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/05/23/team-mccain-immigration-statement-poorly-worded/
And by the way:
“Then came a real issue, a national issue. Then came comprehensive immigration reform and the far right went ballistic and called all who disagree with them traitors, un-American and worse. Compounding their disgusting behavior towards political allies (acting like Sadrists to Maliki’s Shiites)”
You have officially fallen over the cliff.
Also, still nothing from you on the language in that comprehensive immigration bill where the new laws would be followed and couldn’t be overturned by the judiciary…could that be because it doesn’t exist?
McCain HAS to keep the hard right on board. Otherwise, he’ll leak fatal numbers of voters who will either stay home or vote for a hard right candidate.
As right blogger John Hawkins said:
Well, of course he’s a liar, he’s Republican, I’m just surprised one of you guys could admit it. Chimed in right-wing darling Michelle Malkin:
The coup de gras comes from another right wing pundit, Greg Ransom:
.
Some candidate: a senescent senior citizen whose own party labels him a liar and a betrayer and a man without honor or integrity. And you think the Democrats are the ones with a problem???
AJ,
Some of us see very clearly your strategy…
If McCain wins it was because he didn’t need the far right. If Obama wins it’s because the far right wouldn’t get on board with McCain. Pretty slick…either way you win. It couldn’t possibly be that maybe those “centrists” or conservative democrats ended up voting for Obama instead of your “centrist” candidate, or that all of the far right still voted for McCain and it still wasn’t enough to win.
I know you say you’re an independent conservative…but you have said many times in the past that you didn’t leave the dems, they left you, and you didn’t leave the conservatives, they left you. Did you ever think that maybe neither of you left each other, that you were never one of them to begin with? That you’ve always been a “middle of the roader” and that neither party would change to suit you?
McCain has never said that he does not intend to secure the borders or enforce laws. The fact that he made a statement about immigration without reassuring the hardliners {yet again} that he is serious about immigration does not mean he is an open border fanatic.
Most Americans support some sort of immigration reform. If they were like Hannity or Tancredo or Malkin on this issue, conservative Republicans would not be a minority today.
So while some people refuse to see the obvious shift in politics away from the right, the voters themselves have made it plain. Conservatives need to accept this reality and adapt to it. That is how politicians like Reagan were able to succeed.
And I agree with crosspatch when it comes to Reagan. Personally I think the man would be outraged to see the way some people on the right have used his memory to advance their own agenda. It is not something he would have done to someone else’s legacy. He was no fanatic.
whippet:
And it is plain to see the strategy of many on the far right: Do as we say or we sit home and pout.
And if the Democrats win, who cares.
The following is from Morrisey at Hot Air , the first two paragraphs are a statement from McCain:
Senator Kennedy and I tried very hard to get immigration reform, a comprehensive plan, through the Congress of the United States,†he said. “It is a federal responsibility and because of our failure as a federal obligation, we’re seeing all these various conflicts and problems throughout our nation as different towns, cities, counties, whatever they are, implement different policies and different programs which makes things even worse and even more confusing.â€
He added: “I believe we have to secure our borders, and I think most Americans agree with that, because it’s a matter of national security. But we must enact comprehensive immigration reform. We must make it a top agenda item if we don’t do it before, and we probably won’t, a little straight talk, as of January 2009.â€
***************
McCain never pledged to give up comprehensive immigration reform. He pledged to secure the borders first, but even in the extensive quotes that John has in his post, he never promised to stop seeking a comprehensive solution for illegal immigration afterwards. Even in this sequence, he talks about border security first. I don’t see this as “breaking his security pledgeâ€, as John puts it.
John and I have debated this before, and I know him to be an honest, impassioned, and effective advocate of strict enforcement policies, and opposed to any kind of normalization. If he chooses not to vote for McCain, he will make that choice with integrity and commitment. But not voting is a choice with consequences in a two-party system, and those consequences will impact a lot more than border security.
