It is becoming increasingly clear that the battle for the GOP Presidential nomination in 2016 is going to be between Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, with Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky being a “wild card”!
The possibility of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, or Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan to be the nominee seems very distant.
So it will be two Hispanic (Cuban) Senators battling one another, one trying to work with Democrats on an immigration reform bill, and the other on the warpath against all Democrats, as well as Rubio himself, unwilling to make any deals or promote any cooperation with the “enemy” And hoping to benefit from the battle between Rubio and Cruz is Rand Paul, who with his libertarian bent, will have a major problem attracting many conservatives, including the neoconservatives and the Establishment Republicans of Wall Street.
In the end, it will not matter, as no Republican can overcome the Electoral College advantage of the Democrats, as outlined yesterday in a blog entry.
And the concept that Cuban American Senators, who represent three and a half percent of Hispanics and Latinos, will be able to convince large numbers of Mexican Americans, who are 65 percent of all those with Spanish heritage, to vote Republican, is laughable.
So it will be an interesting sideshow, the battle among Rubio, Cruz and Paul, but at the end, we are likely to have Hillary Clinton as our next President!
Even if Romney had won 70% of the Hispanic vote he would have lost in 2012. But if the conservative base would have gone out to vote or/and Romney would have just won 4% more of white voters, he would have won the elections. See for yourself: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/04/30/us/politics/presidential-math-demographics-and-immigration-reform.html?_r=0
So it really comes down to this historical electoral fact. Every time the Republican Party ditched its conservative base, it lost the Presidential election. It happened in 92,96, 08 and 2012! You just can’t win elections if you despise your electoral base. Of course Democrats and people like yourself Ron are grateful to the Republican moderate establishment for doing everything possible so the Democrats can continue winning.
As always Dr. Hanson nails it. http://www.nationalreview.com/article/351213/illegal-immigration-elite-illiberality-victor-davis-hanson
Illegal Immigration: Elite Illiberality –
“The divide over immigration reform is not primarily a Left/Right or Democratic/Republican divide; instead, it cuts, and sharply so, across class lines. Elites blur the distinction between legal and illegal immigration to ensure that the opponents of the latter appear to be against the former. They talk grandly of making legal immigration meritocratic, but fall silent when asked to what degree. They talk darkly of racist subtexts in the arguments of their opponents, but skip over the overt ethnic chauvinism of proponents of amnesty; they decry conservative paranoia over a new demography, but never liberal euphoria over just such a planned reset. They talk deprecatingly of rubes who do not understand the new global realties, but never of their own parochialism ensconced in New York or Washington or San Francisco. They talk of reactionaries who do not fathom the ins and outs of the debate; never of their own willful ignorance of the realities on the ground in East L.A. or southwest Fresno.
The elites favor de facto amnesty for a variety of self-interested reasons. For the corporate echelon, creating a guest-worker program and granting amnesty — without worrying about securing the border first — ensures continued access to millions of cheap laborers from Latin America. The United States may be suffering the most persistent unemployment since the Great Depression. There may be an unemployment rate of over 15 percent in many small towns in the American Southwest. American businesses may be flush with record amounts of cash, and farm prices may be at record levels. But we are still lectured that without cheap labor from south of the border, businesses simply cannot profit.
Unmentioned is the exploitation of illegal labor. Hard-working young Latin Americans, most of them from the interior of Mexico, cross the border illegally, usually to find jobs that pay over five times more per hour than anything they could find in Mexico, yet still less than the employer would have to pay an American. Between the ages of 18 and 40, illegal immigrants are among the hardest-working laborers in the world. However, the traditional entry-level jobs — picking peaches, nailing shingles, mowing lawns, changing diapers, cooking, making beds — for those without legality, education, or English often become a permanent dead end.
Many employers appreciate the myriad advantages of hiring illegal immigrants. Although supporters of amnesty are bold in leveling charges of illiberality against their critics, the unspoken truth is that insistence on access to cheap labor is about as reactionary and unethical as one can imagine. Off the record, employers will admit they are reluctant to hire jobless African-American youths, although the black community is suffering historic levels of unemployment. They are not even eager to hire second-generation Hispanics, who, according to the employers’ creed, have lost the firsthand memory of crushing Mexican poverty and thus their parents’ desperate work ethic.
Instead, employers want a continuing influx of young workers who will undercut the wages of American citizens. That the bargaining power of other minorities, Latino- and African-American citizens especially, is undercut by illegal labor matters little. How odd that elite Republicans pander to Latino grandees to win perhaps 35 percent of the Latino vote; that the party garners no more than 5 percent of the much larger African-American vote is never discussed. In the bizarre logic of the Republican elite, you must cater to the Hispanic elite in order to siphon votes from the liberal Latino bloc, while the much more important black demographic is simply written off. Is there one Republican politician who is more worried about the plight of unemployed African-American citizens than he is about granting amnesty to foreign nationals who broke U.S. laws to come here?
Employers do not care that the presence of 11 million illegal aliens has driven down entry-level wages. They are not concerned about the depressing cycle of illegal-immigrant labor: The young male from Latin America works extraordinarily hard for 20 years. But by the time he’s 40, he is married with children, and discovering that without education, English, or skill sets, he has no way forward.
Arms and backs that were near superhuman at 25 are often shot at 50. When the 45-year-old illegal alien can no longer pick, or cook, or rake as he once did, the employer loses interest, and the state steps in to provide him with rough parity through subsidies for housing, health care, food, and legal assistance, and meanwhile it has been educating his children. Because second-generation immigrants are deemed less industrious than their worn-out fathers and mothers — and Hispanic males in California graduate from high school at little more than a 60 percent rate — the need arises for another round of young hardy workers from Latin America.
In past times, this depressing cycle of exploitation was justified by low unemployment or ongoing wars that siphoned off American manpower. But why the need for imported labor in times of near-record joblessness, relative peace, and often-record profits? The elites simply turn a blind eye to out-of-work Americans, the low wages of illegal laborers, and the cynicism of using up human capital and letting the state pick up the subsequent social costs. How odd that profit-making from cheap labor is considered liberal, while concern for low-paid American workers is written off as xenophobia.
Most elites talk of nativism and racism as being what fuels opposition to their brand of comprehensive immigration reform. Yet I doubt that the wealthy Silicon Valley residents who clamor for “reform†send their children to public schools. Indeed, in the fashion of the Southern academies that popped up in the 1960s during court-ordered busing, Silicon Valley is currently experiencing an explosion in private schools.
Apple, Google, and Facebook 1-percenters are much too sophisticated to call these booming apartheid prep schools “academies,†but they are burgeoning in reaction to worries that the flood of illegal service workers from Latin America has finally lapped up to the outskirts of Palo Alto and Menlo Park. Once-topnotch public schools like Menlo-Atherton are now whispered about as “problematic,†given the growing enrollment of the children of illegal aliens.
In truth, do not expect Washington politicians, La Raza leaders, or agribusiness owners to send their children to the Sanger school system in the outskirts of Fresno, or to enroll them in Cal State Bakersfield. Their elite status mostly exempts them from the ramifications of their own ideology in a myriad of ways. If taxes must rise in California to pay for one-third of the nation’s welfare recipients, or to prop up public schools that have descended to 48th in the nation in math and English test scores, or to bring some parity to the nation’s highest percentage of people below the poverty line, most of the elite can afford the increases. For some, the higher taxes even become a sort of penance — a kind of abstract generosity necessary to expiate their unwillingness to assimilate, integrate, and intermarry in the concrete.
Meanwhile, forget the tire-store owner and the electrical contractor who have no such margin of error, and are written off as mean-spirited for resenting rising taxes to pay for soaring subsidies to the growing immigrant underclass. That the caricatured Neanderthal followers of Sarah Palin resent the social costs of illegal immigration and the fact that their children’s education is directly affected by the entry of millions of new non-English-speakers is, well, their own fault.
Almost every aspect of illegal immigration is illiberal to the core. Respect for the law? The elite decides that for a particular political constituency, the law is now fluid. If you are a Bulgarian M.D. and overstay your visa, beware. A Korean engineer wouldn’t dare to fly to Mexico City and cross illegally into Arizona. Without ethnic bosses and millions of compatriots within our borders, all others are lawbreakers subject to deportation.
That well over $30 billion in remittances leaves the U.S. economy each year to prop up the Mexican and other Latin American economies is an afterthought. Indeed, Mexico is romanticized as an aggrieved partner, not excoriated as cynically opportunist for printing comic books to instruct its own citizens how to break U.S. law. How liberal is it to assist citizens to leave their own homeland, while assuming that they are almost certainly illiterate and thus need pictorial instruction?
To suggest that Mexico exports human capital in lieu of engaging in social reform, to suggest that indigenous peoples are the most likely to want to leave Mexico’s often racist social stratification, to suggest that Mexico does not care that its own expatriates suffer and scrimp to send back billions of dollars in cash to those ignored by the Mexican government, to suggest that Mexico appreciates that its citizens are more likely to cheer their homeland the longer they are away from it — all of this is considered reactionary and perhaps racist or at least culturally biased. But it is also absolutely true: Mexico, not the U.S., is the illiberal player in this entire sordid trafficking in human capital.
