Last weekend I was amused to hear about Rush Limbaugh's attack on John McCain. Check it out:
"If I believe the country will suffer with either Hillary, Obama or McCain, I would just as soon the Democrats take the hit . . . rather than a Republican causing the debacle," he said. "And I would prefer not to have conservative Republicans in the Congress paralyzed by having to support, out of party loyalty, a Republican president who is not conservative." Rush Limbaugh
John McCain is no liberal. Let's be clear about that. He's not a party loyalist, true, but that's not the same as being a liberal. The Arizonia Senator passes with an 83% conservative rating by one of their thinktanks. In that other 17% falls three things: campaign finance reform, Bush's tax cut for the wealthy while going into war, and resolving the illegal immigration problem with a plan that leads towards citizenship. The first one isn't important to most Americans but it sure pissed off Tom Delay and other Republicans who wanted the cash teat to flow freely. The tax cut thing was part of that "straight talk express" and the party line is that all taxes are bad. That last one, the "amnesty" thing, that's the one where Rush had to make a stand.
Listen, children, let me tell you a story about a man named Pete Wilson. He was Governor of the biggest state in the land and he wanted to be President some day. Governor Wilson's friends all told him that the best way to become President was to have a noble cause, a crusade. Now, to have a crusade, you need a group of people to crusade against. Pete's friends told him to crusade against all the people in his state illegally. It sounded good to Pete. His friend's drafted Prop 187 and off he went in the name of his noble cause under the banner of "Save Our State." Pete thought it was a fine banner.
The proposition passed, but Pete now had a lot of people who never wanted to be his friend. Worse, some people who used to be his friends, ranchers and business people, were very unhappy because they needed these illegals to do work that no one else wanted to do.
Poor Pete Wilson, his crusade eventually failed in the courts system and now he didn't have enough friends left to help him become President.
See, this is where someone draws the lesson from the tale and acts wiser in the future. In fact, Republicans across the land saw this as a bad crusade and they dropped the issue. Since 187 you can count Republican statewide elected officials on one finger and a thumb. But, there was another lesson.
In 2001 I was shocked to see a huge billboard looking like a ballot with two boxes: Send All The Illegals Back or Give Them Amnesty. It was an ad for a local right wing shock jock. Mr. Radio Guy had learned the other lesson: to a certain group of people, this was an issue that mattered, this was an issue that drove the ratings. His phone lines lit up each time it came up. Soon, other right wing broadcasters started banging the drum. The tail began wagging the dog. Everywhere, cliches manifested right before our eyes!
Keeping with a theme, the problem is how to unscramble this egg. I'm a Chef. You know what we do when the yolks break on over-easy? We start over. That's what will have to happen, eventually. I've seen cook's try to pour egg white over the break. This never works. Some plate the thing up and move the toast over to cover the broken egg. What you don't do, is stop service and argue with the cook. That sort of grandstanding helps no one, but sometimes it is interesting to watch.
And that brings up back to Mr. Limbaugh. From Rush's point of view, illegal immigration was a panacea. The Dems would eventually reform the laws and he could use this as a point of outrage for years and years. As Rush says up top "I would just as soon the Democrats take the hit." But, John McCain, like most Republicans form the increasingly hispanic south-west, knows that this all-or-nothing battle is bad for his party in the long term. Rush isn't concerned about the long term. Arbitron polls listeners 4 times a year.
Go in Peace
