Trends in Collision

Any objective assessment of America’s direction over the past forty years, during which time mass nonwhite immigration has shrunk America’s historic white majority from 89 percent of the population to 67 percent, with Spanish names such as Gonzalez recently entering the ranks of the most common American surnames along with Smith and Wilson, tells us that things do not look good for the future of our country as a unitary cultural entity. The latest blow to our prospects for surviving in our historical national form was the shocking agreement by the Republican candidates to participate in a Spanish-language presidential debate—the single most dispiriting development on the immigration/multiculturalism front in many years.

Yet, at the same time, dramatic signs of a renewed pro-national, pro-Western consciousness keep springing up. Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs launched a hyper-politically correct attack on the Belgian immigration restrictionist party Vlaams Belang and on Paul Belien of Brussels Journal, thinking he could ostracize them from the anti-Jihad movement through ascriptions of guilt by association, and to his shock found himself being opposed and condemned by many of his own allies in the mainstream conservative movement.

Meanwhile, New York governor Elliot Spitzer, as arrogant and thuggish a liberal as you could imagine, announced his intention to issue an executive order that would require the state motor vehicle bureau to issue drivers licenses to illegal aliens. Spitzer, like Johnson, viciously smeared everyone who disagreed with him, thinking he could roll over all opposition. But then, to his utter shock, again like Johnson, he found himself politically isolated, with the mainstream establishment including his fellow Democrats almost unanimously standing against him. Last week, Spitzer admitted defeat and formally withdrew the licensing plan.

Spitzer’s defeat was an echo of the fight over the Bush-Kennedy-McCain immigration bill last spring, in which its promoters, calling all critics of the bill racists and anti-Americans, arrogantly thought they could push this insane and radical bill through the Senate without even committee hearings, but instead their bill to kill America was itself killed by the greatest wave of grassroots lobbying in modern American history.

So, on one hand we see unprecedented retreat and surrender to the anti-national, anti-Western forces, and on the other hand we see unprecedented opposition to them. These conflicting trends make it difficult to know where we are really heading. But at the very least we know that there is life in us—increasing life—to resist our national and civilizational destruction.

As for the Spitzer degringolade, here is the New York Post’s editorial and news story on it from last week:

ELIOT IN FREE FALL

November 14, 2007—Gov. Spitzer’s spectacular political crash-and-burn, reflected in a stunning Siena College poll yesterday, seems to have had an immediate effect: The governor today will deep-six his ludicrous driver’s-licenses-for-illegal-aliens proposal.

Finally!

The governor is less than seven weeks from the start of his second year, and he’s facing gargantuan challenges: a brittle economy, a red-ink budget and an emboldened Legislature just raring for an election-year spending spree.

Spitzer needs to restore public confidence in himself and his administration; abandoning the license scheme is a good start—but it’s only a start.

How far has Spitzer fallen?

Elected a year ago with 69 percent of the vote (and the widest victory margin in state history), Spitzer can now claim support from just 25 percent of voters. Almost twice that, 49 percent, say they’d back “someone else,” were the next gubernatorial election held today.

Also, Spitzer’s job-performance rating is now 2-1 negative. And nearly half of all voters (45 percent) think the state is headed in the wrong direction.

“Eliot Spitzer’s standing with voters has fallen faster and further than any politician in recent New York history,” Siena spokesman Steven Greenberg said.

Republicans may be chortling. Remember how Spitzer vowed to break the GOP’s lock on the Senate and topple Majority Leader Joe Bruno?

But no one, not even the GOP, should rejoice. Way back on July 5, when The Post’s Fredric U. Dicker reported the news of the administration’s Dirty Tricks campaign against Bruno, it was clear that a crisis was on the horizon.

How quickly it arrived.

Spitzer tried his damnedest to change the subject with the wacky plan to give illegals driver’s licenses.

Well, he changed the subject, all right: The Siena poll showed 70 percent of voters oppose it, and 52 percent say it has lowered their view of him.

And now it is to be history.

Meanwhile, Albany is about to kick off new budget and legislative cycles. The state is facing billions in spending shortfalls. Major initiatives are sitting dormant. Government, frankly, is paralyzed, lacking coherent guidance from above.

How can Spitzer recover?

Yes, by dropping the license plan.