Mexico and American employers are not the only cynics in this drama. The La Raza elite understands well that only yearly massive infusions of the impoverished across the perpetually open border ensure a changed demography, anchored by a permanent Spanish-speaking underclass and periodically recharged by new illegal immigrants. Without massive immigration, the Latino population goes the way of the Italian or Greek community. Intermarriage, assimilation, and integration would gradually make the Chicano Studies department about as relevant as the Italian Studies department, La Raza about as catchy as La Razza, and the third-generation Hispanic with the accented last name about as much a minority in need of diversity favoritism as Rudy Giuliani’s son. How odd that illegal immigration is fueled by ethnic chauvinism, while those who criticize it are called ethnically biased. How could a Chicano Studies professor cite endemic poverty as a reason for federal attention if Mexican-Americans followed the Armenian- or Polish-American paradigm — and, of course, they soon would without the regular infusions of additional illegal immigrants.
Somehow, we have created an absurd situation in which a resident of Oaxaca, often fleeing racial and class oppression in Mexico, becomes defined as a victim of American pathologies the nanosecond he crosses the border. In turn, America, the generous host, is reinvented as a culpable oppressor that has treated the illegal alien so badly that his children deserve job and college-admission preference. Mexico likewise must be reinvented, from the exporter of superfluous human beings to the liberal champion of its stolen human assets.
Finally, there is the elite of the American Southwest, who believe that they are new 17th-century French aristocracy, entitled to $8-to-$10-an-hour nannies, gardeners, housekeepers, maids, and occasional day laborers. There are millions of white, Asian, Latino-American, and African-American youths out of work. We are simply told publicly that most of them would not do such work, and apparently if they did, they would not be trustworthy.
Indeed, the tragedy of illegal immigration is that it becomes the cornerstone for hundreds of agendas: those of the self-interested Mexican government, exploitative American employers, the new ethnic chauvinists, the upper middle classes who deem themselves lords of the manor, and, yes, the elite whose professions are as noble as their deeds are not.
Most Americans do not object to providing a green card to those who came to work, stayed off public assistance, did not commit crimes, and did not recently arrive in search of amnesty. They do not even object to offering a pathway to eventual citizenship to immigrants who pay a fine for their illegal entry, learned English, and go to the back of the legal-immigration line. But all this is a hypothetical if the border is not first secured — if we cannot guarantee that 2013 does not become another 1986, meaning that some future date will be a replay of 2013.
If we are to offer a second chance to the majority of illegal immigrants who, apart from their illegal entry, otherwise played by the rules, there must not be a second chance for the minority who broke all of them.
In the meantime, for those who profit both materially and psychologically from something that largely benefits the elite and hurts the mass, at least spare us the hypocritical aspersions and bottled pieties.”
Comments?
A Little Monday Naughtiness.
Hey Folks… I do believe I might have located Juan’s mother!
http://samuel-warde.com/2013/06/conversations-with-a-tea-party-patriot/
Juan, I will agree with you that the border must be secured so that there is not another 2013, as there now is since 1986. Anyone who committed criminal acts should NOT be made eligible for future citizenship. Does that satisfy you at all?
Thanks for that Maggie. It would be pretty funny if it wasn’t so scary.
Maggie, you have caused me to laugh heartily, but actually, this woman is very scary, indeed, as Princess Leia said. Why is it that it seems so often that it is women who are nastier and more bigoted than men? It may not be literally true, but what makes some women so narrow minded and prejudiced, even with GOP Congresswomen? Can you imagine this woman or others like her being a mother, a grandmother, your sister, your aunt, someone’s daughter? It makes me sick even to imagine it!
And I may have found your son Maggie..
Now, now, Maggie and Juan, let’s not promote character assassination! Let’s play nice! 🙂
This is ridiculous. Senate rejected building the 700 miles of double-tier border fencing Congress authorized just seven years ago.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jun/18/senate-rejects-border-fence/
So I guess I will have to start working with my friends against Rubio here in S.Flo.
You realize, Juan, that Rubio is probably the only hope for the GOP in 2016? So working against him on one issue will only help the Democrats! So go ahead, do what you want, and we will have a rout in the Electoral College in 2016!
The Republicans will go for someone perceived ‘electable,’ just as they did in 2008 and 2012 with John McCain and Mitt Romney. The party isn’t going to go for the flip side of their aisle, which that includes the likes of Rand Paul and Paul Ryan.
Ron: If Rubio goes back on his word of dropping the Bill if it doesn’t have a tougher border security provision then he will be lost politically. But I have this hope only, that he is playing with the Democrat greed for power, and will wait to the last minute to ditch them if no agreement on border security is reached. Then he could say ” I tried, but my Democrats friends were just unwilling to compromise on the border security issue”. In other words, he will use their own force against them. In other words political ju-jitsu. Now Schummer, Reid (and behind they Obama) believe they are unstoppable, if they push too far, and Rubio drops out , the Bill is dead and Rubio wins. Then how are the Democrats going to explain pushing a “compromiser” like Rubio out of the deal? Then Rubio could very well as why the President didn’t push his colleagues to reach a deal half way with Republicans.From here to the elections in 2014 – 16 Democrat bullying must be allowed to flourish. We will see what happens, we will see if Rubio succumbs to the Washington establishment or not.
But, D, who do you see as perceived “electable”—Bush or Christie, or who else?
LOL , every time the Republican establishment imposed an “electable” candidate they lost!! Now wonder Democrats love “electable” RePUBICans…
The CBO finds that immigration reform would generate economic growth and reduce deficits.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/18/cbo-immigration-bill_n_3456233.html
Republicans need to change their name to RepubliCANTs because they don’t do anything except obsess over socially divisive issues like abortion or gays.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/18/anti-abortion-bill_n_3460794.html
Yes, Princess Leia, Immigration reform would generate economic growth, and strengthen Social Security and Medicare, as they would put more in those programs than take out, for a long time, and immigrants are going to be the lifeblood of the future, as they are mostly young, in a society which is getting older. Working against immigration undermines our future, as immigration has always been a plus for America throughout its history!
Ronald asks, “But, D, who do you see as perceived “electableâ€â€”[ex-Florida Gov. Jeb] Bush or [New Jersey Gov.] Christie, or who else?”
Bush is more likely than Christie, at this point, but fellow Floridian U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio is on the radar. That would be the same motive as selecting then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as John McCain’s 2008 vice-presidential running mate—demographic strategy.
In 2008, because Palin was a woman that supposedly meant—in the minds of behind-the-scenes Republicans—that women would vote for the McCain/Palin ticket because, well, she’s a woman and there’s no need to be concerned about this thing called, “party platform.” One can guess that Sen. Rubio would be an appealing choice, from the behind-the-scenes party’s powerful, because he’s Hispanic—and, well, that’s good enough for all Hispanics.
Coming back to Jeb: He is a Bush, and all winning Republican tickets following World War II have had a Bush or Nixon on the party ticket (president/vice president). So, that would be … understandable. And pathetic. (Even though it may well be that America has had enough of the family.)
In an earlier posting, I mentioned that Bill Clinton was the only president whose home state—Arkansas—did not rank among the Top 20 in population. I think 2016 will continue that trend, and that we’ll find both major-party nominees ranking from a double-digit electoral-vote state. (No. 1 in population is California, with 55 electoral votes and No. 21 is Minnesota, the lowest of those with 10 electoral votes. Colorado, with 9 electoral votes, ranks No. 22 and is the beginning of the single-digit electoral-vote states in population rank.)
REVISE: “In an earlier posting, I mentioned that Bill Clinton was the only president whose home state—Arkansas—did not rank among the Top 20 in population.”
I’m referring to over a period of the last 100 years. That would also be true going back to all of the 20th century presidential elections. Clinton’s Arkansas is the only one not among Top 20 in rank. We seem to look the heavily populous states for presidents.
Interesting observations, D! But realize that Rubio, and also Cruz, are Cuban, which is only about 3.5 percent of Hispanics in America, while Mexican Americans are 65 percent, and Puerto Ricans are clearly second in percentage. Why would Mexican Americans or Puerto Rican Americans find Cuban Americans appealing to vote for, particularly since there is no love lost between these groups and Cuban Americans, even in their home lands?
Regarding the top twenty states being where Presidential winners come from, that is actually good, as to elect a President from a state that is miniscule in population seems ridiculous on its surface, so I guess that clinches Joe Biden never becoming President by election, especially with Hillary Clinton likely to run!
Leftus Ignoramus
-“A smart fence which is what Senator McCain and I want to build — since he’s from Arizona, I think he knows more about this than the Senator from South Dakota, who only has a border with Canada that is quite different.” Democrat Senator Mary Landrieu last Thursday.
