Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, thought to be a likely Presidential contender for 2016, just published a book in which he declared his opposition to promotion of a pathway to citizenship for the millions of undocumented immigrants, the vast majority being Mexican, as his wife is.
But now, 24 hours later, on MSNBC’s MORNING JOE, he backed off on this, taking a stand similar to Florida Senator Marco Rubio, Senator John McCain of Arizona, and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. In do doing, he has totally confused people, flip flopping more often than even Mitt Romney!
It comes down to this—the vast majority of undocumented immigrants are Mexican heritage, as are the numbers of legal Mexican Americans in the nation. Nothing that Bush, Rubio, McCain or Graham say or do is going to convince the legal citizens to vote Republican in 2016. With 71 percent support among all Hispanics and Latinos, as well as 73 percent support among Asian Americans, the Democratic Party is insured of defeating any Republican nominee for President in 2016, even if Bush or Rubio is the nominee.
And if the GOP continues to follow the Tea Party and oppose any reform on immigration, the defeat for any candidate will be a landslide of majestic proportions!
And since 70% of hispanics of which 65% are Mexican Americans always vote Democrat no matter what, since they are pro-big government statist, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to support legalizing those that violated the law to come to America. As for Jeb Bush, enough of the Bush family! The GOP either represents its conservative base or it will be run over by the base. They had their chance and were disastrous. Bush expanded government, McCain and Romney as establishment politicians already proved once again that all the establishment moderate liberal Republicans know how to do, is lose. Many years ago someone wrote : “Conservatives in this country — at least those who have not made their peace with the New Deal, and there is serious question whether there are others — are non-licensed nonconformists; and this is dangerous business in a Liberal world, as every editor of this magazine can readily show by pointing to his scars. Radical conservatives in this country have an interesting time of it, for when they are not being suppressed or mutilated by the Liberals, they are being ignored or humiliated by a great many of those of the well-fed Right, whose ignorance and amorality have never been exaggerated for the same reason that one cannot exaggerate infinity. ” This was Bill Buckley , and when he writes about the “well-fed Right” he is talking about the Roves, the Bushs, the Romneys and the McCains of the day. And he continued: “We begin publishing, then, with a considerable stock of experience with the irresponsible Right,(aka the establishment moderate Republicans) and a despair of the intransigence of the Liberals, who run this country; and all this in a world dominated by the jubilant single-mindedness of the practicing Communist, with his inside track to History. All this would not appear to augur well for NATIONAL REVIEW. Yet we start with a considerable — and considered — optimism. ” So you see the fight within the Republican party is not new, and those of us who believe in the following shall continue to fight!
Among our convictions:
1. It is the job of centralized government (in peacetime) to protect its citizens’ lives, liberty and property. All other activities of government tend to diminish freedom and hamper progress. The growth of government (the dominant social feature of this century) must be fought relentlessly. In this great social conflict of the era, we are, without reservations, on the libertarian side.
2. The profound crisis of our era is, in essence, the conflict between the Social Engineers, who seek to adjust mankind to conform with scientific utopias, and the disciples of Truth, who defend the organic moral order. We believe that truth is neither arrived at nor illuminated by monitoring election results, binding though these are for other purposes, but by other means, including a study of human experience. On this point we are, without reservations, on the conservative side.
3. The century’s most blatant force of satanic utopianism is communism. We consider “coexistence†with communism neither desirable nor possible, nor honorable; we find ourselves irrevocably at war with communism and shall oppose any substitute for victory.
4. The largest cultural menace in America is the conformity of the intellectual cliques which, in education as well as the arts, are out to impose upon the nation their modish fads and fallacies, and have nearly succeeded in doing so. In this cultural issue, we are, without reservations, on the side of excellence (rather than “newnessâ€) and of honest intellectual combat (rather than conformity).
5. The most alarming single danger to the American political system lies in the fact that an identifiable team of Fabian operators is bent on controlling both our major political parties(under the sanction of such fatuous and unreasoned slogans as “national unity,†“middle-of-the-road,†“progressivism,†and “bipartisanship.â€) Clever intriguers are reshaping both parties in the image of Babbitt, gone Social-Democrat. When and where this political issue arises, we are, without reservations, on the side of the traditional two-party system that fights its feuds in public and honestly; and we shall advocate the restoration of the two-party system at all costs. (That is you stand on your side and we stand on our side!)
