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The Democrats’ Trump Card
President Obama seems on the verge of the most abject diplomatic capitulation in American history – to Iran, our bitterest enemy – and Republicans are arguing about Donald Trump? The prospect of a deal with Iran is dumbfounding and infuriating, as the U.S. held all the cards in the protracted negotiations and yet executed serial surrenders to the Iranians, rather like a courtier bowing his way backwards from a monarch.
While the Obama Administration is paving the way for a possible mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv or New York in the near term, we’re all tying ourselves in knots about what Donald Trump said about Mexicans. The Democrats seem to have a Trump card.
Immigration arouses tremendous rage among both left and right. The left, always panting to push grievance buttons, transforms illegal immigrants into yet another clientele – as if those who enter the country illegally are entitled to legal status, benefits, and even citizenship. They establish “sanctuary cities” as if enforcing immigration laws amounts to persecution.
This drives the right crazy. You don’t break into my house and then demand the keys, they fume. While I like a good brawl as much as the next person, it seems that Trump is the answer only if the question is: Why can’t we get more oafish egomaniacs into politics? Just when the Republican Party needs finesse and sensitivity when discussing immigration; just when it needs to focus on issues that unite all sectors of the electorate including Hispanic and Asian voters; it gets a blowhard with all the nuance of a grenade.
Trump’s smear about Mexican immigrants was about as far away as you can get from Ronald Reagan’s “Hispanics are Republicans, they just don’t know it.” He tarred most Mexican immigrants as drug-dealers, criminals, and rapists, allowing only as an afterthought that some may be good people. He claimed to have discussed the matter with border guards. (Would those officers please step forward?) In any case, crude and vulgar people always preen that they are brave truth tellers.
Trump has achieved his objective – making himself the center of attention — but he has subtracted from our sum total of knowledge about the immigration issue. According to an analysis of Census Bureau data by the Immigration Policy Center, only 1.6 percent of immigrant males between the ages of 18-39 are incarcerated, compared with 3.3 percent of the native-born. There are terrible stories of immigrants committing crimes, and it’s certainly fair to demand that criminal aliens be deported with dispatch. Sanctuary cities are a disgrace. But just as Dylann Roof doesn’t represent white people, Mexican rapists don’t represent anyone other than themselves either.
Oddly, the entire brouhaha over immigration may be misplaced. If demographers are correct, the great wave of immigration from Latin America is over. As Jonathan V. Last noted in the Los Angeles Times, birth rates are plunging throughout our hemisphere. Between 1970 and 2005, Mexico was the source for roughly two-thirds of the million or so immigrants who entered the United States yearly. When this huge migration began, Mexico’s birthrate was 6.72 children per woman. It has since fallen to 2.1, and it continues to decline. Last writes: “Countries with fertility rates below the replacement level tend to attract immigrants, not send them.” And voilà, since 2005 net migration from Mexico has been zero.
The Census Bureau reports that starting in 2013, the country that sent the most immigrants to the U.S. was China with 147,000, followed by India with 129,000, and Mexico with 125,000 (an equal number of Mexicans living here went home). Other Latin American nations whose fertility rates have already dropped below replacement – Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, and Costa Rica – send virtually no immigrants north.
Some immigrants will doubtless continue to arrive. As Tamar Jacoby of ImmigrationWorks USA put it, “Once they see that you don’t have to bribe the police here, they’re satisfied.” There remains much to recommend the U.S. as a destination, and we’ve been lucky that our neighbors to the south roughly share our religion and civilization (unlike the Muslim immigrants who’ve flooded Europe during the same period). But with world fertility rates declining, the U.S. may face an unexpected problem – too few immigrants. In 1960, half of the U.S. workforce consisted of high school dropouts. Today, it’s only 6 percent. Yet the jobs for low skilled workers – busboys, chambermaids, food processing – remain. If employers cannot find workers for those jobs, there will be fewer managerial and executive positions for native-born Americans.
It’s a complex subject that deserves grown-up discussion – exactly what Trump and his claque preclude.
