Cantankerous Conservatism . . .
BARNES, FRED
Cantankerous Conservatism . . . . . . replaces compassionate conservatism, at least for a moment. BY FRED BARNES PATRICK BUCHANAN, commentator and former presidential candidate, looked over the...
...Senator Hillary Clinton of New York and other Democrats are already attacking the House bill, saying it would create a police state focused on Hispanics...
...They are a critical part of the Republican majority...
...Well, it's a horrible symbol, one that clashes with the welcome mat laid out by the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor...
...home" from Iraq...
...It's not that these views are illegitimate...
...But he's overcome the "temptation" and "probably" won't run...
...The political problem is the effect all of this, including the congressional debate itself, is likely to have on Hispanic voters...
...More important, it says to Mexican-Americans: We don't want any more people like you coming into our country...
...A larger threat is the paleocon influence on one of the touchiest issues, immigration...
...Democrats recognize this...
...Jump to the November election...
...Excessive government spending, a worry of all conservatives but especially paleocons, is a major topic this year...
...And they do this in several ways...
...Here, their thinking is reflected in the antiimmigrant rhetoric of some congressional Republicans...
...I'm afraid many would interpret that message: Keep Mexicans out, forget free markets and free trade, and shrink America's role in the world...
...Republican voters dismiss criticism by Democrats or the media, but they pay attention when other Republicans zing Bush, or when they attack congressional Republicans, for that matter...
...They have it when Bush's poll numbers are up...
...It's a paleo moment in America...
...BY FRED BARNES PATRICK BUCHANAN, commentator and former presidential candidate, looked over the issues on the political agenda in 2006 and liked what he saw...
...Bush lifted the percentage of Hispanics who voted Republican from 35 percent in 2000 to 44 percent in 2004...
...On the Dubai ports deal, paleo-cons were leading voices of opposition...
...It was a paleoconservative's delight...
...This weakens the Republican base and, potentially at least, reduces voter turnout...
...I think the Republican party wins and runs the country for the next 25 years if we are perceived as pro-immigrant and respectful of immigrants," he says...
...So, if all goes well, the Republican party is on the way to claiming a majority of Hispanics, the fastest growing voting bloc in the country...
...The paleo-con message is not an electoral win-ner—unless you believe voters are eager to hear ideas that are gloomy, negative, defeatist, isolationist, nativist, and protectionist...
...Chances are, the moment won't last...
...What Republicans need more than anything else is unity...
...Which means there's no paleocon in the hunt...
...And it is such thinking that imperils the gains made by Republicans among Hispanic voters...
...In the immigration bill passed by the House last December, there was a distinct nativist streak...
...It's a little bit late," Buchanan says...
...They're part—a small part—of the broad conservative coalition in America...
...As for Buchanan, he says he's "thought about" running for president again in 2008...
...One is to attack Bush on issue after issue...
...On Iraq and the campaign for democracy, they reject Bush's optimism about rolling back the dictatorships of the Middle East...
...And the intervention in Iraq and President Bush's crusade for democracy face sharp criticism, with paleocons in the lead among the critics...
...How would such a fence play politically...
...And paleo-cons themselves are easily gathered under the big tent of the Republican party...
...Instead, they take the pessimistic view that the Middle East is unchangeable, Arab culture being what it is...
...It calls for the raising of a 700-mile fence along America's southwest border with Mexico and for stepped-up border security in general...
...The field is vanilla," he says...
...Grover Norquist, the conservative activist and head of Americans for Tax Reform, says holding Hispanic voters is crucial...
...A paleocon-inspired immigration bill would jeopardize this...
...There's immigration, soon to be debated on the Senate floor and always high on the paleocon list of concerns...
...He'd rather it had occurred in 1992 or 1996, when he ran for the Republican presidential nomination, or in 2000, when he ran as the Reform party candidate...
...In fact, without them, there would be no Republican majority...
...But it's a moment that could be politically painful for the president and harmful to Republicans in the midterm election in November...
...With their issues unusually prominent this year, paleocons are likely to be critical...
...Buchanan is the big dog among paleocons...
...And the mainstream media likes nothing more than to play up conservatives who attack other conservatives...
...The only way we lose majority status is to treat Hispanics the way we treated Catholics in the 1880s...
...He's not impressed with the current field of Republican presidential candidates...
...It was Buchanan who popularized the fence idea, and now a Republican senator intends to propose a fence along the entire border, from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico...
...They don't when his approval rating tumbles—and it drops all the more when Republicans are criticizing him...
...The problem comes when they influence the party in ways that threaten the narrow Republican majority...
...His message, were he to run again for president, he told me, would be: "Secure the borders, stop exporting jobs, and bring the troops Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...That's not an optimistic message...
...There was the Dubai ports deal, rejected by a congressional uprising part nationalistic, part isolationist...
Vol. 11 • March 2006 • No. 25
