The power we have, if we would only realize we have it

John at Powerline, having spent the day of June 28 in Washington D.C. and around the Congress, concludes:

The defeat of the immigration bill was due entirely to the public outcry against it.

I said it in November 2000 when a near-riot by middle-class Republican men in the Dade County government building during the Florida recount made liberal columnist Richard Cohen decide it would be better for liberalism if Bush won the recount than for liberals to face a country full of furious and aroused conservatives. I said it in November 2003 when the conservative uproar over an anti-Reagan made-for-tv movie about the former president forced CBS to withdraw the movie from the network. I said it in October 2005 when the conservative uproar against Harriet Miers forced Miers’s patron-in-chief, President Busheron, to withdraw her nomination. My point was that if conservatives would noisily and stubbornly refuse to accept things that are unacceptable by the light of conservative principle, they could transform the politics and culture of this country in a conservative direction.

And now we have seen another instance of this truth in operation, by far the greatest and most important so far. Slowly, slowly, the lesson (let us hope) is being learned.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 29, 2007 10:31 AM | Send