Thread: Cannon’s Firing: The Treason Lobby Attempts Damage Control

Cannon’s Firing: The Treason Lobby Attempts Damage Control
By Marcus Epstein

That the defeat of pro-amnesty Congressmen Chris Cannon at the hands of political neophyte Jason Chaffetz was over immigration should be simple conventional wisdom.

Were it not for Cannon’s long and vocal support for amnesty, there is absolutely no reason why Chris Cannon should have had any problem in a Republican primary. Other than immigration, he has near impeccable conservative credentials—with a 96% lifetime American Conservative Union rating. He had oodles of money and outspent Chaffetz 7-1. He had the support of the entire Republican Establishment from George Bush (still popular in Utah) on down. And having the last name Cannon in Utah is like having the name Kennedy in Massachusetts or Byrd in Virginia.

Needless to say, the Treason Lobby is attempting damage control by claiming both that illegal immigration was not the main factor driving his defeat. Michael Barone, for example, writes, "Chris Cannon's defeat made [stopping a future ‘comprehensive immigration reform’ bill] a little, but only a very little, likelier."

Henry Fernandez [email him]of the Center for American Progress claims, it is "apparently not true is that there was a connection between Cannon’s immigration moderation [sic] and his loss."

This is all very interesting to me, because for the past three election cycles, my employer Team America, a political action committee founded to support anti-amnesty candidates, had supported primary challenges to Chris Cannon.

Each time we went after him, Cannon would pose as a restrictionist—he would say he’d secure the borders, oppose amnesty etc. Then, when he won, the Open Borders lobby would claim that the election was a referendum on Amnesty. And Cannon would go back to his pro-Amnesty ways.

In 2004 Cannon was challenged by Mark Throckmorton. At that point, many in the Open Borders world still openly used the word amnesty. But this was when Chris Cannon began to say he opposed amnesty. Following Cannon’s defeat of Mark Throckmorton, Tamar Jacoby [email her] wrote, "The immigration reform movement dodged a bullet" and this proved "Americans aren’t anti-immigrant—far from it" Grover Norquist said it showed "Immigrant-bashing failed."

In 2006, Cannon was challenged again, by John Jacob. The race was well timed—immediately after the Senate had passed its first comprehensive amnesty. Cannon suddenly came out against the Senate Bill. He ran on his record on border security, and accused all of his opponents of being racists.

It still looked like Jacob was going to pull it off. But in the last week of the campaign he didn’t run any ads, although he had plenty of money in the bank, and said the Devil was behind his personal financial problems. Cannon went on to win by a healthy margin.

But nonetheless exit polls showed that only 4.5% of the population wanted illegal aliens to stay in the country permanently and only 30.5% thought they should be able to stay as "temporary workers who should return home eventually". Most likely due to Cannon’s apparent last-minute conversion on immigration 35% of voters who said all illegals should return home immediately still voted for Cannon.

Despite this, the open borders lobby took his victory as a mandate for amnesty. Grover Norquist gloated that the election was "very helpful" to getting amnesty. Michael Barone [Email him] wrote: "It is conventional wisdom in many quarters that Republican voters overwhelmingly favor a border-security-only approach to immigration. Cannon's victory casts some doubt on that."

So how can these same people claim that this election, suddenly, has nothing to do with immigration?

They have one shred of misleading evidence, a discussion of an exit poll in the Salt Lake Tribune

[quote]“It appears the election simply did not, as some have argued, hinge on immigration.

"‘It may be a victory for them, but that's different than saying that's the reason he lost,’ says Quin Monson, assistant director of the center. ‘I'm sure they're celebrating for whatever reason, but there's not a lot of evidence’ to support their claims the issue brought down Cannon.

“Roughly the same number of voters who were highly concerned about immigration in 2006, when Cannon won his last primary, showed up this time, when Cannon got whipped. Exit poll results show that more of those who said they had a tougher view on undocumented immigrants voted for Cannon's opponent, Jason Chaffetz, but a majority of those who backed plans like a guest-worker program also favored Chaffetz.â€

The treason lobby is in denial. If Cannon really opposed amnesty, he would still be a Congressman. He supported amnesty, he was unable to hide this anymore, and he lost -- big time. It's that simple.