This morning, I am going to say something nice about George W. Bush.
No, it’s not April Fool’s Day. Nor have I lost my mind (though I did turn 50 on Monday, so there is the possibility of Alzheimer’s.)
But you’ll have to look for it, so I’ve flagged it for you...
Election year after election year, the Republican Party conjures up some new boogeyman to terrify voters about. We can go all the way back to
Kevin Phillips’ salad days as a Republican strategist, before he realized his Frankenstein monster was destroying his country.
A quick review of the last 35 years of Republican
fears du jour, for those who’ve managed to forget:
“Abortion, amnesty, and acid” McGovernites out to destroy everything that made America great. School busing integrationists forcing our kids to go to school with ‘them.’ Radical feminists out to destroy the American family. Flag burners. Affirmative action supporters who gave my job to someone less qualified (so
that’s why I can’t save a dime.) Willie Horton and the millions of dark criminals he represents, every one of them
certain to be paroled by Michael Dukakis. Supporters of gay marriage, once again out to destroy the traditional family. Secular humanists, trying to chase Christmas from our department stores, schools, and hearts.
And, of course, the most useful of them all: Democrats weak on terror, who -- given a private moment -- would gladly morph into Osama Bin Laden. (As in Saxby Chambliss’ detestable commercials about war hero Democratic senator Max Cleland.)
Over these years, they’ve built a hard core base of millions of fear-driven people. Please understand me: there are plenty of perfectly decent people who decide to vote Republican. Democrats have been flat-out lousy at giving them a good alternative. But, for millions, the sell is raw, unadulterated fear.
Now, we come to 2006, and (momentarily at least) the fear of terror is abating. In the wake of the Iraq debacle, Americans are less likely to view the GOP as self-evidently stronger on security. In fact, the Democrats have -- shockingly -- managed to edge ahead on security issues in at least a couple of polls.
So the planets are perfectly aligned for a new victim. The perfect candidate? Hispanic illegals.
Those are the people who scare us when we go into the Home Depot on Saturday morning.
Those must be the people who are taking our jobs away. No doubt some of them are terrorists, too,
right?
It’s all garbage, of course. But look at the polls: thanks to the Lou Dobbs’s of the world, combined with America’s native provincialism, it’s a slam dunk.
Except, for once, the GOP’s notoriously lockstep political and propaganda apparatus is having trouble in rehearsals. And the problem has a name: George W. Bush.
Given their druthers, the party faithful would gladly line up behind Tom Tancredo and the Minutemen, and ship everyone with a Spanish accent off to parts distant and unknown. But Bush (and Rove) won’t have it. They’re clear that, given inevitable American demographic trends, the future of the Republican Party depends on growing its Hispanic vote.
They’ve been doing a pretty decent job of it: while the numbers are controversial, Bush may have received 45% of the Hispanic vote in the last election. They know those gains will collapse if the GOP becomes America’s obvious anti-Hispanic party: they saw it happen in California in the 1990s. And it terrifies them.
Plus, of course, closing America to Hispanic émigrés might slightly drive up wages. And anything that might drive up wages would infuriate the employers who are the Bush administration’s natural compadres.
(Psst: I told you I was going to say something nice about George Bush. Here it is.)
I’d add something, too. After a lifetime of surfing Republican waves of fear, I just don’t think George W. Bush is comfortable with the bigotry and demagoguery this time. As former Governor of Texas, and someone with Hispanic folks in his family, I think he’s very comfortable with Hispanics. And I just don’t believe he wants all that hatred unleashed.
So, the man is trying. His immigration bill is what happens when George Bush makes an honest attempt to forge a compromise between warring parties. You can see the gears working. It reminds me of his early 2001 stem cell policies: failed, short-sighted, but uncharacteristically for George Bush, well-intended. End of compliments. Bush’s bill, like so much else he’s done, is a fundamental betrayal of American principles. It establishes a guest worker program that puts citizenship off-limits for millions of hard-working people, and makes sure they will never have a stake in our society. This is the very policy that has caused havoc in Europe, contributing heavily to the failures of Moslem integration in those societies. It would be disastrous here, too.
I could be wrong -- I didn’t expect it to get out of committee -- but I’ll be very surprised if it passes. It’s far too soft for the Neanderthals who represent Bush’s base. As with the Dubai deal, he is reaping what he and his party have sown for the past 35 years.
