Thread: More BS from the Wall Street Journal

POTOMAC WATCH

Native Sons
The political perils of targeting immigrants.

BY KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL
Friday, August 24, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

History students call it a teaching moment: A week before the general election in 1884, fiery Protestant minister Samuel D. Burchard warned about the perils of allowing his party to identify with "Romanism." Standing by his side in New York was Republican presidential candidate James G. Blaine. Catholic voters were furious.

Mr. Blaine lost the state by 1,149 votes, and the election to Grover Cleveland. It then took Catholics 100 years to get over it, when Ronald Reagan finally convinced them to trust his party again.

Today's question is whether Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani are providing future scholars with their own teaching moment. Their spitting row over illegal immigration continues to lead the news, given how little else there has been to fill the newspapers in these dreary August days. At its current momentum, it also threatens to become a case study in how nativism can drive a political party off a cliff.





For their part, both men would like to present this as nothing more than primary politics as usual. A vocal Republican minority is demanding tough talk on an issue that has inflamed its passions for most of this year. Who are these two front-runners to refuse? Immigration gives them an easy way to talk up their security credentials, while simultaneously keeping the conversation away from thornier questions about social issues, or Mormonism, or unsupportive children. It also allows them to distinguish themselves from that dastardly immigration reformer, John McCain.
Unfortunately for their party, what neither man can do is keep the rest of America from listening. And for every base Republican who is gratified by talk of ID cards and border patrols, there's an entire family of Hispanic immigrants who are absorbing the mean language of "sanctuary cities," "lawbreakers" and "deportation." Many of these folks are religious, entrepreneurial, and true believers in the American dream; as such, they're the biggest new voting potential the Republican Party has seen in ages. But a growing number, just like those Catholics of yore, are angered by the recent rhetoric and wondering why they should pull a lever for any party that would go out of its way to tag their community as the source of America's problems.

Here's some math for the numerically challenged at certain GOP campaigns: Bob Dole got 26% support from the Hispanic community and lost. George Bush in 2000 got in the mid-30s and barely made it to the White House. By 2004, the president had increased his share of that vote to close to 44%, and won decisively. That's because while Hispanics make up only about 7% to 8% of the vote nationally, they have far larger constituencies in key swing states. If Mr. Bush hadn't wooed them in Nevada this past election, John Kerry would now be running for a second term.

Mr. Giuliani, to his credit, seems to comprehend this at some level. The former New York mayor has done his share to escalate this ugly fight, though he's also refused to step back from his position that the country needs to provide some path to citizenship for today's illegal population. This is deliberate on his part, done with an eye toward moving back to the center and courting Hispanic votes in the general election. It also provides a contrast--at least for those paying attention--with Mr. Romney, whose own campaign hasn't yet managed to look beyond the short-term goal of using immigration to rile up primary state voters against opponents.

Supporters of both men like to point out that their favorites don't have any choice but to engage in the immigration fight. They note that one reason Mr. Bush was able to make a sincere plea for immigration reform in 2004, and thus win the hearts of many Hispanic voters, was that the topic wasn't yet at a full boil. The president wasn't getting skewered by his own base at town hall meetings.

True. But it's also true that there's a big difference between addressing the question of the border as part of a wider discussion about national security, and using immigrant-bashing as a campaign weapon against a foe. The former, Hispanic voters would tolerate--might even appreciate, given that many are concerned about terrorism and crime. The latter goes well beyond political necessity and straight into the realm of the offensive, of abusing immigrants for electoral gain. And you can bet the voting Hispanic public understands the difference.





The real worry for the eventual GOP nominee is that the party will so damage its reputation with Hispanic voters over the next few months that it will prove unable to connect on any other issue. Mr. Bush talked about immigration in 2004, but what earned him most of his support from the Hispanic community was his assurance that he, and his party, stood for them on the whole gamut of electoral questions. This resonated in particular with foreign-born immigrants, who are more socially conservative on issues such as abortion and marriage, who run small businesses and like tax cuts, and who are inordinately proud of their adopted country.
"George Bush ran in 2004 and said, 'I know you, I want you, I share values with you, I believe in the American dream,' and he got a lot of patriotic, pro-war, entrepreneurial Latinos to vote for him," says Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum. "Now here's the next generation of GOP leaders and their slogan is: 'We don't want you, and we don't like your family members that don't have papers yet. But we still want your vote.'" Charming message.

It's a message you can bet that either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama will be highlighting--on Spanish-language TV, in key states like Florida and Arizona--come this spring. Evidence suggests those ads, which will point out how hard certain Republicans fought against the recent immigration reform, might find a receptive audience. Local businessmen and evangelical leaders are already warning Republicans that their communities are angry, and ready to show it at the polls. Massey Villarreal, a leader at the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, was recently quoted as saying: "I've been trying to put my finger in the dam of Hispanics leaving the Republican Party. I can't anymore. I've run out of fingers."

Teaching moment? It's still too early to know. But Messrs. Romney and Giuliani could both do worse than to do a little history reading on that man who never was president, James Blaine.