-“If this was Texas, which is a state that is directly on the border with Mexico, and they were calling for a measure like this, saying that they have a major issue with — you know, with undocumented people flooding their borders, I would say… I would — I would have to look twice at this, but this is a state that is a ways removed from the border.” Democrat Peggy West of the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors calling for a boycott of Arizona because of its tough law on illegal immigration 3 yrs ago.
-The key, I believe, to Iran is pressure through the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is supplying much of the equipment that Iran, I believe, most likely is using to set itself along the path of developing nuclear weapons. We need to use that leverage with the Soviet Union and it may require us buying the equipment the Soviet Union was ultimately going to sell to Iran to prevent Iran from them developing nuclear weapons.” Howard Dean in 2003 (the Soviet Union had disintegrated over a decade ago)
– “It is just wonderful to be back in Oregon. And over the last 15 months we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states; I think one left to go.” Barack Obama during a campaign appearance in Beaverton, Oregon, on May 9, 2008.http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EpGH02DtIws
Yes, Juan, many errors on the left, but MULTITUDES more of errors on the right, enough to make a massive book, which will be done someday. The right wing has lunatics and certifiables, while the left has stupid comments, mostly harmless, while the right promotes constant hate and poison. Look at the spectacle today on Capitol Hill that I have just written about–morons Bachmann, Gohmert, and King– and booing of Rubio–this is the death knell of the Republican Party, so as I said in the blog entry–Whig Party, anyone?
The IRS in its current form has demonstrated to be rotten at its core. Have you ever taken a Tax law course? Let me tell you , its ridiculous. When something is corrupt and doesn’t work, it’s time to start all over again. The IRS has been terrible politicized. Enough already.
As for promoting hate, there is nothing more hateful that class warfare rhetoric and the racial division the left constantly promotes.
RepubliCANTs teaching hatred to their kids: http://www.politicususa.com/2013/06/16/republican-party-teaching-hate-passing-bigotry-generation.html
Yes, Princess Leia, I saw this article and posted it with comment on my Facebook account!
Harmless left?
1. Abort Palin bumper-stickers
2. Pointing a fake gun at the head of a Sarah Palin likeness sitting next to a cardboard cutout of her daughter in a Getty museum display
3. Hanging of Palin figure http://www.correntewire.com/cmon_ladies_cant_you_take_joke#comment-122503
4. Palin-hating artwork designating her an “M.I.L.P.†(Mother I’d Like to Punch) http://www.afineexample.com/other/other02palin.html
5. In 2004 Charlie Brooker told the readers of the far-Left British newspaper Guardian:On “November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod’s law dictates he’ll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. – where are you now that we need you?”
6. Leftist radio host Malloy :”I have a good news to report; Glenn Beck appears closer to suicide – I’m hoping that he does it on camera; suicide is rampant in his family, and given his alcoholism and his tendencies towards self-destruction, I am only hoping that when Glen Beck does put a gun to his head and pulls the trigger, that it will be on television, because somebody will capture it on YouTube and it will be the most popular video for months.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNHuXU8nQ7M&feature=player_embedded ( I dare you to find a clip where Hannity, Rush or any of the well known conservative radio host wishes the death of any leftist Democrat )
7. Malloy: ” I hope that Limbaugh chokes to death on his throat fat…” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7M6LMHvKbp4&feature=player_embedded
8. Air America Montel Williams to Michele Bachmann: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAuR_mBEKdE&feature=player_embedded
(1:30:32): Michelle, slit your wrist. Go ahead… or, do us all a better thing [sic]. Move that knife up about two feet. Start right at the collarbone. Where are the civility police when you need them, huh?
9. Left-wing mob shuts down speech at Columbia University. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuNXmy0e5fc&feature=player_embedded
10. Left-wing mob shuts down speech at UNC-Chapel Hill. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaTkGgE-hXA&feature=player_embedded
11. Left-wing mob (ACORN) illegally trespasses and breaks into a home in Baltimore in the name of “social justice†http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRrHZGTdhKw&feature=player_embedded
12. Florida Democrat Barry Seltzer allegedly tried to run down congresswoman Katherine Harris with his Cadillac as she was campaigning in Sarasota, Fla., in October 2004. http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/katherine-harriss-car-trouble
13.In May 2005, police arrested Ajai Raj and charged him with disorderly conduct after he asked a vulgar question and made lewd hand gestures after a speech by conservative author Ann Coulter at the University of Texas at Austin.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/another-counter-coulter-bust
14. “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.†— Not Sarah Palin
15. “Get out there and “punish our enemies†— Not Mitch McConnell
16. ”I don’t want to quell anger. I think people are right to be angry! I’m angry!†— Not Rush Limbaugh
17. “Punch back twice as hard.†– Not John Boehner
18. “I want to know “whose ass to kick†— Not Sean Hannity
19. “I’m itching for a fight.†– Yep, him again
I knew that you would list a whole slew of reckless, unacceptable statements by whackos, Juan. But these people are not Congressmen and Senators, and people from Fox News Channel and talk radio who, regularly, are vicious, spew poison and hate, and incite right wing extremists with their rhetoric. These people you mention are jerks, but they do not hold positions of power, as so many Tea Party Republicans do. So while it is horrible that any such statements are made, they are NOT on an even basis, but rather multiplied on the Right, as compared to the Left! Obama has been portrayed in disrespectful ways MUCH more than any previous President of modern times!
Ronald writes: “Interesting observations, D! But realize that [Flordia U.S. Sen. Marco] Rubio, and also [Texas U.S. Sen. Ted] Cruz, are Cuban, which is only about 3.5 percent of Hispanics in America, while Mexican Americans are 65 percent, and Puerto Ricans are clearly second in percentage. Why would Mexican Americans or Puerto Rican Americans find Cuban Americans appealing to vote for, particularly since there is no love lost between these groups and Cuban Americans, even in their home lands?”
Now this is me ascertaining what the behind-the-scenes strategists from the Republican party are thinking. Those specifics on Rubio and Cruz are not necessary. To the Republican big-shots … they’re in the Hispanics’ camp.
One thing to consider is that Florida Cubans carried for President Obama in his 2012 re-election; he, of course, carried the Sunshine State, which has backed all winners (except 1960 and 1992 Democratic pickup winners John Kennedy and Bill Clinton) since 1928. That was not good for a party that is very white.
“Regarding the top twenty states being where Presidential winners come from, that is actually good, as to elect a President from a state that is miniscule in population seems ridiculous on its surface, so I guess that clinches Joe Biden never becoming President by election, especially with Hillary Clinton likely to run!”
With Vice President Joe Biden, it has to do with age. Back in 2004, with candidate and ex-Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, it had to do with him being more to the left than the established Democrats.
I think this observation of Top 20 states (or, in the case of Minnesota, and plenty of presidential/vice-presidential nominees from the 1960s to 1980s, Top 21 as long as their electoral votes boast double digits) wasn’t by design. It just worked out that way. I just returned from a trip to Colorado. That’s become a bellwether state. It’s become a politically influential state (a possible trendsetter). So, perhaps at some point during this and the next decade, we’ll get a president outside the Top 20. (If the Republicans were smart, they’d be going for former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman. But they don’t want him because he went to work in President Obama’s administration.)
D, I have stated a number of times that Jon Huntsman would be, easily, the best and most qualified candidate the Republicans could run in 2016, but they will not do so under any circumstances, because they are not sophisticated enough to run a candidate who would be an exceptional President, were he to win! They would rather run an ideologue, who will put the final nail in the coffin of the party of Lincoln, TR, and Ike! Very sad and tragic, indeed!
Ron: “Reckless, unacceptable statements by whackos”? You should have more respect for President Obama. Statements number14 through 19 were all his. Furthermore we have a bunch of hateful rhetoric from Democrat Congressmen.
-Maxine Waters: “Tea Party can go to hell” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzVKQCnLJns
-Congressman Cohen: GOP are like the Nazis: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC5acx2qU7E
-Congressman Ellison comparing 9/11 to Reichstag Fire thus Bush to Hitler: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1zmL82skqA
-Two staffers form Senator Chuck Schumer office, Katie Barge and Lauren Weiner, ran an illegal credit report on Republican Michael Steele. – 9/28/05
-Speaker Nancy Pelosi dismissed Conservative protesters as “astroturf. You be the judge … carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health care.” (which was a lie and insult)
-Keith Halloran,Democratic candidate for New Hampshire’s House said in a Facebook post that he wished Sara Palin would have been in a plane crash that killed five people including former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens.
-Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.) in a speech to union members in Boston made the statement “every once and awhile you need to get out on the streets and get a little bloody when necessary.”
-Democratic Wisconsin State Rep. Gordon Hintz told Michelle Litjens, a fellow Representative, that she was “fucking dead” after she voted for Gov. Scott Walker’s budget plan.
– Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee tried to obtain the health record for U.S. Senator Scott Brown (R) Mass., his wife and their two daughters from a state agency.
