On immigration, blatantly false logic reigns supreme

This morning’s New York Times reports:

Many Republican lawmakers returned to their home districts in triumph this week, having beat back a comprehensive immigration bill that many of their constituents had denounced as untenable.

But the bill’s demise may have greatly damaged the party’s ability to meet its enduring goal of attracting a large percentage of the growing number of Hispanic voters…

“There may be some short-term gain from this,” said Linda Chavez, … “But in the long term, it is disastrous for the Republican Party.”

Look again at the reference to the GOP’s “enduring goal of attracting a large percentage of the growing number of Hispanic voters.” Note that the Times doesn’t say that the GOP’s goal is to win a majority of the Hispanic voters, it says the GOP’s goal is to win a large percentage of Hispanic voters, like, say, 40 or 45 percent. But if 40 percent of a steadily growing ethnic group votes for the GOP, then 60 percent of that ever-growing group is voting for the Democrats, and the bigger the group becomes, the greater becomes the Democratic advantage over the Republicans. Therefore, if the GOP’s main concern is its own electoral survival (which should not be its main concern, its main concern should be the well-being of America, but I’m going along with the premise of the Times article), it needs to stop the growth of the Hispanic population, not help increase it further through generous immigration policies. But this obvious logical conclusion never occurs to anyone in the GOP and the conservative movement, because that would require stepping outside the prevailing liberal mindset which simply assumes that America is becoming and must become a non-European and predominantly Hispanic country, and therefore the only thing for Republicans and conservatives to do is to adapt themselves to this transformation, instead of, perhaps, resisting it.

Furthermore, we must adjust to this transformation and seek in all ways to please the Hispanic and Mexican immigrants, even if they display attitudes that should be highly objectionable to any American. In the present case, an immigrant group from a bordering country that has revanchist claims on a large part of our country has taken the position, expressed through its voting patterns, opinion polls, and the repeated statements of its recognized leaders, that the condition for that group’s political support for the Republican party is that Republicans must support (a) the legalization of all current illegal aliens from that country and (b) unrestricted future immigration from that country. To the extent that this position does indeed represent the broad feelings of that group, that group has revealed itself as being, not loyal members of our country, but the front rank of an invasion. Therefore the desires of that group should not be accommodated, but questioned and challenged, and the continued demographic growth of that group via immigration should not be encouraged, but halted and reversed.

But again, while these conclusions are evident to logic, we literally cannot see them so long as we remain within the prevailing liberal mindset, which prohibits critical thoughts about the claims of Third-World peoples, and prohibits any positive concern about the well-being of our own people.

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Larry G. writes:

This reminds me of the old ethnic joke where a store owner is complaining to another store owner:

First owner: “I lose a dollar on every item I sell.”
Second owner: “Really? That’s terrible. How are you going to make up the money?”
First owner: “Volume!”

Tim W. writes:

A column by Tamar Jacoby after the 2006 election illustrates the point about the GOP and the Latino vote. The only choice the GOP has is to either lose it in a small landslide or a big one. Note that the Bush pollster highlighted in the article said that Republicans would have to keep their Latino percentages above 40% to stay competitive. Apparently even he wasn’t delusional enough to suggest the GOP could ever top 50%.

It’s considered impressive that President Bush ran better among Latinos than Bob Dole and other Republicans. What’s forgotten is that he still didn’t get a majority of the Latino vote. George Bush in a fellow who has spent an entire political career courting Latinos. He has many Latino friends and even family members. He learned Spanish. He’s done everything since his very start in politics to cater to Latinos, and a comfortable majority of Latinos still rejected him on election day. Yet his strategy is painted as a success.

The creation of the welfare state by Franklin Roosevelt won a majority of black voters for the Democrats. By 1960, the GOP was only getting about a third of their votes. That’s about what Nixon got against Kennedy that year. Over the next decade, Congress passed three major Civil Rights bills. The vast majority of Republicans voted for all three. In fact, more Republicans voted for them than Democrats, as there were still plenty of conservative southern Democrats in those days. By the end of the decade, the GOP was down to around 10% of the black vote despite voting for literally every racial initiative aimed at helping blacks. LBJ’s Great Society, which took the FDR welfare state to new levels, won them over. No amount of pandering by the GOP could ever match that.

It’s funny that in the Jacoby article (linked below) she tells us that Latino voters are family values types who oppose abortion, homosexuality, and the like. Yet the Republican politicians she mentions as reaching out positively for Latino votes are Schwarzenegger, Giuliani, and Pataki, three liberal Republicans who are pro-abortion and pro-gay agenda.

I went to the library and looked up the roll call vote on the 1965 immigration bill, the one which Ted Kennedy assured us wouldn’t change the demographics of America. Not surprisingly, a majority of the Republicans voted for it, particularly in the Senate where I believe only two GOP senators voted “no”. A lot of good that did. Stupid party, indeed.

Charles writes:

If I may add, why does it always seem that when this issue arises, liberal media outlets suddenly become very concerned about Republican electoral prospects and eager to suggest ways for them to perform better? The very fact that they are doing so should be a huge red flag right from the get-go. The false logic of the article is, I think, just a way to avoid having to conclude that Democrats supported the bill because it would have created millions of new voters for them—something that the Times is no doubt aware of, but unwilling to state openly.

Steven Warshawky writes:

It is worth emphasizing that the electoral enchilada remains the white vote. Republicans should stop worrying so much about gaining a few more percentage points of the Hispanic or black vote, and concentrate on gaining a few more percentage points of the white vote. That remains the key to winning elections … at least until the Democrats and their Republican enablers succeed in swamping the country with non-white voters who never will support a conservative political agenda.