Ms. Strassel is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board, based in Washington. Her column appears Fridays.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnist ... =110010517

Fortunately not all on Wall Street have this view; only the ones interested in maintaining a steady supply of CHEAP LABOR have the WSJ/Bush interest.
The SANER investors believe otherwise:
http://www.alipac.us/modules.php?name=F ... ic&t=79374

The key operator in that propagandist trash is the targeting immigrants statement. These people aren't immigrants, but I am sure that the wsj has been looking for historical comparative models ever since that classification fell on deaf ears. The folk they speak of came here LEGALLY and were Catholic in practice. I can see this article in a couple of different ways. One, it is a sign of desperation on the part of Global Inc. They have resorted to utilizing their "behind the scenes" argument, the one that they tongue massaged into Bush's ear about votes and numbers. This is most likely what they have been telling gops for quite awhile: You can't win unless you get Hispanic votes. For a good amount of the rhino zealots this has been sufficient. But the actual real world reality is that they hate Bush, they hate republicans and they hate other races and any other ethnicity. They will tolerate whites who give them what they want, this is the real world part of that. A blind person could reference the number of photographs taken where a Brown Nationalist Socialist protesting for amnesty was carrying a sign with a circle slash over Bush's name with all of her children dressed in che shirts. If it were really the case that they would vote for Bush the WSj would be releasing articles that stated: It's Dumb for Bush to go against Illegals, they all want to vote for him. The articles would then be padded with quotes from illegals stating how they "love him and want to vote for him," but alas, anyone with common sense knows that this utopian vision doesn't exist in the real world. So since there isn't any actual support they have resorted to using very poorly and thinly veiled analogies in their propaganda pieces.

But let's talk about the reality of Blaine, since it was used in this article as a foundation. He actually lost the election because of corruption. James G. Blaine is the only nonincumbent Republican nominee to lose a presidential race between 1856 and 1916. Republican reformers called "Mugwumps" supported Cleveland because of Blaine's reputation for corruption. His corruption was so intense and his scandalous nature so pronounced they chose to support Grover Cleveland, who many know was the moral choice and back then, Democrats didn't fetish collectivism by any means. They were at that time supporters of Classical Liberalism.

Here are some political cartoons from the time that illustrated the immorality and corruption of Blaine:
http://www.cartoonstock.com/vintage/dir ... blaine.asp

Here is more reason why the writer of that WSJ article is a liar and propagandist:
Blaine's mother was a Roman Catholic of Irish descent and his sister was a nun, and speculation was that he might gain votes from a heavily Democratic group. However, Catholics were already suspicious of Blaine over his support of the Blaine Amendments. An amendement added in 1875, long before his run for Presidency. These amendements forbid direct government aid to educational institutions that have any religious affiliation. So of course the Catholics, including his own Mother and sister hated him, it had absolutely nothing to do with "nativism." I hate propaganda by the WSJ's undereducated staff writers...Let's not forget that Blaine ended up where he was at after Garfield was assasinated Chester A Arthur kept him on as Secretary of State, he was good for big business. In any event, can you imagine America without Grover Cleveland? It's funny that Wall Street has come out against him, he saved the economy in the Panic of 1893 with the help of JP Morgan and Wall Street, lol. Cleveland hid his cancer from the country so as not to panic the economy and his motto was I tried hard to do right! Apparently the WSJ wouldn't want a Grover Cleveland around now either!

Oh yes and the second way of looking at it is not in its essence, but in its craftmanship. We should pay note to the desperation and lack of message couching that Global Inkers usually have in their rants. They have simply, in the worlds largest financial paper, resorted to calling those who oppose violation of the rule of law as immigrant-bashers. More communist semantic spin, not calling them illegals. They will never learn that their constituency is much more intelligent than they are.

Might I also add that we start calling Kimberley Strassel the Emma Goldman of the rich?

Yes, the WSJ is not fooling anyone when they spout flowery rhetoric about the "true believers in the American dream." They want more trade agreements and cheap, free-flowing labor, pure and simple.

Ah, c'mon you guys, the WSJ is just great.

Great for lining the kitty litter box, covering the asphalt in the driveway when changing the oil in your car, great wadding up to start that nice warm toasty fire in the cold of winter. The WSJ is just great - and very useful too.

Originally Posted by Populist

Yes, the WSJ is not fooling anyone when they spout flowery rhetoric about the "true believers in the American dream." They want more trade agreements and cheap, free-flowing labor, pure and simple.

Well, this is true. But we also have to remember that on August 1, 2007 Wall Street Journal became part of Newscorp, Rupert Murdocks empire. So WSJ will simply become the paper printing rhino arm of Fox News. The Wall Street Journal was at one time known for rugged individualism, now it is nothing more than a tabloid for narrow global corporate interests. Maybe this began to happen in the mid to late 90's when, after being long known as an independent financial and conservative opinion rag it started to sink and posted a dow jones loss for the first time. I think here they began to lick corporate hands and mimick the infotainment "news" journalism/entertainment model.

This Hot Air Article on the WSJ blitzkreig is good:
http://hotair.com/archives/2007/08/22/w ... surrender/