← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Faust
Thread ID: 10934 | Posts: 3 | Started: 2003-11-05
2003-11-05 04:19 | User Profile
NEOCONS ARE STILL BEATING THE DRUMS FOR THE BROWNING OF THE GOP
[QUOTE]October 28, 2003
NEOCONS ARE STILL BEATING THE DRUMS FOR THE BROWNING OF THE GOP by Samuel Francis
With no fewer than three lead articles on the California election in the Oct. 20 issue of The Weekly Standard, the neo-conservative spin on the election's meaning is pretty much complete. As usual, the neo-cons manage to miss (or mask) the real meaning, misdirect conservatives and Republicans who pay attention to them, and desperately try to clamber on board what geniuses like me have been telling them for years.
The most interesting of the articles is one that ridicules the belief that California's 1994 ballot measure, Proposition 187, harmed Republicans. Proposition 187, which terminated welfare benefits for illegal aliens, passed by some 60 percent of the popular vote but was later killed by the courts. In the Standard, columnist Debra J. Saunders announces, "It is an article of faith among political journalists that Proposition 187 ââ¬Â¦ was poison to the Republican Party." And she's right.
She's also right that the article of faith is wrong, as I have argued ever since the days nine years ago when the measure was on the ballot. Since California victor Arnold Schwarzenegger backed Proposition 187 at the time and still won this month's election, it could not have been very poisonous. But what's interesting is that among the political journalists who were wrong about Proposition 187ââ¬âthen and, until this week, nowââ¬âwere the neo-conservatives for whom Saunders is writing.
The most prominent neo-cons who denounced Proposition 187 as poison were Bill Bennett and Jack Kemp, who held a news conference just before the vote to call on voters to reject it. In the Nov. 3, 1994, issue of Roll Call, columnist Morton Kondracke, who also opposed the measure and prematurely celebrated its defeat, told us why the two did what they did.
"Credit for Prop 187's swift decline," wrote Kondracke, "goes mainly to defeated California Republican gubernatorial candidate Ron Unz, who convinced influential national conservatives Bill Kristol, Jack Kemp and Bill Bennett to come out against it. ... Kristol then convinced Bennett at a lunch in New York to reverse his position on 187, and Kemp joined him in leading a charge against it."
And what does Bill Kristol do today? He's the editor of The Weekly Standard, of course, where Saunders' article ridiculing those who denounced Proposition 187 appears.
If Kristol after nine years of delusion has at last grasped what was obvious to me, Arnold Schwarzenegger, California Gov. Pete Wilson, presidential candidate and commentator Pat Buchanan, and 60 percent of California voters, I'm happy to hear itââ¬âbut don't tell me the Republican Party should pay much attention to him and his magazine in the future.
The other major article spinning the California results is one by Standard Executive Editor Fred Barnes, who mainly wants to see the election as proof a Republican majority has finally emerged. Maybe so, but in reaching that conclusion (from a rather unique election), he manages to make the same blunder neo-cons made about George W. Bush.
With Bush, who won re-election as governor of Texas in 1998 with about 39 percent of the Hispanic vote in his state (not "half," as Barnes claims), the neo-cons prophesied he would carry a "majority" of Hispanics nationally in 2000. In fact, he won only 31 percent in that year.
Now, with Schwarzenegger having won almost the same percent of Hispanic voters in California that Bush did in Texas in 1998, Barnes leaps to the conclusion that Hispanic voters are "in play" and can be won by the GOP.
Together with Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom McClintock, Schwarzenegger won about 41 percent of the state's Hispanic vote. Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante won 52 percent, considerably less than the Democrats usually get. But if you add McClintock's share to Schwarzenegger's, it's only fair to add the portion of the Hispanic vote won by Michael Camejo of the state's Green Partyââ¬â3 percent to 5 percentââ¬âto Bustamante's share. That means something like 55 percent to 58 percent of California Hispanics did not vote Republican, so it's just a bit of a stretch to claim the returns show they are "in play." In fact, California Hispanics remain solidly Democratic and liberal.
The neo-cons' strategy in making up their political analysis as they go along is not only to paint themselves as winners but also to smother any talk of serious immigration control. By making Republican think they have a chance to win Hispanics if only they shut up about immigration, they aim to keep the issue out of political discussion entirely.
The Republicans may well fall for it, but whether the voters who backed Proposition 187 and want real immigration control will fall for the new neo-con propaganda line is another question.
To find out more about Samuel Francis, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at [url]www.creators.com[/url].
COPYRIGHT 2003 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
[url]http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/News/Francis/NewsSF102803.html[/url] [/QUOTE]
2003-11-15 18:23 | User Profile
How a parasite destroys its opponents: join one of their groups, push it further toward the fringe and thus into a paradoxical position, then blame its genre for the crisis of its one member.
Conservatives in America are, like Democrats, liberal democratic propaganda pieces.
2003-11-17 04:54 | User Profile
Carl Conned-swerve-ative: "Mexicans? They are just like us. They have the same dreams, hopes, and values as Whites. Anyone who says otherwise is an evil, racist Nazi hatemonger who hates America!" [tm, the Jewish community].
Conned? Go talk to a WN.
:1eye: