"The Irrepressible Conflict": Obama vs. Arizona—And America

The really good news about Obama's assault on Arizona and its SB1070 law is captured in both the headline and the lead of this report by the very Politically Correct Associated Press:

"As Dems lay low, GOP hits Obama on Arizona lawsuit

 "WASHINGTON -- Republicans denounced the Obama administration's challenge of Arizona's new immigration law Tuesday, a fresh sign they may try to paint Democrats this fall as soft on illegal border crossings. [VDARE.COM comment: whaddya mean, "try"?]

"While Democrats stayed largely quiet, a host of Republicans said the federal government has no business challenging Arizona's new law. Slated to be implemented July 29, it would require state and local police to question and possibly arrest illegal immigrants during the enforcement of other laws such as traffic stops.

" 'If the president wants to make real progress on this issue, he can do so by taking amnesty off the table and focus his efforts on border and interior security,' said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky….

"They included House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio. He said the federal government should not sue Arizona but should help it and other states 'stop the crime and lawlessness along the border.'

"Top Democratic elected officials had little to say, leaving the defense of Obama's move to liberal allies such as the ACLU."

[By Charles Babington, July 6. 2010] (links added)

The immigration issue, which immigration enthusiasts have fought desperately to keep bipartisan (and thus out of the reach of American voters), is finally precipitating out on party lines.

It's not that Republican elected officials want to take a strong stand on illegal immigration, legal immigration or anything else for that matter. McConnell and Boehner, quoted above, are the single most important reason not one congressional Republican can be found to introduce a "Time Out" or moratorium bill in the teeth of record unemployment—even though they have no other ideas to reduce unemployment, and even though Senator Harry Reid (of all people) introduced one during the much less serious recession of the early 1990s.

Indeed, Senator John McCain's response to the Obama attack on Arizona goes some way to answering the interesting question of where he will stand on immigration if he succeeds in convincing Arizonans that he really is a born-again border enforcer and staving off J.D. Hayworth's primary challenge.

McCain (and the hapless junior GOP Senator, John Kyl) said in a statement: "It is far too premature for the Obama Administration to challenge the legality of this new law since it has not yet been enforced." [Republicans Slam Obama for Suing Arizona, by Connie Hair, Human Events, 07/06/2010]

This, of course, implies that there will be a time when a challenge is not premature—like, for example, after John McCain's re-election.

There is only one reason Republicans are now making these brave statements: they are being forced to do so by their base. This is the only reason Arizona's RINO governor Jan Brewer signed SB1070 in the first place—and she has been rewarded by soaring polls and probably re-election in a race that had looked very difficult indeed.

We know from the experience of California governor Pete Wilson's similar resurrection victory after he endorsed Proposition 187 in 1994 that Republican campaign consultants cannot be trusted to draw the obvious lesson from Brewer's bounce-back. But how stupid can they be?

Pretty stupid if they believe AP's reporter, who parrots the usual Democratic disinformation:

"'There's no evidence that Republicans have been able to turn this issue into a winning issue in a general election," said Simon Rosenberg, [Email him] who follows immigration matters as head of the liberal-leaning group NDN. If top Republicans keep pounding the issue, he said, it could increase Democratic turnout in Texas, Arizona, Nevada, California and possibly other states."

In fact, of course, the Republicans have never run a general election on patriotic immigration reform—McCain and the catastrophic George W. Bush were quite simply on the other side.

And the factor totally missing from this type of conventional analysis: what about the white a.k.a. American turnout?

At VDARE.COM, we have repeatedly demonstrated that the GOP (or some generic patriot party) can most easily win, and can continue to win for a long time, by mobilizing its white base. We call this the "Sailer Strategy".

Needless to say, the Establishment Right is incapable of adopting, or even discussing, this strategy. But, inexorably, it is adopting them. By a remarkable coincidence, the Washington Post carried an article that said as much just the day before Obama's attack on Arizona became official:

"Obama's [poll] numbers among white voters have some Democratic strategists with an eye on the fall elections decidedly nervous.

"One senior strategist, speaking candidly about his concerns on the condition of anonymity, noted that white voters made up 79 percent of the 2006 midterm electorate, while they made up 74 percent of the 2008 vote. If the white percentage returns to its 2006 level, that means there will be 3 million more white voters than if it stayed at its 2008 levels. That scenario, said the source, 'would generate massive losses' for House and Senate Democrats in November because of Obama's standing with that demographic."

Democrats hope Obama 2008 model will help stem midterm losses, by Chris Cillizza, July 5, 2010

In the short term, Obama operatives apparently plan to respond by mobilizing their own base, both because they can't stop themselves emotionally, and because they don't seem to realize how small this base is.

In the long run, they simply plan to swamp the historic American nation with continued non-traditional immigration:

" 'There is probably some short term pain politically given how popular the law is,; said the Democratic strategist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the government lawsuit had not been filed at the time. 'But considering the demographic changes the country is undergoing, long term, there is a lot of upside in advocating for Latinos and comprehensive immigration reform.' "

Obama faces political challenge on Arizona case, by Michael Shear, Washington Post, July 6, 2010

So desensitized has American public discourse become that this shameless statement of a determination to elect a new people—a nation-wide version of  "The Curley Effect",  named for Boston Mayor James M. Curley who systematically drove his Protestant opponents out of the city (See Glaeser, Edward L. and Andrei Shleifer. The Curley Effect: The Economics Of Shaping The Electorate, Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, 2005, v21(1,Apr), 1-19)—can be made without fear of criticism.

That's why we call them "The Treason Lobby".

America's continued post-1965 immigration disaster has set in motion inexorable forces.

Reluctant Republicans being forced, finally, to defend their constituents.

American whites becoming ever more alienated.

An American state is forced to defend itself against a federal government that will not honor its constitutional obligation to defend the states against invasion—which must ultimately raise the secessionist question: what good is the American Union at all?

And a elemental political question is being punted to the judiciary—which must ultimately draw the judiciary into politics and waken the sleeping dragon of the constitutional check/balance, the impeachment of judges.

I've said before that all this is beginning to remind me of the last years before the outbreak of the Civil War.

What William H. Seward called an "irrepressible conflict" is shaping up—between the historic American nation and the radicals who must overwhelm it if they are to maintain power.

Peter Brimelow (email him) is editor of VDARE.COM and author of the much-denounced Alien Nation: Common Sense About America's Immigration Disaster, (Random House - 1995) and The Worm in the Apple (HarperCollins - 2003)