Cutting through the Lies

Striking back at the Jeb Bush and Ken Mehlman's ridiculous - and reality divorced - defense of the President's "comprehensive immigration reform" (read: AMNESTY) bill in the Wall Street Journal, the incomparable Heather Mac Donald, easily makes hash of the argument that California's Prop. 187 alienated Hispanic voters and cost the GOP the state. Mac Donald acidly notes that no Republican presidential candidate has won California since 1988 - six years before Prop. 187 was passed.

Mac Donald then explains - in simple language, in deference to Messrs. Bush and Mehlman and the editors of the WSJ - why California no longer votes for the GOP:

n fact, California’s transformation from “Reagan country” to labor-union country is the far more likely consequence of the growing Hispanic population per se and the corresponding outflow of white Republicans to other states. In 1990, California was one-quarter Latino and 57-percent white; in 2000, it was 32-percent Latino and 47-percent white; in 2005, Latinos constituted 35 percent, and whites 43 percent, of the population. Those shifting demographics have been accompanied by the growing clout of the Democratic party, and of California's public-service unions, not because of some vestigial memory of 187, but because they appeal to low-wage, low-skilled Hispanics. Los Angeles politics are now closely intertwined with the unionized Left, now that Latinos in 2005 made up 47 percent of the population and whites, 30 percent. The idea that Prop. 187, now 12 years old, is driving this massive shift is fanciful. California provides a glimpse of the likely political future if poor Hispanics continue to be the fastest-growing demographic in the country.

Though that's as simply and clearly as it can be put, no doubt Mac Donald will change few minds among the GOP's lemming-like leadership, or at the WSJ, which has committed itself to open borders immigration with the fanaticism of a jihadi on a suicide mission - aptly enough since President Bush's AMNESTY is an act of national suicide.

The Party of Lemmings

Leading Republican senators back a "comprehensive immigration reform bill" that grants amnesty for tens of millions of illegal immigrants co-authored by Ted Kennedy and pushed by a president whose popularity is currently polling in the low 30's, and are then "surprised" to discover that their constituents don't like it.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In his speech Tuesday on immigration reform, President Bush was trying to provide political cover for members of Congress to support the legislation. That could be tough.

Republicans are getting an earful on immigration. "I have learned some new words from some of my constituents," Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Arizona, said.

The angry response comes as a shock. "The level of intensity and volume is, I think, surprising,'' CNN contributor and radio talk show host Bill Bennett said. "We've talked to a number of Republican senators, and they confessed to being surprised by the reaction."

There's a big difference in intensity. Among those who favor a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, 28 percent say the issue is extremely important to them, according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll. Those who oppose a path to citizenship feel much more strongly about the issue. Forty-seven percent say it's extremely important.

If, in fact, the GOP senators are actually surprised by the reaction they are getting, then it is the clearest bit of evidence yet that the GOP under George Bush has become completely divorced from reality. The GOP base has made its opposition to amnesty loud and clear for years; the issue has come up before. The polling has been consistent. So, either GOP leaders are lying - and thus admitting that they are backing a bill that they know their base doesn't want (in which case announcing that they don't serve the interest of their voters and don't care what they think) - or they truly don't have a clue what is going on in the country. Worse, perhaps they truly don't understand what is going on, and don't care.

A political party that defies its constituents' most strongly held beliefs and actively seeks to diminish its voting base is a party headed toward extinction. But that is what George Bush has done to the GOP - turned it into a party of lemmings.

Hispanics Adhere to Blood, not Party

While attempting to justify his nation-killing plan to grant amnesty to millions of illegal Hispanic immigrants, and welcome millions more into the U.S., President Bush has argued that Hispanics possess strong family values and are a natural fit with the GOP's voting base. Like most of the President's other political calculations, this is based entirely on fantasy. Heather Mac Donald at City Journal has amply shown that actual Hispanic family values mirror the worst of America's hip-hop black underclass - which is not notably Republican in voting patterns. But worse for the President's clueless optimism is the fact that Hispanics will throw ideology and party to the wind in order to vote for other ... Hispanics.

WASHINGTON — As a consultant in six Republican campaigns, dating back to Ronald Reagan in 1980, Texas ad man Lionel Sosa tried to persuade Hispanic Democrats to back non-Hispanic Republicans for president.

This year, after serving as a Hispanic outreach consultant and high-dollar fundraiser in President Bush's national campaigns, Sosa is putting his money on a Hispanic Democrat.

Blood is thicker than party," Sosa said in explaining his support for New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson's bid to become the nation's first Hispanic president.

Of course, Ms. Sosa is entirely correct, blood is thicker than party, or just about anything else. Blood - racial identification - is a very powerful draw, one that holds nations together. It also causes nations whose blood is too diverse to fracture and balkanize, which is exactly what President Bush's obscene immigration scheme will do to the U.S. over the next few decades as various racial groups vote and act for their own ethnic interests.

Mr. Sosa isn't alone in migrating from the GOP to the Bill Richardson bandwagon.

The lure of heritage and potential political history also moved Houston lawyer Hector Delgado, another former top fundraiser for Bush, away from a lifetime of backing Republican presidential candidates.

"He is Hispanic," he said without pause when asked why he backs Richardson.

Sosa and Delgado are among at least 20 Bush "pioneers" — people who raised more than $100,000 for his presidential races — who have contributed to Democrats seeking their party's 2008 presidential nomination.

Notice, by the way, that Hispanics are permitted to openly state that they are voting for a politician because he is of their own race. What, one wonders, would be the reaction from the press if white donors or voters said that they were supporting a white candidate just because he or she was white? Well, we know the answer to that. For whites, ethnic solidarity is not permissible. That's multiculturalism, don't you know.