Posted on June 17, 2015

You’re Barking up the Wrong Tree, GOP

Ann Coulter, The Hill, June 16, 2015

For decades, liberals have bullied Republicans into taking suicidal positions by warning that the country will wreak a terrible vengeance on them if they do not urgently accede to some liberal agenda item. The demanded policy is invariably one that the white working class either is indifferent to or actively detests.

Over the years, the GOP has been obsessed with winning more votes from some generally Democratic constituencies: perpetually alarmed women (gun control), the media (campaign finance reform) and feminists (Equal Rights Amendment).

It never works. Democrats must be astonished at their good luck that Republicans fall for it every time.

Today, Republicans have again decided their path to victory is to concentrate on winning slightly more of another Democratic constituency: Hispanics. Curiously, Democrats never follow their own advice. They don’t neurotically fixate on increasing their support from evangelicals, coal miners, pro-lifers or small-business owners.

{snip}

The Democrats say it’s urgent that Congress pass an amnesty for illegal aliens: It’s a crisis to have people living in the shadows! If illegal immigration is a crisis, it’s a crisis only for the Democrats, who demand that they be given 30 million new voters. If it were a crisis for the illegal immigrants themselves, there’d be an easy solution.

{snip}

The second President Bush tried to foist amnesty on the country, and his party was wiped out in the next election. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) pushed amnesty and lost his presidential bid. Jeb Bush is still hawking amnesty and he’s polling about the same as Donald Trump, despite having unparalleled name recognition and the media’s deep respect. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) ran for office vowing to oppose amnesty and then has spent his Senate career pushing an amnesty bill. Now, the telegenic favorite of cable news can’t catch mild-mannered Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wis.) in the polls.

In the 2014 Republican sweep of Congress, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) took out a sitting Democratic senator by aggressively opposing amnesty. Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.) took out an incumbent Republican congressman–and party leader–by attacking his support for amnesty. Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) easily won an open Senate seat by opposing amnesty, getting nearly twice as many votes as the two amnesty-supporting Republicans combined. Scott Brown in New Hampshire nearly defeated the most formidable Democrat running that year by opposing amnesty.

So, naturally, the amnesty-supporting Chamber of Commerce is demanding credit for the GOP’s 2014 victory.

And guess what? Republican political consultants agree.

It’s important to remember that political consultants’ main interest is not in winning elections–look at how rich Mike Murphy’s gotten by losing them–but in raising boatloads of cash without breaking a sweat. They assure their idiot clients that conservative voters have “no place else to go.”

In fact, it’s the rich, the business interests and the Chamber of Commerce that have no place else to go. If they want lower taxes, less regulation and protection from trial lawyers, they’re not voting for the Democrats.

It’s ordinary white men and their wives who get discouraged and stay home. The only two Republican landslides for president in the last century were won by candidates who drove up the white working-class vote: Nixon and Reagan. Will elected Republicans ever notice that working-class whites are the only swing voters?