THE PEOPLE ARE HEARD FROM

The CPAC of 2013 came and went leaving a welter of confusion in its wake on the issue of how to deal with the alien invasion known as illegal immigration.  Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, in his speech at CPAC told of how as a boy in Texas working at one of his first jobs he was making $3 an hour.  He fell into a conversation with an illegal from Mexico who told him that he was making $3.  When Senator Paul said to the man  in Spanish that he too was making $3 an hour the Mexican illegal corrected him by informing him that he was making $3 a day.  The speech had an echo of the comment of Governor Perry when the Governor was attacked by Mitt Romney during the Republican Presidential Primary debates about the bill that went through the Texas legislature and that Governor Perry signed giving the children of illegals who had met certain conditions tuition in Texas universities equal to that going to native Texans.  In response to the attack Governor Perry retorted: “Have you no heart?”

The echoes of those debates has led, unfortunately, to the so-called “gang of eight” bill in the United States Senate, a jumping on to this allegedly bipartisan bill by the man occupying the Oval Office and a promise of some sort of passage by August of this year in what has been called a “Trojan Horse” maneuver, where a strong House bill embodying strong corrections of truly horrendous (if actually read) measures in the looming Senate bill would be completely gutted in conference.  The realistically possible outcome just described illustrates what seems to be a present reality of this debate: the answers will not come from the Washington elite.  Poll after poll, at least those in which questions are not pushy, reflects a mounting opposition to the bill on the part of the general public.  The most forcefully articulate opponent of the bill in the Senate,  Senator Ted Cruz (R.Tx), himself of Hispanic heritage, reports that he has his pulse on the large population in his own state of Mexican heritage and that they do not support the concept of broad amnesty.  Phone calls to the Congress opposing the measure are flooding the Capitol Hill switchboard.  One proponent, Senator Charles “Chuck” Schumber (D.NY), has threatened riots in the street if a sweeping bill granting amnesty is not passed.  As this occurs the Speaker of the House, Congressman John Boehner (R.Oh.) announces that he will not have the House take up the bill that the Senate passes, putting a decisive stall on matters.

What is most striking about this situation, it is increasingly evident, is that it puts the Washington elites of both parties directly in conflict with the opinion of the majority of the American people.  We have seen this play before, back in the Reagan days with Simpson-Mazzoli.  Again we are hearing about a “one-time deal” and how, in exchange for this alleged “one-time” deal, the borders will be secured.  Yaeh, right!  The American people are sending the old-time country message: “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me!”  The public is not buying and, for once, seem to be informing themselves as to the content of the measures probed.  The broad public seems to be honoring Jefferson’s maxim: “If you believe that the people are ill-informed, the answer is not to take away their discretion, the answer is to inform them.  Rush Limbaugh take note.

What seems to be important to the elites in Washington is that the actual facts not be examined in the rush to do something.  The public is catching on to this and does not like it.  Commentators calling themselves “conservative,” some of them, are assisting in the growingly unpopular effort by dubious “economic arguments.”  Facts concerning the entrepreneurial achievements, for example, of highly educated immigrants in Silicon Valley are conflated with the contrary facts of low skilled illegal immigrants.  The latter on the whole have higher rates of unemployment and dependence upon government largesse, higher rates persisting, for that matter, and even increasing into the second generation.   Supposed conservatives embrace opening the doors of immigration because of what they term “brainiacs,” when the facts are that opening the doors wide to illegals will result in an enormous dumbing down and reduction of skill levels.  There is absolute denial about the economic realities of floods of illegals.  There is no evidence, for example, that illegals have a greater rate of small business start-up success than legal immigrants.

The only “fact” that the Washington elites’ denial has established is that they will not do anything to correctly define the problem, must less solve it.  The American people, polls continually show, don’t believe that the borders will be closed to illegality by the controlling authorities in Washington.  The people are right.  As a stall seems to be setting in it appears to be the first one that has occurred for the present regime.   In the media the so-called mainstream media continues to act as if “state-owned” a la Pravda but the message out of conservative talk radio and the conservative web sites and blogosphere seems to be overwhelming that of the “lame=stream” to empower the actual decision making at the grass roots.  The message of Doc Savage (not the pulp fiction hero) about borders, languages and culture seems to gaining wider and wider approval.

What is quite notable is that in these conservative “new media” the message is clear that the voice of the people is rising and creating a road block to swift passage of “comprehensive” immigration reform to include amnesty howsoever trickily described or termed.  In response tricks such as gutting of any conservative version passed by the House in Conference are being focused upon in the new media. Doc Savage, who seems often ahead of the pack among conservative talk show hosts, had a guest host who spoke of countering efforts in states such as Kansas and Texas being formulated with the assistance of a friend of his.  But we have not seen much about what such measures consist of and, indeed, we have not heard anything from national conservative talk show hosts about what they might consist of.  This seems puzzling.  We have not even heard from callers-in to such shows about what such measures might be.

There surely are such callers but for some reasons they are not getting past the call-screeners.  If you call the call-screener for Mark Levin, for example, who makes much of his grounding in the Constitution and its formative influences, and tell his call-screener that you have a suggestion for such a measure at the state level, he will immediately hang up on you.  Thus there seems to be a universal opinion in the conservative new media that the answers will not come from Washington but rather from the states and yet we are not hearing what those countering measures might be.  One wonders why there is this vacuum and how it will be filled in?  Surely it will be.