6. The competitive price system is indispensable to liberty and material progress. It is threatened not only by the growth of Big Brother government, but by the pressure of monopolies(including union monopolies. What is more, some labor unions have clearly identified themselves with doctrinaire socialist objectives. The characteristic problems of harassed business have gone unreported for years, with the result that the public has been taught to assume(almost instinctively) that conflicts between labor and management are generally traceable to greed and intransigence on the part of management. Sometimes they are; often they are not. NATIONAL REVIEW will explore and oppose the inroads upon the market economy caused by monopolies in general, and politically oriented unionism in particular; and it will tell the violated businessman’s side of the story.
7. No superstition has more effectively bewitched America’s Liberal elite than the fashionable concepts of world government, the United Nations, internationalism, international atomic pools, etc. Perhaps the most important and readily demonstrable lesson of history is that freedom goes hand in hand with a state of political decentralization, that remote government is irresponsible government. It would make greater sense to grant independence to each of our 50 states than to surrender U.S. sovereignty to a world organization.
I am glad to see, Juan, that you believe in the above principles of 60 years ago, but you will never see the triumph of NATIONAL REVIEW principles in the America of the present and the future.
However, I encourage you and other “true believers” to continue the fight, while those who are progressives watch in glee as you go down to defeat after defeat, until the day arrives, and you realize your principles cannot win the day in an America very different than in the 1950s! And it is clear that the Republican Party is doomed, and the Tea Party will be the opposition, but will NEVER carry a majority of the nation, only the rural Great Plains and the South. The coastlines and the upper Midwest are lost forever, except for isolated districts in those states in the House of Representatives.
Ron: Eventually the reality of the wallet sinks in and the love of freedom always survives and is more powerful. Statists policies are irrevocably doomed to failure and in the end freedom wins. Also you are a history professor and you know very well how many times its was said and believed the conservatism/classic liberalism was dead. With Roosevelt , with Johnson after Goldwater’s defeat , with Clinton! Remember, they were all new eras and we the conservatives/classic liberals were doomed to extinction. The problem is we have mans love of freedom on our side. That is why even the Fabians lose. They move slowly step by step but the reality of their failed policies always prevail. Finally the principle of freedom and limited government is pretty new in the history of mankind, around 230 yrs. On the other hand , the principles you and progressive defend,as well as many other statists, that is big unlimited authoritarian populist government, which exists to solve all our issues is pretty old, it has been with us since the ancient Greeks and the new Greeks seem not to have learned much since then! LOL! So I will stick with the new concept of freedom and limited government, thank you!
I reject your statement of “unlimited authoritarian populist” government, as FDR, LBJ, Clinton, Obama were and are believers in freedom as much as your ideology professes, but believes in a different road to that freedom, including NOT having one percent of the nation now controlling 40 percent of all assets and wealth due to Reagan and Bush II tax policies, putting more people in poverty, and destroying the middle class in the process. Social mobility is gone, and most Americans down and out will NEVER rise, and that is the true tragedy of America, as we have greater concentration of wealth now than in the Gilded Age or the 1920s! This is a crime against humanity and decency!
This is not Latin America and Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, or Juan Domingo Peron, and it is not the Soviet Union and Nikolai Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, and it is not Italy and Benito Mussolini or Germany and Adolf Hitler! This is America, where the most dangerous threat is the right wing hate mongers who have no desire but to keep all of the wealth and power in a small elite!
I suggest that these issues be judged within the cultural context of each country, nevertheless I think you belief are indistinguishable from Democrat Congressman Jose Serrano. His words as well as yours speak for themselves: http://serrano.house.gov/press-release/serrano-%E2%80%9Cchavez-changed-conversation-latin-america%E2%80%9D
And by the way, big government is synonym to authoritarian and unlimited government. It can be no other way, it is the nature of the beast. History demonstrates that. Do you want me to go over every single one of the abuses many of the New Deal programs incurred in? Do you want the list of people prosecuted for selling products or services below the government established price? And I can give you more examples.
Once thing I have to make clear, I don’t consider Clinton an authoritarian and a big government fan. After all he said “the age of big government is over.” In any event he was a pragmatic. No that he was ideal, but compared to FDR, LBJ and BHO politically he is more than acceptable. Personally and character wise I grant he was tremendously flawed.
I do not agree with Serrano, any more than you believe in Bachmann, I hope! 🙂 I reject what he said, and am glad Chavez is gone! Do not compare me to Serrano, please! That is an insult, Juan!