Contributors

Friday, November 09, 2012

Amnesty Amnesia

The day after the election I opined that demographic shifts would require the Republicans to change their policies in order to remain politically viable. The shift took exactly one day, and on Thursday Republican pundits began to concur with my analysis in droves.  Sean Hannity endorsed immigration amnesty. Charles Krauthammer, in a piece in the Washington Post, wrote:
[Hispanics] should be a natural Republican constituency: striving immigrant community, religious, Catholic, family-oriented and socially conservative (on abortion, for example).

The principal reason they go Democratic is the issue of illegal immigrants. In securing the Republican nomination, Mitt Romney made the strategic error of (unnecessarily) going to the right of Rick Perry. Romney could never successfully tack back.

For the party in general, however, the problem is hardly structural. It requires but a single policy change: Border fence plus amnesty. Yes, amnesty. Use the word. Shock and awe — full legal normalization (just short of citizenship) in return for full border enforcement.
This sounds reasonable enough. But it's going to be hard for the Republican Party to do a full 180 on amnesty, because it's more than just changing a bullet point in a party platform.

For decades Republicans have depended on the Southern Strategy for victory. That strategy, often credited to Richard Nixon, involves stoking racial prejudice among certain southern whites. Prior to the 1960s the south was reliably Democratic (because Republicans were the party of Lincoln), but by using racist code words and "dog whistles" like "states rights" Nixon was able to end the Democratic Party's hold on the Solid South. Reagan did the same in the 1980s, when he talked about "welfare queens." Romney was still doing it when he said "Obama gutted welfare reform."

But over time, with increasingly positive images of blacks in popular culture (Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman, Halle Berry, Will Smith, Ice Tea), and the total devotion to hip hop by white teens, African Americans were becoming more mainstream and non-threatening. Conservative blacks like Clarence Thomas, Herman Cain and Alan West further eroded the efficacy of the Southern Strategy.

So, in the 2000s Republicans morphed the Southern Strategy into anti-immigrant and anti-Latino sentiments. These foreign invaders who can't even speak English are stealing our jobs! Never mind that we would never consider doing those jobs ourselves because they are too dangerous, or back-breaking, or degrading and don't pay enough.

In states like Arizona, Georgia, and Mississippi, Republican state legislatures have enacted (or tried to enact) tough new immigration laws, intruding into questionable legal territory. The Republican Party embraced these attitudes nationally, leaving only a few outliers like Rick Perry. Mitt Romney, whose own Mormon church has a long history of racism, tore into Perry for breaking the party line on immigration.

Now, the people persuaded by the Southern Strategy are not some abstract them situated south of the Mason-Dixon line. They include my dad, who lives in Minnesota. When my sister M got engaged to a Hispanic American my dad disowned her. When my sister S went to M's wedding in Texas, he refused to speak to S for years. When my sister J's daughter, N, got pregnant by a Latino boyfriend, my father had a two-fer: he disowned them both.

I am therefore one of the millions of people who are directly affected by this stupid, senseless and divisive racism that the Republican Party has been perpetuating and exploiting to their political advantage for decades.


And the word that most disgusts my father, the word that caused him to despise John McCain as much as he loathed Ted Kennedy? Amnesty.

How are people like my dad going to react to a Republican Party that embraces amnesty for illegal immigrants, in what is undeniably an openly cynical political ploy just to gain more votes? Republicans like Mitt Romney and the Heritage Foundation invented the health care insurance mandate, but as soon as Obama accepted the compromise that included it, they decreed the mandate to be the end of freedom and democracy.

Will people like my father develop instant amnesty amnesia on command from the Republican Party, like they forgot that they supported the health care mandate? Or are their attitudes on race so deeply ingrained that they will stay home on election day? I'm sure Krauthammer thinks that since they have nowhere else to go, they'll just blindly continue voting Republican.

But is Krauthammer right in blithely assuming that my dad is a Republican patsy who will sit down, shut up and do what he's told? Or will people like my dad join third parties and vote for candidates like George Wallace, as my dad did in 1968?

In other words, is the Republican coalition of big business, stubborn tribal whites, NRA gun enthusiasts and anti-abortion and anti-gay crusaders about to come apart?

3 comments:

6Kings said...

So, in the 2000s Republicans morphed the Southern Strategy into anti-immigrant and anti-Latino sentiments. These foreign invaders who can't even speak English are stealing our jobs! Never mind that we would never consider doing those jobs ourselves because they are too dangerous, or back-breaking, or degrading and don't pay enough.

You really can't figure reality out can you? Those sentiments were coming from blue collar and union democraps both in their opposition to immigration - legal and illegal as well as resistance to NAFTA and other trade agreements. That wasn't republican in any stretch of the imagination...except you proggies in fantasy land. And furthermore, there has NEVER been an issue with legal immigration from anywhere. We have repeatedly told you and M this but apparently you aren't bright enough to figure it out.

last in line said...

Ice tea?

Anonymous said...

Your Dad hates Mexicans too?

That kinda explains why you hate niggers and Jews. I guess we can add an inborn hatred of spics to your list of eugenics eligible races.