But, equally important, by urging his handpicked head of the Public Integrity Commission, which is probing the Dirty Tricks case, to refer it to Attorney General Andrew Cuomo for an expeditious resolution under the state’s Executive Law.

The AG would be able to subpoena sworn testimony, even from Spitzer—no doubt an embarrassing, if not downright risky, prospect for the governor. But it beats a continuation of the death-of-a-thousand-cuts he’s suffered since July.

The numbers say it all.

And dropping the licenses for illegals is only a start.

* * *

RECORD PLUNGE IN POLL

By FREDRIC U. DICKER State Editor

November 14, 2007—ALBANY—Gov. Spitzer’s once-sky-high popularity has fallen faster and further than that of any governor in modern state history as a result of his driver’s-licenses-for-illegals plan and the ongoing Dirty Tricks Scandal, according to a devastating new poll released yesterday.

The Siena College Research Institute survey—conducted before the revelation that Spitzer is scrapping the plan—found that New Yorkers, by an overwhelming 64 percent to 33 percent, disapprove of the job the governor is doing, and only 25 percent think he should be re-elected.

In addition, by 70-25 percent voters said they were against Spitzer’s effort to grant driver’s licenses to illegal aliens.

And by almost the same amount, 65-28 percent, voters opposed the governor’s revised three-tier driver’s-license plan, according to the poll.

“Eliot Spitzer’s standing with voters has fallen faster and further than any politician in recent New York history,” said Siena spokesman Steven Greenberg.

“A year ago, Eliot Spitzer won 69 percent of the votes for governor, and in January, 75 percent of voters gave him a favorable rating.

“All that’s changed in a New York minute,” Greenberg continued, adding, “It’s breathtaking and dramatic in terms of his fall.”

Greenberg attributed Spitzer’s enormous unpopularity to massive public opposition to his license plan, as well as concerns over the Dirty Tricks Scandal, in which top aides to the Democratic governor used the State Police in an effort to damage his chief Republican rival, Joseph Bruno.

The poll found that just 41 percent of New Yorkers view Spitzer favorably—compared with 54 percent who had a positive view of the governor a month ago, before the development of widespread opposition to his license plan.

Forty-six percent said they viewed Spitzer negatively, compared with just 36 percent who held that view a month ago.

Spitzer’s job rating was low even among heavily Democratic New York City voters, where just 35 percent viewed him positively compared to and 62 percent who were negatively.

City voters also turned thumbs down on Spitzer when asked if he should be re-elected.

Just 28 percent of city voters said they’d support his re-election while 40 percent said they wanted “someone else” and 32 percent were unsure.

In sharp contrast, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat and potential challenger to Spitzer in a party primary, received a record-high approval rating, with 56 percent of voters rating him favorably compared to just and 27 percent who viewed him unfavorably.

Spitzer blamed opposition to his license plan for his poor poll showing, noting, “This is an issue that has touched a nerve in the public and we’re trying to address that in a thoughtful, modulated way, and then we’ll see where we go.”

- end of initial entry -

Bill in Maryland writes:

“..New York governor Elliot Spitzer … announced his intention to issue an executive order that would require the state motor vehicle bureau to issue drivers licenses to illegal aliens. .. But then, to his utter shock, again like Johnson, he found himself politically isolated, with the mainstream establishment including his fellow Democrats almost unanimously standing against him. Last week, Spitzer admitted defeat and formally withdrew the licensing plan.”

There is a mystery here: it seems that the people of New York, who voted for Spitzer in full knowledge of what he was like, are more exercised by the offer of licenses to illegals than they are by the presence of illegals in the country in first place. The same was true of California, where governor Gray Davis tried to give licenses to illegals and lost to Schwarzenegger in the recall election. Can anyone explain this?

LA replies:

It’s a species of the Unprincipled Exception. Liberals go along with every kind of liberal insanity, then suddenly, for some unknown reason, without debate, an instant consensus forms that THIS particicular manifestation of liberalism (whatever it may be) has gone “too far” and must be opposed. There is no discussion about what makes THIS manifestation so much worse than the others, it’s just a concatenation of events and accumulated feelings that tells everyone that THIS has gone too far and so all the liberals gang up against THIS liberal manifestation with the same unanimity with which they supported all the previous manifestations of liberalism that led up to THIS one.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 19, 2007 09:05 PM | Send