Published in Foreign Policy
I understand the sense that we’re losing the country — that multiculturalism, socialism, and soft-headedness are daggers pointed at the heart of our country. I feel that too. I just locate the trouble on the left, not with immigrants per se.
In any case, as I wrote, it seems quite possible that the great immigration wave from Latin America (including Mexico) is over. If that’s true — and I challenge anyone to point to a country whose birthrates have declined and then bounced back up — we may be fighting the last war.
To be clear, I oppose illegal immigration. We must control our borders and it isn’t fair to those who wait patiently to come legally to benefit those who jump the line. I favor temporary worker visas, fingerprinting foreign visitors, changing the loophole that permitted thousands of children to come over the border last year, using the national guard and military if necessary to keep drug dealers and other criminals from crossing the border, etc. I also think we must come up with a method for tracking those who overstay their visas (estimated 40 percent of illegals).
Finally, here is the source for my numbers on criminality among immigrants.
http://immigrationpolicy.org/special-reports/criminalization-immigration-united-states
I also think that Republicans and conservatives must speak of Hispanics as friends and potential voters rather than as problems to be solved or contained. Hispanic voters are a large constituency — but even more important is the message that Republicans send to other voters, including native born whites and blacks, when they sound xenophobic. It’s a turn off. We should be making the case that all voters are welcome in the Republican Party and would be better off under Republican policies. We should be praising the contributions of immigrants to the country. On this score, I’m liking the way Rick Perry is sounding this week.
I understand that many do not agree, but please refrain from ascribing motives.
Finally someone taking on Trump and the illegal immigration issue. Kudos to Mona. Trump is a blowhard demogogue. In addition here’s Trump from 2012 on Romney:
and
Quotes taken from here: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/07/trump_in_2012_attacked_romney_for_being_too_tough_on_illegals.html
This whole immigration issue is way overblown. Yes, we need to control the border, but following Trump’s convenient demogoguery will lead us to lose another election.
Absolutely. George W. Bush won his elections because he got 40-ish percent of the hispanic vote. Romney lost because he got 20-ish percent of the hispanic vote. At the rate Trump is going he’s going to get less than 10% of the hispanic vote.
Where is the winning electoral strategy going down this illegal immigration path? I don’t see it. Conservatives have to get over this. Conservatives have to accept the fact that hispanics are here and deal with it. You have to attract them to us, not repell them away.
We’ll leave that to you.
Don’t you think this comes rather close to equating “illegal” with “hispanic’?
Donald Trump, 2012: Romney’s Policy of Self-Deportation Was “Crazy,” “Maniacal;” Romney Lost All the Votes of Those “Inspired to Come Into this Country”
—Ace
The Art of the Deal means selling what the public’s buying.
When he had nothing to gain either way from his policy, he said that self-deportation was maniacal, crazy, mean-spirited, and “very tough” .
Now that he wants your vote he’s “severely conservative” on the issue.
Hey, you all believe what you all gonna believe. You do you, as they say.
I am skeptical that the Hispanic vote had anything to do with Bush winning or Romney losing. I also think Hispanics vote Democratic because polls show they agree with Democrats on most of the issues. Immigration is also not one of their highest concerns. Hispanics also vote Democratic because Democrats are very good at playing the ethnic grievance game and using the treasury and courts as a racial spoils system. All the policies they advocate are based on assumption that America is a racist society run by whites and you need to vote your ethnicity to protect yourself. Why else would Asians vote Democratic? Republicans try valiantly to appeal to voters beyond race, and they are at a decided disadvantage because their biggest supporters are white voters, and heaven knows they cannot make racial appeals on that basis, unlike Democrats. I am also somewhat tired of hearing that Hispanics are natural Republicans given things like “family values”. If that were the case Muslims would vote for Republicans in huge numbers given issues like SSM and abortion. I just think the MSM and Democrats will keep us divided, and further ethnic fragmentation via Third World immigration will make things worse for us.
Perhaps, but that’s how the demogoguery comes across. Obviously there’s a relationship between the anti illegal immigrant rhetoric and how hispanics vote.