-A court released the sealed divorce records of Jack Ryan, a Republican running for a U.S. Senate seat against Barack Obama, an embarrassing controversy ensued and Ryan lost the election.-6/8/04
And the list can go on and on..Oh I almost forgot VP Biden calling the Tea Party “terrorist” and “barbarians”.
Why is it, Juan, that you do not list all the asinine statements of Bachmann, King, Gohmert, Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, O’Reilly, Coulter, Savage, Levin, West, Palin, Paul, Cruz, ad infinitum? I never said that all on the left are responsible and proper in what they say!
But the number of attacks from the Right are still FAR more than from the Left!
And If Obama said numbers 14-19, the only one I object to is Number 14, but no one is perfect, particularly when Obama stays so “cool” through the most hateful, bitter attacks any President has suffered in office, including assassination threats far outnumbering all Presidents before him combined since Nixon!
Ron: I am waiting for you to reproduce what you consider hateful statements from them. I am really interested to know what you consider hate. Limiting abortion to prior to 5 months? Eliminating Live – Birth abortions? Replacing the tax code with a flat or fair tax? Which by the way would reduce enormously the IRS bureaucracy.Welfare reform? Lower taxes? Limiting big government? What? Or is it all in “code”? I at least listed specific hateful rhetoric that were said, and I haven’t even gone to the violent acts committed by leftist Democrats in the past decade or so. The list is long Ron and I don’t think you want me to go there.
You have the amazing ability to come up with list after list, Juan, and it makes me wonder how you do it. I have better things to do than answer all of your accusations, and do not use any one specific website, such as the Heritage Foundation propaganda organ, as you seem to do. Suffice it to say, there is too much rhetoric on both sides of the political spectrum that is regrettable!
But when Republicans and conservatives make light of rape, want to cut school lunches, want to keep immigrants in inferior status, have no trouble harming the elderly, and promote total stalemate on job growth, and waste millions of dollars on pointless attempts to repeal Obama Care, that is enough to show their lack of compassion or concern for average Americans!
If you insist on more and more of these listings, I will simply ignore you, as I have better things to do with my time, and you, as a lawyer, need to stop wasting so much time on your mission to destroy progressive ideas and goals!
Way to go Professor! 🙂
Ronald, in response to Juan, writes: “If you insist on more and more of these listings, I will simply ignore you, as I have better things to do with my time, and you, as a lawyer, need to stop wasting so much time on your mission to destroy progressive ideas and goals!”
I don’t believe Juan is a lawyer.
D,
My thoughts exactly.
Ron: There you go again making generalizations. You accuse all conservatives of promoting hate and violence, and when I give you just a few examples of leftist liberal promotion of hate and violence, you say, but none of our elected officials with power ever do that. When I come back and give you plenty of examples of Congressmen and even the President promoting hate and violence you ask me why I don’t do the same with conservatives. Why are you inverting the burden of proof? You are the one who made the accusations about all this conservative hate promoting machine.So all I said was ok, just give me ONE example, just ONE of any main stream conservative talk show host calling for the death or any leftist liberal. Just one! Apparently you can’t so you fall back again on generalizing and making broad accusations.
Like, making light of rape? So,all conservatives do that because of a dimwit politician? So making light of rape is part of the conservative agenda? We as conservatives ponder all day on how to find a way of allowing rapist to get away with rape by accusing the victim? Oh yes we conservatives are just like radical Islamist , right?
We want to keep immigrants in an inferior status? Are you talking about ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS? Because they are the only ones who put themselves in an illegal situation by violating our immigration laws. So you honestly believe we should reward just like that those who violate our laws. Not surprised. In liberal “doubletalk land” supporting the law actually makes you the lawbreaker and breaking the law makes you the victim. And of course any reform of the current broken welfare state must be an attack on the elderly , the children, the poor and lets not forget minorities. Because of course conservatism is based on racism. And so on and so on. It’s very easy to live in your mindset, anyone who disagrees with the liberal big government statist viewpoint must of course be a hateful wretched soul and must be stopped for the good of the people. With that mindset it’s no surprised the IRS people acted like they did.How could they act any other way, after all conservatives deserve it. That’s the way the liberal “logic” works…
D. glad to see that you are joining the group that is skeptical about Juan and also Dave! 🙂
Juan, I do not need to list quotes like you do, as any intelligent person who has any humanitarian nature in him or her, KNOWS that conservatives have become the cause of the poisonous atmosphere in this nation, and they do not care about anything but their own advancement economically. Everyone has a right to self defense against these monstrous excuses for human beings! 🙁
Quite right Professor. Tons of conservative politicians and Faux News pundits have quite often referred to the president as being a lazy Kenyan Muslim Socialist and so on.
Again, where is the exact quote from any Fox News host saying Obama is a lazy Kenyan Muslim Socialist? I will be waiting.
The various smears of Obama: http://mediamatters.org/research/2010/03/25/no-surprise-that-harris-poll-finds-republicans/162266
All Guano needs to do for more such examples is a Google search.
Professor,
I’m even skeptical about Guano coming from Chile. 🙂
Chile? Try Los Angeles,California USA. And by the way , I lived in Argentina, not Chile.
Juan, look at what Princess Leia has shown from Media Matters, and this is 2010, and much more hate has been propagandized since then.
And, in addition to smearing the President, they’ve taken potshots at his family.
So saying that Obama is a socialist, which I really believe he is, is the same as wanting him killed? Saying that he wants to fundamentally transform the US is promoting violence? Oh wait, Obama said that! “We are 5 days away from fundamentally transforming Americaâ€. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKxDdxzX0kI. Well guess what? He was elected President, and that doesn’t mean he gets to fundamentally transform anything! And who would want to fundamentally transform America? You really have to detest America to want to do that!
That Obama produced the most important government power grab is clearly evident, just look at Obamacare. That is a quintessential power grab by the government.
As for him being a Muslim, nah, to be a Muslim you must submit to Allah, and Obama submits to no one, he considers himself the greatest thing since the invention of peanut butter. Even though as a kid he went to a Madrasa, he doesn’t consider himself a Muslim. Nevertheless it must be noted that his father was a Catholic who converted to Islam, and for Islam, even though Obama does not consider himself a Muslim, he is considered a Muslim because his father was a Muslim and abandoning the Muslim faith is not permitted. That said, of course Obama is not a Muslim because he is a Christian, the problem is that Muslims do not accept that. If you leave the Muslim faith you should be killed according to their laws.
That Obama’s birth certificate is a forgery is nonsense.
Finally that he acted unconstitutionally on various issues is also clearly apparent, specifically with the recess appointments when there was no recess and the defacto amnesty he granted to illegal aliens. I mean, of course the Executives has prosecutorial discretion, but this was more than that, it changed the law and so far according to our Constitution only Congress can change laws.
In any event, none of the things posted on that webpage calls for act of violence, wishing the death or murder of anyone. And calling someone a socialist is not inciting violence. That would be ridiculous. As for the Nazi comparison, hey Bush was called Hitler all the time! Where was the outrage then? That said, it is a historical fact that fascist/communist regimes had as one of their first measures the implementation of universal health care and of course gun control, which was really confiscation of private owned guns. Now of course that doesn’t mean Obama is the equivalent of Hitler. Let’s not be stupid. It just means that he is, as I said before just a statist, that leans left, but a statist nonetheless. Now you have mass genocidal statists, like Stalin, Hitler, then you have bully thug statists, like Chavez or Peron, and you have mild control power hungry statists, like modern day leftist liberals who want to control how much soda you drink, how often you exercise, go to the doctor, redistribute wealth and more all in the name of so called “social justiceâ€. But you and I know (we are grown-ups now) that the real incentive is to create a permanent power structure based on people who one way or another, either through employment or benefits, are dependent of certain government agencies. And that is where Obama is, where all the Democrat party is. Obamacare is just an example of power building, just like FDR and LBJ did.Nothing new here, as a historian you know very well that they did it before and they are doing it again. See: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-perspective/061813-660457-california-democrats-fund-left-wing-groups-with-taxpayer-dollars.htm?p=full (Any comments? I don’t think so)
Juan, do you ever take a break from your assault on what you call “statists”? I do not believe in conspiracy theories, and I believe the New Deal of FDR and the Great Society of LBJ were good for the nation!
You are NOT going to convince me otherwise, as that is part of my lifeblood, and I still call myself an FDR Liberal, reason why I loved Hubert Humphrey so much, and why I love Joe Biden so much today, two Senators, who became Vice President, wanted to be President, and are sincere, compassionate people who really care about those in the middle class and the poor!
No matter what you say, I am not abandoning my belief in the goodness of progressivism and liberalism. So stop trying to convert me, as it will not work!
And many Republicans of the mainstream that used to exist also saw the virtues of the New Deal and Great Society, with some modification, starting with Eisenhower, even Nixon in some ways, Rockefeller, Scranton, Percy, Hatfield, Weicker, Javits, Lodge, Aiken, Case, Mathias, and others!
I very highly doubt he’ll ever take a break from doing that Professor.
Also, he’ll never convert me either! He needs to take a hint and give up on this blog.