Charles continues:

Another thing—even if these charges of “hostile, anti-immigrant rhetoric” were remotely true, given the level of attention the ordinary American pays to national politics, is it really possible to imagine a Mexican family in Los Angeles huddled around the TV set watching C-Span and becoming outraged after hearing some five-minute floor speech by Jeff Sessions? And then proceeding to storm down to the registrar of voters, renounce their Republican party membership and swear to never again support a Republican? About the only national political figure I would expect them to have heard from consistently (as is the case for most Americans) is Bush, who is (surprise) pro-amnesty and a Republican. The Times’ arguments collapse in a heap when one stops to think about them for even a second.

Alex K. writes:

Why, nativist free, wouldn’t Republicans win 90 percent of a natural Republican bloc?

Of course the argument that Latinos are natural Republicans because of their position on abortion, homosexuality, and … well, that’s usually about it apart from vague non-policy gloss terms like “family values” and “Catholic,” the argument is always bad because it assumes that Latinos are really as functionally conservative as that stereotype claims and it assumes that they, unlike blacks, would vote these social issues over ethnic and transfer payment issues.

Since no one in the mainstream press ever challenges immigration propagandists on the above point it’s unlikely that they’d go for this one either, but here goes: Why, if Latinos are natural Republicans, do even the most aggressive proponents of the Republicans-must-court-Latinos school of thought expect the GOP to be unable to get even a solid majority, let alone the massive landslide Dems have with blacks? [LA replies: Brilliant. I don’t remember anyone ever making this point before.] Once the Republicans manage to purge the wicked nativists, a pre-requisite, the immigration boosters claim, of even retaking Bush’s 40-45 percent (many still have not abandoned the 44 percent figure from 2004; I heard Barnes and Kondracke using it just last night), shouldn’t they be able to win the natural Republican bloc by enormous landslides? There’s no anti-Hispanic vibe left to object to, so it’s all smooth, natural-GOP-constituency sailing from there, right?

Why, even in a post-xenophobe GOP, can the Republicans not get more than half of a natural Republican voting bloc?

The only way to square this is that there is some inevitable level of anti-Hispanic vibe that the immigration boosters expect the GOP always to give off. So what they are really saying is that the GOP must find a sweet spot with less xenophobia than it has now but short of the impossible xenophobia-free GOP that might actually own the Latino vote the way Dems own blacks. That’s what they should shoot for as their only hope for electoral survival. And yes that sweet spot, that not-entirely-xenophobia-free but free-enough-to-come-in-around-50 percent, requires an open borders position. That’s a pre-requisite for hitting the sweet spot, it doesn’t preclude a great deal of anti-Hispanic animus (or appearance thereof) remaining in the party and denying the GOP their 90 percent. To be that xenophobe-free is not even considered by the immigration boosters.

Note I am not saying the above business about the sweet spot is the immigration propagandist position. That’s why I’d like to see the question put to them, I don’t know what they’d say. But the above is the only way I can see to reconcile their claim of the natural-GOPness of Latinos with their low expectations for what an open borders GOP could actually get from the Latino voting bloc.

Any other explanation—say, that Latinos would never be too GOP because they also have some natural Democratic tendencies, such as support for affirmative action—cancels out the original claim that Latinos are natural Republicans. Having some natural GOP streaks and some natural Dem streaks does not a natural GOP voter make.

Of course, how Hispanics can still qualify as natural Republicans if Republicans will inevitably always give off some bigoted vibe against them is also fairly obscure to me, so even my sweet spot theory isn’t perfect. But I think it’s the best anyone can do with immigration-propagandist logic.

LA replies:

It occurs to me that the Republicans and conservatives could make the following argument in reply to Alex K.:

Hispanics are indeed conservative, just as we said, and in the long run they will vote Republican. The reason they vote Democratic at present is that they are currently mostly immigrants, and immigrants vote Democratic, even if their deeper values are conservative. However, their children will vote Republican.

I think the reply to that argument would be as follows:

If what you say is true, why then do you never project that Republicans will win a majority of Hispanic votes? If it’s because the unceasing immigration (which you support) keeps the majority of Hispanics as Democrats, then you’ve just blown up your own argument. For your argument to work, you must support a significant reduction of Hispanic immigration. Since you don’t do that, your professed concern about the survival of the Republican party is exposed as false. Your main motive is to surrender to the Hispanicization of America, regardless of its effect on the Republican party and on conservatism.

Larry G. writes:

One of the ideas underlying what Alex K is discussing is that Hispanics would vote more for Republicans if Republicans would become more like Democrats. If Republicans abandoned all their principles and became Democrats, then they might get 50% of the Hispanic vote.

What I think may be missed here is that “Hispanic” is really just a convenient term to group people coming from various countries more or less south of our southern border. It really doesn’t describe a distinct people. “Hispanics” are a racial mixture of native Amerinds, blacks and Europeans in different proportions varying by country. They can be black, brown or white, and their political views can lie anywhere on the political continuum. Hispanics in this country include people who have lived in the same place for centuries while the political jurisdiction changed, and others who just ran across the border yesterday. These are different groups of people, probably racially different, but certainly differing in motivation and outlook.

So the question of what percentage of the “Hispanic” vote Republicans can ever get depends on who we are talking about. If the Hispanic community in the U.S. comes more and more to be dominated by poor border jumpers from Mexico, then it is unlikely they will ever become majority Republican. If we send all the illegals back home to Mexico and “Hispanic” comes to mean old-stock people in Texas, Arizona and New Mexico, anti-Castro Cubans, and folks like Bob Villa, then the Republicans have a chance to capture a majority of that demographic.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 01, 2007 06:17 AM | Send