After November 5th, either Barack Obama or John McCain will be President. We can be politically correct and claim that Bob Barr or Ralph Nader could somehow overcome the combined weight of the Republican and Democratic parties, but realistically they can at best act as spoilers. Uncast potential votes for either candidate makes it more likely their opponent will win; conservatives who sit on their hands make it more likely that Obama will win the White House.
Does anyone believe that Barack Obama would be more committed to border security than John McCain? Not if they’ve paid attention. Obama is at best the same as McCain on immigration, and more likely to acquiesce to Democrats like Dick Durbin on another full-blown amnesty. Even if we consider that a wash, where else does Obama look better than McCain to conservatives?
* Spending? No. Obama wants to eliminate the Bush tax cuts and increase federal spending by another $280 billion a year, with an eye towards nationalizing health care.
* The war on terror and national security? Please! Obama wants to dismantle our nuclear deterrent, end work on missile defense, and do a full-scale retreat from Iraq just as the country has begun standing on its own for security.
* Foreign policy? Only if conservatives have suddenly discovered a desire for direct meetings with sponsors of international terrorism like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Castro brothers, Bashar Assad, and Hugo Chavez. Even Obama’s own allies think this a bad idea.
* Abortion? Obama voted to support partial-birth abortion.
* Judges? Obama voted against the confirmation of John Roberts, putting him in the minority of Democrats.
Whippet, absolutely correct! I would add that not only does AJ think he can have it both ways, he never bothers to ask himself if his centrist dogma is good for the Republican party or even the country! History shows that no movement to the left is ever good for the country or the party because it only engenders more leftism. Also by taking this absurd position, he casts the results of the past 40 years of presidental election results out the window in hopes of making his point. It never occurs to him that what is turning the American public off isn’t the conservative position but the rejection of conservative principles. His position also fails to take into account that most conservatives consider it their duty to vote and will be there for McCain anyway. For someone constantly chirping about compromise, amity, and unity, our host certainly does everything in his power to thwart it. An awful lot of one-sided hate there for someone who claims to be independent.
AJ
I have to disagree to some extent on Miers.
I don’t believe Bush really intended to carry her through to nomination.
I believe that he wanted to use her as bait to draw out all the players into exposing their positions before he then dropped the bluff and moved to his real nominee after she rightly fell by the wayside.
The rage from conservatives was simply due to the the fact that we had waited for so long for a nomination opening and then to look like it was going to be squandered on a person of little or no qualification for the position when people like Roberts were sitting in line was the issue.
Ahh here we go again
Even though I think AJ could perhaps get his point across by using a bit more sugar and less vinegar he is right. He is also I know reacting to the real hurt a lot of felt during the immigration balttes and the assorted things he mentioned.
What AJ is talking about is not really “Centrist”. There were many valid views on the immigration debate. One cannot really call people like Rep Flake to Jon Kyl , ot Brownback and Icons like the WSJ and the Cato Insititue “Centrist. Those all supported immigration reform. NO matter how many times people shouted McCain/KENNEDY or AMNESTY it did not change those facts.
The people that oppose Immigration reform have to deal with the Republican Exit polls we saw from the primary season. We see still after 3 years of debate people are divided. THe Hardline position of deport them all big and small policy rarely got over 50 percent. Even in the Redest of States
It did not help Romney that he was a hardliner. Even when my guy , Huckabee took a more hardline(which I thought was mistake) it not help him. Even the people’s allegiance to the hardline position is shaky. When it was largely a three man race in the Republican Primary McCain on a consistent basis got 25 percent of the deport them all crowd.
I suggest iot is time to compromise. I also suggest we quit fighting each other and get McCain and the rest of the GOP folks elected. We had a primary. It is over!!! LEt us all get on the same team. We can battle this out again another time
Merlin:
However, one would think that after Roberts and Alito they might stop crying.
Besides, if they let Obama win, what kind of judges will they get from him?