Juan writes, “Even if Romney had won 70% of the Hispanic vote he would have lost in 2012.”
This is one example why you’re not a convincing lawyer.
From CNN:
Vote by Gender and Race:
* White men (34%): Barack Obama 35% | Mitt Romney 62% (R+27)
* White women (38%): Obama 42% | Romney 56% (R+14)
* Black men (5%): Obama 87% | Romney 11% (D+76)
* Black women (8%): Obama 96% | Romney 3% (D+93)
* Latino men (5%): Obama 65% | Romney 33% (D+32)
* Latino women (6%): Obama 76% | Romney 23% (D+53)
* All others (5%): Obama 66% | Romney 31% (D+35)
Take what you said about Hispanics, Juan, and keep all other numbers the same and you can work out the following scenario:
* White men (34%): Obama 35% | Romney 62% (R+27)
* White women (38%): Obama 42% | Romney 56% (R+14)
* Black men (5%): Obama 87% | Romney 11% (D+76)
* Black women (8%): Obama 96% | Romney 3% (D+93)
* Latino men (5%): Obama 23% | Romney 75% (R+52)
* Latino women (6%): Obama 36% | Romney 66% (R+30)
* All others (5%): Obama 66% | Romney 31% (D+35)
Some math (Obama having nationally carried Hispanics 71% to Romney’s 27%):
* White men (34%): Obama 11.90% | Romney 21.08% (R+9.18)
* White women (38%): Obama 15.96% | Romney 21.28% (R+5.32)
* Black men (5%): Obama 4.35% | Romney 0.55% (D+3.80)
* Black women (8%): Obama 7.68% | Romney 0.24% (D+7.44)
* Latino men (5%): Obama 3.25% | Romney 1.65% (D+1.60)
* Latino women (6%): Obama 4.56% | Romney 1.38% (D+3.18)
* All others (5%): Obama 3.30% | Romney 1.55% (D+1.75)
> Exit Poll Margin: D+3.27
Some math (Romney with 70 percent Hispanics):
* White men (34%): Obama 11.90% | Romney 21.08% (R+9.18)
* White women (38%): Obama 15.96% | Romney 21.28% (R+5.32)
* Black men (5%): Obama 4.35% | Romney 0.55% (D+3.80)
* Black women (8%): Obama 7.68% | Romney 0.24% (D+7.44)
* Latino men (5%): Obama 1.15% | Romney 3.75% (R+2.60)
* Latino women (6%): Obama 2.16% | Romney 3.96% (R+1.80)
* All others (5%): Obama 3.30% | Romney 1.55% (D+1.75)
> Exit Poll Margin: R+5.91
So, according to Juan, “Even if [Mitt] Romney [would have] won 70% of the Hispanic vote he would have lost in 2012.”
No.
70 percent, for Romney, to 28 or 29 percent for Obama, with the Hispanic vote nationwide means an approximate popular-vote victory around 6 points. And a hell of a lot of state flippings from 2008 Democratic to 2012 Republican. (Obama won nationally, over Romney, by close to 4 percentage points nationwide and carried 26 states plus District of Columbia for 332 electoral votes.)
D: You are wrong. You do not take into account the electoral college and where those Hispanic votes are counted. Take a look here at this interactive electoral demographic map the New York Times elaborated. It plays with all segments of society and up to the year 2048. Just go to 2012, and leave everything the same but change Romney’s Hispanic % of voters to 70% (or drop Democratic share of Hispanic vote to 30%) and you will see that when all other stats stay the same Romney loses in the Electoral College 270-268. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/04/30/us/politics/presidential-math-demographics-and-immigration-reform.html?_r=0
Ron: Do you actually believe I am that stupid to think I can change your mind? Or any leftist big government liberal mind for the matter? No, you got me all wrong, remember I lived 20 yrs abroad where people, even though they see and suffer the failure and cruelty of big government, are still faithful to the creed of big government. I know perfectly well that one cannot change a faith. Because that is what modern leftist liberalism (or statism as I call it) is. Its a religion, with true believers among the followers and then there are those among the “leadership” that know what this is all about, just plain simple power. The believers, the followers, have their God and all their faith in big government. The leaders, use big government as a tool to dominate. Its the oldest form of governing Ron, and you should know that.
So, all I am doing is just confirming your beliefs. You had no comment on the piece I posted, but to say “I don’t believe in conspiracy theories”. The California legislature has acted, there is the Bill,there are the grants of millions of dollars, there are the $900 million from the Federal government. There in that piece you can see everything outlined. But, all you can say is I do not believe in conspiracy theories. So its either “I do not believe in conspiracy” or you actually agree on what’s going on, on the “modus operandi” outlined in the piece of modern liberalism. Since I consider you a rational human being, I find it hard to believe that you think this is a conspiracy and find it more likely that you actually agree with all of it, since as an intellectual of the left, you would fall into the category of leadership, not follower, and thus you should know better. Leia on the other hand is a prime example of a faithful follower. Either way I know I cannot change your mind, nor am I actually trying or care to. I just have like to have fun.
I agree to disagree that liberalism is not a religion.
I don’t believe in conspiracy theories either.
Guano’s definition of fun is being a troll. He just wants to start arguments and upset people.
Juan, what you believe, libertarianism and what you call classic liberalism, which I call conservatism in the veil of the preferred word liberalism, is most certainly a religion, a faith, which promotes what is good for oneself, and to hell with society and those less fortunate! It is justifying selfishness and mean spirit as a virtue to be promoted. It is the belief in dog eat dog, and kick those who fail to the side of the road. Anyone with a conscience and a set of ethics and morals could not, honestly, live with themselves with that kind of view of the world!
And I have fun destroying your mythology! LOL
Thanks, D, once again for your perceptive analysis as always! And, Princess Leia, you have correctly explained what Juan loves to do, his idea of having fun!
Exactly correct about libertarianism Professor!
An excellent critique about libertarianism: http://www.politicususa.com/2013/04/06/bill-maher-blasts-libertarians-rand-paul-paul-ryan-selfish-pricks.html
Great info on the differences between liberalism and progressivism: http://www.411mania.com/wrestling/video_reviews/36625
“To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.”
Charles Krauthammer
This is one of my favorites.
“If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking … is freedom.” – Dwight Eisenhower (Yeah I’m pretty sure Dwight would support Obamacare)
Yes, Ike would support ObamaCare, as would Nixon, Ford, and secretly the Bushes, or maybe not so secretive when one thinks about it, as it is more conservative than health care plans in Europe, and was endorsed by the Heritage Foundation and Newt Gingrich in 1993, twenty short years ago!
As far as Krauthammer is concerned, I consider him a nasty old man who, due to his horrible handicap, should have different views, but is obviously a very bitter man!
Why is it that anyone who disagrees with a leftist view is automatically nasty , bitter and a hater? Since when do handicapped people have to have liberal views? And if they don’t then they are nasty people? Since when have you guys become the guardian saints of those in need? You are so narrow minded that the only possible way to help people is through the Federal Government. Never mind, freedom, self-reliance, economic growth, a job, or local governments where the people would have more control. If it weren’t for the fact that I used to be on your side and thus understand the mentality, it would be very frustrating. You constantly disqualify the motives of those that do not follow your religion. Just like all the leftist of the world. They are the NUMERO UNO of Intolerance!
By the way, your definition of conservatism/classic liberalism, just demonstrates how ignorant you are about conservatism. It is as if you had not read Smith, Locke, Hume, Burke,Madison, or Bastiat to name a few. Because if you did, then evidently you did not understand.
“The first requisite of a good citizen in this republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his own weight.”-Theodore Roosevelt
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”-Adam Smith
Juan, I can quote TR quite differently on many issues, as can be done with Thomas Jefferson and numerous other public figures, so trying to justify your views by quoting them is pointless! And Adam Smith is the epitome of selfishness, and laissez faire does not work, and when it has been tried, has led to disaster!
And I know that conservatism is more complex than I stated, but I do not see you denying the basic nature of the ideology, self centeredness and promotion of one’s own good over the general good!
And since you were once on the “bright side”, you should consider leaving the “dark side”, as it just might make you less bitter and more compassionate! 🙂
And I am intolerant of selfishness, greed, and lack of compassion, so I plead guilty to your definition of “intolerance”, but you need to look in the mirror at the truly intolerant person, who has gone over to the “enemy”! LOL 🙂
What this man discovered at a late age I fortunately saw it over 25 years ago. ” …at the heart of liberalism, is the idea that only a great and powerful big Government can be the benefactor of social justice for all Americans. But the left is only concerned with one thing: control. And they disguise this control as charity.†– Louisiana State Sen. Elbert Guillory
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_YQ8560E1w&feature=player_embedded
Guillory said he has watched the party moving further left on gun rights, abortion, prayer in schools, big government spending, and the family, but it was a shocking claim in the Senate that finally crossed a line.
