Youth Revolution
I just arrived back from Turkey and am still a bit jet-lagged, but after watching my friend Kevin DeAnna's speech in Arizona, I'm about ready to fly back over and retake Constantinople!
Is McCain Mad at Mexicans?
Now most people probably believe McCain is simply a liar and I've previously taken that position. But the more I think about it, the more I suspect that he may just be mad at Mexicans. See this article from last year.
John McCain sounds angry and frustrated that, despite the risks he took in pushing immigration reform, Hispanic voters flocked to Democrat Barack Obama in last year's presidential contest. McCain's raw emotions burst forth recently as he heatedly told Hispanic business leaders that they should now look to Obama, not him, to take the lead on immigration.
The meeting in the Capitol's Strom Thurmond Room on March 11 was a Republican effort led by Sens. McCain of Arizona, John Thune of South Dakota, and Mel Martinez of Florida to reach out to Hispanics. But two people who attended the session say they were taken aback by McCain's anger...
"He was angry," one source said. "He was over the top. In some cases, he rolled his eyes a lot. There were portions of the meeting where he was just staring at the ceiling, and he wasn't even listening to us. We came out of the meeting really upset."
McCain's message was obvious, the source continued: After bucking his party on immigration, he had no sympathy for Hispanics who are dissatisfied with President Obama's pace on the issue. "He threw out [the words] 'You people -- you people made your choice. You made your choice during the election,' " the source said. "It was almost as if [he was saying] 'You're cut off!' We felt very uncomfortable when we walked away from the meeting because of that."
In 2006 and 2007, McCain was a leader on immigration, but his efforts ran aground largely because his legislation included what many Republicans derisively characterized as "amnesty," a pathway to citizenship for the nation's estimated 12 million illegal immigrants if they took a series of steps to earn legal status.
McCain probably found most Hispanics he came into contact with over his life friendly and pleasant enough. He figured that they were the new white people and would eventually become middle class Republicans. He risks his neck for them again and again and then finds out when he runs for president that no matter what he does, they still don't like him or conservative white people in general. And here he is now worried that he's going to lose his Senate seat-retire in humiliation after being the Republican nominee for president two years earlier-and all because he tried to help those damn beaners who voted against him anyway! To hell with them, McCain says, and dedicates the rest of his life to making sure no more of them get into the country.
Now it's pretty much impossible to picture Ron Paul or Tom Tancredo arriving at his views through such a vain and petty thought/emotional process, but McCain is a different story.
The Libertarian Problem
This political alliance was as unlikely as any, with everyone from hedonist anarchists to medieval Catholics in agreement on most policy prescriptions. Murray Rothbard, the godfather of anarcho-capitalism, supported (for a time) the candidacy of Pat Buchanan, an ardent nationalist. It is hard to overstate the fragility of a political movement that finds Murray Rothbard and Russell Kirk agreeing on a Presidential candidate.
The most recent incarnation of this alliance could be seen in the support for Ron Paul's 2008 Presidential campaign. Paul, being well-read on Austrian economics, was already a libertarian folk-hero, and having opposed NAFTA and amnesty, stated that life begins at conception, and holding a reverence for the Founding Fathers bordering on adulation, was an easy candidate for traditionalists to support. As political ideologies, the libertarians and traditionalists are about as different as you can get, but if the political agenda of the neocons has done any good it has aligned the policy prescriptions of these two different groups and allowed such a fragile alliance to be continued for some time.
That being said, the simple fact is that this alliance won't last much longer. It has played itself out and, having accomplished little, won't survive the coming immigration debate.
YWC Covers the "March for America"
This is Not a Joke: Census Edition
Can't wait to see what the little Mestizo has to say about amnesty! (HT: LRC)