To be clear, I’m for immigration reform that stops illegal crossing of the border. But this is not the number 1 issue, so let’s put it on the backburner as part of an agenda. All the candidates support such reform, everyone of them. The distinctions between them are minimal and Congress through legislation will ultimately determine the details. It’s during those debates where we have to force the issues. As I see it, that’s the prudent way to go forward, if we want to win elections of course.
Are hispanics incapable of distinguishing between anti-illegal rhetoric and anti-hispanic rhetoric?
How are the republican’s going to win with a message of “[CoC] off and die” to their core voters and their families?
Because that is, in fact, the message here. No amount of mendacity changes that.
What caused Romney to lose 20% of the hispanic vote off of Bush’s total? And Romney was more moderate than Bush on almost every issue other than immigration. I suspect some are able and some aren’t, and most get repelled by the nastiness of the tone. The other candidates have all spoken on the need for stopping illegal immigration, and but none that I’m aware elevated it to their #1 issue, and mostly all with a decent tone. Trump went over the line. Speak about the pourous border and its ramifications; speaking about Mexicans violates a sense of decency.
Your numbers are flat-out wrong. As Nate Silver, Sean Trende and others have demonstrated, even if Romney had won 70% of the Hispanic vote, he still would have lost. Republicans are the “white party,” plain and simple, and they didn’t get enough white votes in 2012.
Possible. I’m sure it wasn’t the sole reason for Romney’s loss, but I still don’t see how you win by driving voters away. We’ve lost the culture war to the young and middle aged middle class and up. Hispanics can be attracted to cultural conservative values.
We need a new electoral model/strategy to win national elections. We lost the vote in 2000 but luckily won in the electoral college, we barely won in 2004, got slaughtered in 2008, and even though Obama was one of the most incompetant presidents running for re-election, he still won in 2012. We’ve written off California, and the turning point was when Pete Wilson went anti hispanic. We’ve written off other states. This country is no longer culturally conservative, and I’m not sure it’s fiscally conservative either. This has been going on a long time now, and I’m not even bringing up the 1992 and 1996 losses. We need a new stategy. We can’t afford to drive voters away.
No. Pete Wilson was losing his race in 1994 until he embraced Prop 187, which won overwhelmingly with 59% of the vote. Prop 187 was hugely popular in California.
Also, Romney did not lose 20% off Bush’s Hispanic vote total. Bush won (maybe) 40% of the Hispanic vote. Romney won 27% in 2012. For another comparison, John “I Adore Latinos” McCain won a measly 31% in 2008.
Again, for Republicans, the white vote is where the action is. Minority Outreach is a distant fifth-or-sixth priority.
Hard for me to square Wilson being blamed for California going Democratic when the proposition he ran on won. California became irreversibly Democratic because of a huge Hispanic influx. Even if Republicans did better amongst Hispanics they will never get enough support to regain the state. The mystery for me is why they win white vote overwhelmingly in Texas but not in California where both states have huge numbers of Hispanics.
Here we go again with you tarring us as hateful bigots. Why can you and your beltway buddies not give us credit for being concerned about the legality of the immigration process? Do you yourself draw no distinction between legal immigration and an unlawful invasion? How is it that you begin your response to an evening of comments by flat-out calling us anti-immigrant?
My grandfather immigrated here. My wife *has yet* to immigrate. Believe me, I’m not anti-immigrant. Your sloppiness seems intentional. is it unreasonable for me to conclude that based on what you have written in this thread alone?
Meh. I know this is futile. You have a goal and will mow down as many of us as it takes to get there. See you on election day. I’ll be getting hammered far from a voting booth.
Please note in no way am I ascribing Trump’s methods as a winning strategy. The people I was hanging out with last week wouldn’t vote for him in a million years.