When he heard Democrats claiming that if you oppose Obamacare, you’re a racist, Guillory said he couldn’t believe it. (This is a clear example of the left’s intolerance) His 103-year-old mother called him and said she didn’t want him associated with “anything like this,†despite the fact that she also has been a lifelong Democrat.
“It was the last straw,†Guillory reflected.
One last thing: I totally categorically reject your characterization that “the basic nature of the ideology, self centeredness and promotion of one’s own good over the general good!”. You are wrong and have absolutely not a clue of what conservatism/classic liberalism is. Furthermore you do not understand Adam Smith. I suggest you read or re-read Smith’s “The Theory of Moral Sentiments”.
It is ironic that this African American legislator, in a state which is just about the worst historically and today on racial matters and social justice, is stupid enough to be taken in by right wing propaganda!
Bobby Jindal has proved how insensitive he is, as poverty and ignorance reign in Louisiana, and he had said the GOP was acting “stupid”, until suddenly, recently, he decided to join those acting “stupid” himself, and therefore, disqualified himself as a serious GOP Presidential candidate in 2016, or any time in the future. Jindal has no future politically, and he has self destructed by his policies and utterances!
Louisiana has been well know for its historical corrupt political system! Yet since 1877 Republicans have only govern the state during 17 years total. That’s 17 years over 136 years! And you somehow have the gall to blame Jindal or the Republicans for the lousy state in which Louisiana finds itself!? Poverty and ignorance has always reigned in Louisiana and your populist progressives Democrat party is responsible for it!
Calling Russell Long, or Allen Ellender, or others populist progressives is a total distortion of reality, Juan! The state is worse now than it has ever been, and has David Vitter, who should have been drummed out of the Senate, as well as their excuse for a Governor, and their loony GOP representatives in the House of Representatives!
Ron: 17/136 , that’s the ratio! And you actually believe Louisiana was some kind of nirvana before? Give me a break!
From this article: http://www.411mania.com/wrestling/video_reviews/36625
Liberalism: Liberalism is an ideology with a long history. The core values of liberalism are individual freedom, freedom of thought, democratic government and equal opportunity. At the core of liberalism is the belief that society’s problems can be solved through government intervention. Liberals also tend to have an optimistic and utopian vision of the world.
Progressivism: The Center for American Progress defines progressivism as,â€A non-ideological, pragmatic system of thought grounded in solving problems and maintaining strong values within society.†Progressives are not interested in the big government vs. small government liberal/ conservative battle. Progressives are only interested in finding the best solution to the problem. Sometimes the best solution will be public, other times it will be private. Progressives are not burdened with the optimism or pessimism of liberal or conservative ideology. Progressivism does look to promote fairness and equality. Fairness does not mean that everybody will think the same or get the same benefits in life. What is does mean is that everyone should start with a level playing field, and it is each individual’s skills, talents, or motivations that will take them to where they want to go in that life. Progressives believe that people should be active in politics, and that our democracy should be open and fair to all citizens, and that the best ideas don’t come from elites in think tanks, but from the grass roots of America.
No, of course not, but the Republicans have done NOTHING to make anything better, not surprising at all!
Juan writes: “D: You are wrong. You do not take into account the electoral college and where those Hispanic votes are counted. Take a look here at this interactive electoral demographic map the New York Times elaborated. It plays with all segments of society and up to the year 2048. Just go to 2012, and leave everything the same but change Romney’s Hispanic % of voters to 70% (or drop Democratic share of Hispanic vote to 30%) and you will see that when all other stats stay the same Romney loses in the Electoral College 270-268. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/04/30/us/politics/presidential-math-demographics-and-immigration-reform.html?_r=0 ”
No.
I took in consideration the Electoral College, the popular vote, the demographics shift of just Hispanics. (Realistically, other racial demographics would shift in Romney’s direction along with this one group. As was the case in the Democratic pickup year of Obama and 2008.) There is also the gender vote. And this, in reality, would be dealing with a national tide. (After all, you said 70 percent of the national Hispanic vote to have carried in the scenario for Mitt Romney. Since Republicans and Democrats don’t exactly tend to get the full 100 percent of the vote, and that it’s really between 97 and 99 percent, you should assign 28 percent to President Obama. In both 2008 and 2012, exit polls accounted for 98 percent Hispanics’ vote going for the two-party nominees. That played out over all.)
That exit-polling number, covering what really materialized, was posted by me as D+3.21 (or D+3.27); that part of the page disappeared on me. And there was, for this scenario of Romney and 70 percent nationally carrying Hispanics, a popular-vote margin win of R+5.91. Well, in order for that to have happened, there would have been more than a 9-point shift nationally from the reality to the fantasy.
Here were the states in President Obama’s re-election column with their electoral votes and their margins that carried by D+9.50 or less. (Obama won nationally by D+3.85 and with carriage of 26 states plus District of Columbia worth 332 electoral votes while Mitt Romney carried 24 states worth 206 electoral votes.) …
* Florida, 29, D+0.88
* Ohio, 18, D+2.97
* Virginia, 13, D+3.87
* Colorado, 9, D+5.36
* Pennsylvania, 20, D+5.38
* New Hampshire, 4, D+5.58
* Iowa, 6, D+5.81
* Nevada, 6, D+6.68
* Wisconsin, 10, D+6.94
* Minnesota, 10, D+7.69
* Michigan, 16, D+9.48
Those states I listed add up to 141 electoral votes. A national tide of Romney carrying Hispanics by R+42 would be a 2008-to-2012 shift of R+78 (because, in 2008, President Obama won them, over John McCain, nationally by D+36; that was 67% for Obama to 31% for McCain). That would have taken Romney’s 206 up to a winning 347 electoral votes. And this isn’t taking consideration of another scenario analyses: the margins from 2008. Oh, and with this very different scenario, the fantasy 2012 Romney campaigned would have been markedly different from the reality. (For one … strategy.)
Now the states I listed aren’t an automatic. They’re really consideration for taking the actual Election 2012 numbers and giving a further mathematic shift to serve as a guide. So, obviously, I disagree with that “New York Times” map in connection with your assertion that Mitt Romney would have still lost in the Electoral College had he nationally carried Hispanics with 70 percent of their vote.
There is no way, given this scenario, that Ohio would have remained blue. It’s a bellwether not only for the longest streak—since 1964—but has also been producing statewide margins within a spread of five points from the national number the very year Lyndon Johnson landslided Barry Goldwater. On top of that, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama carried Ohio by margins less than their national numbers, suggesting slight Republican tilts within its bellwether status. No way, given that, could Romney have won the popular vote by about R+6 and not flip and carry Ohio.
Also, something like this 70-percent-of-Hispanics-for-Romeny would have shifted California, which alone is about 12 percent of the entire nation, dramatically away from incumbent Obama and his likewise incumbent Democratic party and, well, I’d have to go state-by-state with Calif. and all the rest of the states with examining their 2012 exit polls’ crosstabs. Worse is that, with Election 2012, I think it was “Associated Press” which came up with the bright-eyed idea only to poll election-day results with 31 of the 50 states. It wasn’t that way before. And given that Barack Obama won over the female vote in 2008 Georgia (their 54% topped his official Democratic pickups of Florida, Ohio, and Virginia), leaving the Peach State one of 19 denied was one hell of an insult decision.
All I can say, D, is AMAZING! You must either be a Political Science professor or a political analyst as your profession? 🙂
D: It is all in the realm of “Fantasyland.” There is no way any Republican candidate, much less a conservative one, would ever get 70% of the Hispanic vote. Why fight for 7% of the electorate and risk of losing your base? Every time the conservative base stays home, the Republican candidate loses. It’s like convincing the Democrats they should pander the pro-life crowd! And even then it would be pandering to a large portion of the electorate. But would the Democrats do that at risk of losing their pro-abortion even after birth crowd? In any event, should I trust your methodology or the NYT’s in this fantasy? It really doesn’t matter. The reality is that 70% of Hispanics are of Mexican origin,and they traditionally vote Democrat, ever since the days I grew up in L.A. and that certainly will never change. They truly believe that government is the source of all wealth, as does a large portion of Americans unfortunately. And that is a bigger problem.
Also, all Hispanics are not alike, there are Colombians, Venezuelans , Ecuadorian, Argentines, Chilean etc. And few have much in common except the language. Enormous differences exist between Chileans and Mexicans, but enormous similarities exists between Argentines and Uruguayan, and none between them and Mexicans, Colombians and Venezuelans. But all that is irrelevant, because 70% of Hispanics voters are of Mexican origins, thus the Democrats actually have the Mexican/American vote.
Even when Republicans handed down amnesty in 86 with Reagan, the Hispanic vote went from 37% in 84 down to 34% in 88 for Republicans! Bush senior got less Hispanics votes even after amnesty was granted! So this amnesty will do nothing for Republicans, but it will do a lot of harms for the Republic,the economy , the average American worker and it will be an electoral bonanza for Democrats and some corporations.
