The GOP begins to implode
Yeah, baby...
The GOP begins to implode
By Sidney Blumenthal
Bush's immigration speech was a desperate attempt to keep his delicate coalition together -- but all it did was accelerate its shattering. :
...The Republican Party as a whole is recapitulating the self-destruction of the California Republican Party. In 1994, Republican Gov. Pete Wilson advocated Proposition 187, which threatened to deny social services, healthcare and education to undocumented workers, and it aroused the Hispanic sleeping giant. From that moment, in national elections, California became one of the safest Democratic states, and only an anomaly like Schwarzenegger, an immigrant, could emerge as a viable statewide candidate. Ronald Reagan's party is a thing of the past.
The delicate coalition Bush put together in 2004 has shattered. But in losing control of the debate on immigration, which reflects his loss of control of the political debate in general, he has lost something more -- the capacity to speak for the American idea. In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt confidently spoke before the convention of the nativist Daughters of the American Revolution. "Remember, remember always," he said, "that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists."
The GOP begins to implode
By Sidney Blumenthal
Bush's immigration speech was a desperate attempt to keep his delicate coalition together -- but all it did was accelerate its shattering. :
...The Republican Party as a whole is recapitulating the self-destruction of the California Republican Party. In 1994, Republican Gov. Pete Wilson advocated Proposition 187, which threatened to deny social services, healthcare and education to undocumented workers, and it aroused the Hispanic sleeping giant. From that moment, in national elections, California became one of the safest Democratic states, and only an anomaly like Schwarzenegger, an immigrant, could emerge as a viable statewide candidate. Ronald Reagan's party is a thing of the past.
The delicate coalition Bush put together in 2004 has shattered. But in losing control of the debate on immigration, which reflects his loss of control of the political debate in general, he has lost something more -- the capacity to speak for the American idea. In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt confidently spoke before the convention of the nativist Daughters of the American Revolution. "Remember, remember always," he said, "that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists."
posted by Meander at 5/18/2006 08:35:00 AM
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