To me there are two questions that every other candidate would be asking themselves:
1) what is it about Trump that people are resonating to? (My answer: it’s the fight and the passion. Frankly it’s just refreshing to hear someone on our side pissed off. )
2) how do we make people want to be American again, native born folks, immigrants both legal and illegal? (My answer: scrap public education in all 50 states. Because that’s where the majority of anti-American lessons are taught. It’s way too late for any type of reform)
P.s. Can we PLEASE refrain from quoting Ronald Reagan on this subject? I live in the state where he was elected governor twice. He may have been right then about Hispanic voters but it is no longer accurate.
Geography also play a role. The rate of violent illegal immigrant crimes committed in the southern counties of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas is terrorising the citizens who live there.
And why he resonates with Arizonans. Jan Brewer picked that drum up as a failed governor and was reelected.
“We” who? If your new strategy is not conservative, then you’re not talking about us.
Why is he allowed to run?
In Canada, if we didn’t want him to run for our party, we would deny him as a Candidate.
Given his repeated pro-democrat stances, you could easily deny him a run.
Is the Republican/Democrat parties unable to simply deny candidates to run?
The great immigration wave is not over. The illegal wave has calmed down because the economy is stagnant and growing primarily at the high tech corporate level that can’t use unskilled workers. Although we don’t know who is here or for how long. All we know is that we are catching fewer. We don’t know when or how many tourists or students leave because they just disappear into the economy. But once the economy rebounds with regulatory and tax reform the border crossing will renew. As to legal immigrants, there are virtual lines in front of every embassy in the world and those too will grow. It is not an issue to be dismissed because we don’t want to alienate future Democrats. It is fixable but not within the narratives promoted by those who want future Democrat voters or those who are afraid to alienate them.
If that’s a hairpiece the wigmaker has surely committed suicide.
There is nothing objectively conservative about rewarding lawbreaking or aiding and abetting a foreign invasion of the United States.
The Donald Trump phenomenon is entirely the Republican Party’s fault. As Mark Steyn put it:
A large percentage of Republican voters are coming to the realization that the Democrats really want to eliminate their way of life. This was made particularly obvious from the recent showboating after all the Progressive victories over traditional American culture in the past few weeks.
If the most pro-Hispanic Republican politician in recent history can only get 40% of the Hispanic vote, increasing the number of Hispanic voters will only cement the Democrats’ hegemony over our daily lives.
The Ron Paul front is also the GOP’s fault. RP is a nut, but he was consistently one of the only people of note even attempting to make the case from a Liberty standpoint.
The fact that defending and expounding the very essence of our Republic fell to such a flawed public figure is a black mark on the GOP. How dare they leave that weapon back at base when they go forth to fight for us?
Manny: “Where is the winning electoral strategy going down this illegal immigration path? I don’t see it. Conservatives have to get over this. Conservatives have to accept the fact that hispanics are here and deal with it. You have to attract them to us, not repell them away”
—
Uses racist argument to call conservatives racist while giving bad advice from an allegedly conservative position
I can make an argument for situational ethics, but not situational principles.
Well then you’ve better choose which voters you want. It astonishes me Republicans can’t seem to understand that a.) Hispanics are never going to vote GOP in large enough numbers to matter, and b.) embracing the 3rd World hoard drives away your true natural constituency.
Further more, if the country is no longer culturally nor fiscally conservative as you claim and the party is going to adapt a new strategy based on something other than conservative values why the hell would I continue to vote Republican? I don’t blindly vote for a party likes it’s my home team in a playoff game.
Where is anything I’ve said racist or called conservatives racist? I never said any such thing.
Oh at least own your own comments. Read what you wrote. Why can you not ascribe the same intellectual range and susceptibility to argument to Mexicans that you apparently do to the honkie ruling class? Is there some Mexican jumping bean short-circuit argument that will boost Mexican acceptance of honkie-nomics like hydraulics on a lowrider?
You know what the Republican party should do to attract Hispanics? FIGHT THE PROGRESSIVES. Attract a following and you’ll find it is composed of everybody. Chase a following, and you get only those you can grab. This race junk is for the Sanger lefties. Liberty is colorblind. Stop chasing votes based on race. People can see right through that sort of race-baiting, and the Democrats already have all the people who are cool with it.