From this article: http://www.411mania.com/wrestling/video_reviews/36625
Liberalism: Liberalism is an ideology with a long history. The core values of liberalism are individual freedom, freedom of thought, democratic government and equal opportunity. At the core of liberalism is the belief that society’s problems can be solved through government intervention. Liberals also tend to have an optimistic and utopian vision of the world.
Because Guano doesn’t believe in government intervention, he shouldn’t be calling himself a “classic liberal”.
Another reason why Guano shouldn’t be called a “classic liberal” is because he’s not in favor of individual freedoms, such as gay rights or a woman’s right to choose.
Another reason – doesn’t believe in equal opportunity. In his world, white rich men should be better off than women, minorities, and poor.
Wow, Princess Leia, a one-two-three punch at Juan! LOL
Classical liberalism was the political philosophy of the Founding Fathers. It permeates the Constitution, the Federalist Papers and many other documents produced by the people who created the American system of government. Many emancipationists who opposed slavery were essentially classical liberals, as were the suffragettes, who fought for equal rights for women.
Basically, classical liberalism is based on a belief in liberty. Even today, one of the clearest statements of this philosophy is found in the Declaration of Independence. In 1776, most people believed that rights came from government. People thought they had only such rights as government elected to give them. But following British philosopher John Locke, Jefferson argued that it’s the other way around. People have rights apart from government, as part of their nature. Further, people can both form governments and dissolve them. The only legitimate purpose of government is to protect these rights.
The 19th century was the century of classical liberalism. Partly for that reason it was also the century of ever-increasing economic and political liberty, relative international peace, relative price stability and unprecedented economic growth. By contrast, the 20th century was the century that rejected classical liberalism. Partly for that reason, it was the century of dictatorship, depression and war. Nearly 265 million people were killed by their own governments (in addition to all the deaths from wars!) in the 20th century – more than in any previous century and possibly more than in all previous centuries combined.
All forms of collectivism in the 20th century rejected the classical liberal notion of rights and all asserted in their own way that “need” is a claim. For the communists, the needs of the class (proletariat) were a claim against every individual. For the Nazis, the needs of the race were a claim. For fascists (Italian-style) and for architects of the welfare state, the needs of society as a whole were a claim. Since in all these systems the state is the personification of the class, the race, society as a whole, etc., all these ideologies imply that, to one degree or another, individuals have an obligation to live for the state.
Yet, the ideas of liberty survived. Indeed, almost everything that is good about modern liberalism (mainly its defense of civil liberties) comes from classical liberalism. And almost everything that is good about modern conservatism (mainly its defense of economic liberties) also comes from classical liberalism.
Even though conservatism and modern liberalism are both outgrowths of classical liberal thought, they differ in what they accept and reject of their intellectual roots. Conservatism tends to accept the classical liberal commitment to economic liberty but rejects many of its applications to the noneconomic realm. Liberalism accepts the classical liberal commitment to civil liberties but largely rejects the idea of economic rights.
Classical liberals were reformers. Throughout the 19th century, they reformed economic and civil institutions — abolishing slavery, extending the right to vote to blacks and eventually to women, expanding the protections of the Bill of Rights to state and local governments and creating a largely free market economy. Indeed, part of the notion of what it meant to be a “liberal†was to favor reform.
In the 20th century, those with a zeal for reform continued calling themselves “liberals,†even as they abandon the belief in economic freedom, while those who resisted reform took to mantel of “conservatism.†In the words of National Review publisher, William F. Buckley, conservatives were “standing athwart history and crying Stop!â€
As the last century grew to a close it became obvious all over the world that economic collectivism did not work. Communism didn’t work, socialism didn’t work, Fascism didn’t work and the welfare state didn’t work. Thus in the economic realm there was the great need to privatize, deregulate, and empower individual citizens.The natural people to lead this reformation were conservatives, who profess belief in the goals. Yet conservatives have lacked in the needed skills, having spent the better part of a century on defense.
In American politics these days, it is increasingly common for those on the left to call themselves “progressives†rather than “liberals.†The term is apt in the sense that much of modern liberalism has its roots in the Progressive Era, which flourished in the first several decades of the 20th century. Interestingly, much of contemporary conservatism also finds its roots in that era. In fact it’s probably fair to say that while the best of modern liberal and conservative ideas are extensions of classical liberalism, their worst ideas are products of progressivism.
To many, like Ron, the term “Progressive Era†evokes fond caricatures of Teddy Roosevelt and such reforms as safe food, the elimination of child labor and the eight-hour work day. Yet real progressivesm was much more profound and far more sinister.
The first appearance of modern totalitarianism in the Western world wasn’t in Italy or Germany but in the United States of America under President Wilson. How else would you describe a country where the world’s first modern propaganda ministry was established; political prisoners by the thousands were harassed, beaten, spied upon, and thrown in jail simply for expressing private opinions; the national leader accused foreigners and immigrants of injecting treasonous “poison†into the American bloodstream; newspapers and magazines were shut down for criticizing the government; nearly a hundred thousand government propaganda agents were sent out among the people to whip up support for the regime and its war; college professors imposed loyalty oaths on their colleagues; nearly a quarter-million goons were given legal authority to intimidate and beat “slackers†and dissenters; and leading artists and writers dedicated their crafts to proselytizing for the government?
Of course, some will dismiss these tyrannies as unfortunate excesses of wartime, much as Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and trampled on other constitutional liberties during the Civil War. But the difference is that Lincoln truly believed in Jeffersonian democracy and classical liberal principles. While Wilson, by contrast, who was our first Ph.D. in the White House, in his books and other writings made it clear that he completely rejected the ideas of Jefferson and classical liberalism. (See his book, The State).
Wilson was by no means alone. He was at the epicenter of an intellectual trend that swept the Western world in the early part of the last century. In Russia there was Bolshevism. In Italy, Fascism. In America, Britain and other parts of Europe, the new ideas were called progressivism. There were, of course, many differences — political, moral and otherwise — in the content of these isms and huge differences in resulting policies. But all had one thing in common: they saw classical liberalism as the intellectual enemy and they disliked classical liberalism far more than they disliked the ideas of each other.
At the time of the Wilson presidency, progressives did not view the exercise of state power and the violation of individual rights as a war-time exception to be set aside in times of peace. To the contrary, Herbert Croly (founding editor of the New Republic), John Dewey (father of progressive education), Walter Lippman (perhaps the century’s most influential political writer), Richard Ely (founder of the American Economic Association) and many others saw war as an opportunity to rid the country of classical liberalism and the doctrine of laissez faire.
In fact, the primary domestic objective of progressives was to create in peacetime what Wilson had accomplished during war. They were able to do so a little more than a decade later. Franklin Roosevelt was Assistant Secretary of the Navy under Wilson, and when he led Democrats back to the White House in 1932 he brought with him an army of intellectuals and bureaucrats who shared the progressive-era vision. Indeed, most of the “alphabet soup†of agencies set up during the Great Depression were continuations of various boards and committees set up during World War I.
The use of the word “progressive†by modern liberals is appropriate — to the degree that it reminds us of the historical and intellectual roots of much of liberal thinking. But there is another sense in which the word is very misleading. In general, there is nothing truly progressive about modern progressives.That is, nothing in their thinking is forward looking. Invariably, the social model they have in mind is in the distant past. Many, as Ron for example, explicitly admit they would like to resurrect Roosevelt’s New Deal and they see Obama as just that!
I sense, Juan, your trying to provoke me when you mention me in your discussion of progressivism, but I see Wilson and FDR, particularly FDR, in a more positive light, while being a major critic of Wilson, and yet seeing positive aspects of Wilson as well. I do not ignore his negatives, far from it, but still see him in the top ten of our Presidents, even with his major shortcomings. FDR has his negatives as well, and still, I see him as second to Lincoln, and mot scholars would see FDR second or third (behind George Washington), and Wilson somewhere between six and ten on the list.
Ron: I am not provoking you, whenever I mentioned you it was to just confirm what you “believe” about that specific paragraph. And I think I did not err in light of your response.
Juan writes, “D: It is all in the realm of “Fantasyland.†There is no way any Republican candidate, much less a conservative one, would ever get 70% of the Hispanic vote. Why fight for 7% of the electorate and risk of losing your base?”
To answer your last question: It’s because a party base determines nomination[s] but not the outcome of general [elections]. And that “7%” may very well be enough of a make-or-break difference between winning or losing.
On MSNBC’s 2012 election-night coverage, hosted by Rachel Maddow, one panelist was John McCain’s lead campaign advisor from 2008, Steve Schmidt. Just as 11 p.m. ET arrived, NBC News was able to project that Barack Obama arrived at 243 [244; some already factored Maine #02] electoral votes with California, Washington, and Hawaii. Schmidt noted that Calif. turned away from the Republicans, after the 1980s (Bill Clinton, with unseating George Bush, won the state in a Democratic pickup in 1992), because of [then-Gov.] Pete Wilson and his party’s stance on immigration. Schmidt noted that, years later, it’s remarkable how Calif. is so easily called for the Democrats. (That’s having to do with 12 percent of the nation residing in the No. 1 most-populous state in the U.S.; the two gender votes from Calif. now strongly Democratic; that the Republicans aren’t competing anymore for the state in latest presidential elections; and that Obama, who defeated McCain nationally by D+7.26, and carried Calif. by D+24.03, saw Calif. boast 16.77 percent more blue relative to the national margin of Election 2008.)
