Immigration At CPAC: Grass Roots Restive, But Not Yet Revolting
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Marcus Epstein, VDARE.com, Mar. 9
The Conservative Political Action Conference, sponsored by the American Conservative Union and held annually in Washington D.C., has long been the biggest meeting ground for Movement Conservatives. Recently, it has degenerated into a giant celebration of George Bush and the Republican Party. But at least this year (February 17-19), it allowed a serious debate on immigration policy—unmistakably a hot topic among conservatives and certainly the highlight of the conference.
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The Number One choice for President in 2008 among this year’s CPAC respondents—Rudolph Giuliani…who, despite his “tough on crime” stance, allowed New York City to be a sanctuary for illegal aliens.
There is still a definite tendency among many Movement Conservatives to view immigration as a Rule of Law/ National Security issue—rather than a cultural and demographic issue.
In this context, two further observations about CPAC that are worth noting:
The growing “Draft Condoleezza” movement. Eighteen percent of the CPAC attendees said Secretary Rice was their top choice for the GOP ticket in 2008. This was only one percentage point below Rudolph Giuliani. A huge number of attendants were wearing “Condi in 2008” buttons. Since then, I have noted an array of blogs and websites supporting her candidacy.
I find this absolutely baffling. Besides the fact that Rice has never served in elected office, we have no clue what her political views are. The only time she bothered to state an independent opinion besides echoing the President’s Iraq war stance was to support affirmative action before the Grutter and Gratz decisions.
Rice may be very conservative. But I don’t think that all the people sporting the “Condi in 2008” buttons at CPAC knew anything that I didn’t know. What they did know is that Condoleezza Rice is black and a female. And, in their dream world, this will mean that they will be free from accusations of racism and sexism from the Left.
This idiotic rainbow Republicanism is a recipe for electoral failure. Besides the fact the choice most likely will alienate their white male base, it is unlikely to gain them any brownie points among blacks or females.
Just ask Pat Buchanan—and whomever it was who persuaded him to pick Ezola Foster as his running mate in 2000.
Newt Gingrich’s speech. Many suspect the former GOP Speaker will run for president in 2008.
Gingrich made some strong, but not totally agreeable, statements about immigration. He said that both borders needed to be sealed, and all border crossers should be strongly scanned. At the same time, while not endorsing Bush’s “guest worker” program, he suggested that access to green cards be made easier. [Speech in RealAudio]
This pro-legal immigration/anti-illegal immigration position seems to be very popular among
Movement Conservatives. Of course, it means that they are not the bigots of liberal caricature. But it can easily allow people like Mr. Gingrich to make a few small gestures towards restrictionists—like being less generous about issuing visas to Muslims—while doing nothing to stop the rapid transformation of this country via Third World immigration.Overall, the news from CPAC was good for
immigration reformers.But there’s still work to do.
(Posted on March 10, 2005)