Schmidt mentioned this being significant in part because Calif. has been long recognized as a trendsetter for the nation. I can further note that in the 1900s, Calif. voted for 22 of the 25 winning presidential tickets. Of its three occasions of not voting for the prevailing ticket, two of them were Calif. having carried for a losing ticket in part because of being the home state for a presidential or vice-presidential candidate. (In 1912, former Republican president and Progressive Party nominee Teddy Roosevelt won the state, while Democrat Woodrow Wilson unseated incumbent Republican president William Howard Taft, with then-Calif. U.S. Sen Hiram Johnson as Teddy’s vice-presidential running mate. Johnson was also Calif.’s 23rd governor. In 1960, then-vice president Richard Nixon managed to hold his home state despite a Democratic pickup of the White House by John Kennedy. In fact, there were news sources which erroneously called Kennedy the winner in Calif. but Nixon pulled it out by around 35,000 raw votes and a margin of R+0.55 in an election won by JFK with a national margin of D+0.17. Only in the third occurrence, in 1976, was there no mitigating factor between incumbent Republican president Gerald Ford versus Democratic challenger Jimmy Carter with either’s ticket including a Californian. And Ford, despite becoming unseated by Carter, carried Calif. by R+1.78 as Carter won nationally by D+2.06. So in these two cases, Calif. was less than five percentage points of the national numbers. Just as Ohio has been in every election since 1964.)
Calif. is one of those ex-bellwether states which now strongly identifies with one party over the other. That used to be case with President Obama’s home state of Illinois. From the Republican party’s first presidential election, in 1856, to 1996, the state voted for every winner except the prevailing Democrats of 1884 (Grover Cleveland), 1916 (re-elected Woodrow Wilson), and 1976 (Jimmy Carter). It too backed Gerald Ford (by a margin of R+1.97 which was remarkable close to Calif.’s). Vice President Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware used to be a bellwether, having carried for all winners during the period of five decades that were the 1950s to 1990s (at which time it was the only state to do so as former bellwether Missouri got it wrong in 1956, backing Adlai Stevenson over then-President Dwight Eisenhower, and both Florida and Ohio did not carry for Kennedy in 1960; and Fla. didn’t quite make it to flip and carry for Bill Clinton in his first election of 1992). These two states, along with Calif., are now deeply blue. And, when you think of their geography, they are spread far and apart with Calif. out west, Ill. in the midwest and pretty much around the center (neighboring Mo.), and Dela. in the east and around the mid-Atlantic. (Dela., just like Calif., also carried for 22 of the 25 election winners of the 1900s, getting it wrong and backing the losing Republicans of 1916, 1932, and 1948. Notice a theme: All three states then backed losing tickets in Democratic years. Now they are among the first to back prevailing Democratic tickets.)
Schmidt having mentioned California as a trendsetter is also acknowledging that what it sets up may not make it all the way through much of the rest of the country instantly. But that, in not a terribly long waiting period, the majority of the rest of the country does tend to catch up.
Adding to this bad news for the Republicans was a discussion on ABC News’s 2012 election-night coverage, hosted by Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos, and featuring at least ten panelists. George Will mentioned that the high watermark for Republicans, in recent presidential elections, came from George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election of 286 electoral votes. Will didn’t go deeper, as he should, but what he could have also mentioned was that Bush Jr.’s 271 (in 2000) and 286 (in 2004) election victories combined for less electoral votes than his father’s prevailing 426 (in 1988) and his unseating of 168 (in 1992).
What also hit home is that the racial demographic Republicans can nationally count on, Whites, have significantly dropped to the point that, in 1992, they accounted for 87 percent of the size of that year’s election vote. (This was also mentioned in the ABC discussion and reiterated by Donna Brazile, who managed Al Gore’s 2000 campaign, and is the first African-American to do lead a major-party presidential campaign in such capacity.) Going back to Steve Schmidt on MSNBC: Just after 11 p.m. ET, he mentioned that Mitt Romney’s performance with Whites, nationally, was on par with George Herbert Walker Bush. The difference: In 1988, Bush Sr. receipt of 60 percent national voting support from Whites was good enough for victory with carriage of 40 states and 426 electoral votes. Schmidt went on to say that if Romney were to pull off the 2012 election, he would become the last Republican presidential candidate who could prevail with those kind of national numbers. That it would no longer be good enough for the GOP. A few minutes later, at 11:12 p.m. ET, NBC News announced that the states of Iowa, Oregon, and bellwether Ohio delivered carriage to Barack Obama and brought him to re-election as the 44th president of the United States.
When you do some math, some numbers crunching, you realize that the 2008 number of the national size of the White vote at 74 percent, followed by the 2012 national size of 72 percent of the voting electorate, is no longer good enough for a Republican party presidential victory. It is undeniable that the Republican Party is going to have to go beyond Whites if they care enough to win back the presidency of the United States. If we can look at the Republicans and Democrats as not only political parties but also businesses, in part because they do a lot of Washington, D.C. business with corporations and special interests, it is unassailably undeniable that Team Red is actually in the Deep Red.
Party base may determine the nomination but if the base stays homes and doesn’t vote then you will certainly lose. And this is what the Republican establishment has consistently done. The establishment hates its own base. The most serious problem that Romney had was that he was not able to connect with white voters who were so turned off by the campaign that they abandoned the GOP and in many cases stayed away from the polls altogether. As many as 5 million white voters simply stayed home on Election Day. If they had voted at the same rate they did in 2004, even with the demographic changes since then, Romney would have won. Likewise, the white vote is so large that an improvement of 4 points — going from 60 percent to 64 percent of those whites who did vote — would have won the race for Romney. So which would have been a more realistic goal for Romney — matching the white turnout from just a few years earlier, or winning 73 percent of Hispanic voters?
The total white vote dropped from 100 million in 2008 to 98 million in 2012 (down two percent). Only 64.1 percent of eligible whites voted in 2012, down from 66.1 percent in 2008 and 67.2 percent in the recent high-water mark year of 2004. This was the first time in the history of the Census survey that whites were not the highest-ranking group in terms of their rate of voting.
Among Hispanics eligible to vote, gross numbers continued to rise—but the rate of those taking the trouble to vote dropped from 49.9 to 48.0 percent. The number of Hispanics who claimed to be eligible but didn’t bother to get to the polls soared from 9.8 million to12.1 million. See Census Official Report: http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/p20-568.pdf
So whatever the media may say is “mumbo jumbo”. The reality is quite different. The conventional wisdom about the Hispanic vote as embodied in the MSM has been exaggerated for, roughly, ever. Hispanics didn’t account for 9 percent of the 2008 electorate as the MSM exit polls stated, but for 7.4 percent. And in 2004, they weren’t 8 percent, but 6.0 percent. Way back in 2000, the exit poll claimed that Hispanics made up 7 percent, but the real number turned out to be 5.4 percent.
Washington Post’s Esther J. Cepeda noted the slack Hispanic turnout in 2012:
“After nearly a year of breathless reports about how Latinos were going to trip over themselves to get to the polls and vote against Mitt Romney’s hardline immigration stance — remember Time magazine’s Spanish-language cover “Yo Decidoâ€? — the reality is less dramatic.”
[The GOP’s Hispanic problem, May 15, 2013] http://js.washingtonpost.com/opinions/esther-j-cepeda-the-gops-hispanic-problem/2013/05/15/2ca7292c-bd94-11e2-9b09-1638acc3942e_story.html
Cepeda noted, for perhaps the first time in the history of the Washington Post, the self-interest behind the spin:
“The reason you don’t hear much about these sobering numbers from the Hispanic advocacy organizations—as opposed to how they react with any statistic even remotely suggesting an impending Latino supremacy—is obvious. After all, immigration reform is only in play because Republicans are scared witless that unfavorable Latino voting power will sink their party in upcoming elections.
But how true can this be when fewer Latino voters bothered to vote in a contest featuring an incumbent Democrat and a Hispanically tone-deaf Republican candidate who could never quite get past “self-deportation†than in 2008, when Barack Obama and John McCain—a longtime supporter of immigration reform—were running?”
Furthermore amnesty won’t win Republicans the Hispanic vote — even if they get credit for it. And Hispanics will resent the added competition for jobs.
But rich businessmen don’t care. Big Republican donors — and their campaign consultants — just want to make money.They don’t care about Hispanics, and they certainly don’t care what happens to the country. If the country is hurt, I don’t care, as long as I am doing better! This is the very definition of treason.
Hispanic voters are a small portion of the electorate. They don’t want amnesty, and they’re hopeless Democrats. So Republicans have decided the path to victory is to flood the country with lots more of them!
D and Juan, this discussion is really fascinating, and I thank you both for this!