Author: Alan Bean

Don’t buy the hype; immigration reform will be a hard sell in Washington

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By Alan Bean

A week ago, I asked “Can the Republicans Romance Latinos?”  My conclusion was negative.  Immigration reform will require strong bipartisan support and the initial leadership must come from the Republican side of the aisle.  Barack Obama’s embrace of mass deportation (we deported more people in 2011 than were deported between 1907 and 1980) shows how desperate Democrats have been to flex their tough-on-immigrants muscle.  Obama is unlikely to stick his head out for the Latino community so long as the Republicans are competing to see who can offend Hispanic voters the most.  Only if the Republican party moves to the left of the Democrats on this single issue will the dynamics of the immigration debate shift significantly.

And that is unlikely to happen.  I argued that a political party that has prospered for two generations by tapping into white racial resentment is unlikely to discard it’s trump card.  How can you play to angry white men and advocate meaningful immigration reform at the same time?  You can’t.

Of course there is more than one kind of racial resentment.  If the Democrats have been undermined by white racial resentment, the Republicans just stumbled over Latino racial resentment.  Latinos have good reason to resent both parties, but the Republicans tried to shore up white votes by intentionally demeaning Hispanic voters.  It came down to choosing which brand of racial resentment would hurt you the most.  Republicans decided, correctly, that they had more to lose by alienating their Tea Party base than they would gain from courting Latino votes.  Obama, realizing he couldn’t out-tough the Republicans, wisely decided to toss the Latino electorate a bone.

Republicans should understand that conservative white voters won’t be voting Democrat anytime soon.  Unfortunately, it isn’t that simple.  Conservative whites will vote Republican even if the party moves to the left on immigration; but a large chunk of the party faithful, perhaps a majority, will voice their displeasure.  An internecine civil war will be avoided at all cost.

Barack Obama would likely do his part if the Republicans took the lead on immigration, but he is unlikely to go to the wall on this issue  if he isn’t sure his party has his back.

So it comes as no surprise that Chuck Schumer of the Blue Team and Lindsay Graham of the Red Team are now associating “reform” with an even more militarized border and no real path to citizenship for undocumented residents.  That kind of talk will get us nowhere.

Seth Wessler, the author of the article pasted below, is the guy I call when I have a question about immigration.  He has a thorough grasp of the key issues and the courage to speak painful truth.

Until we get it through our heads that undocumented immigrants are normal men and women with a compelling interest in bettering their lives, we won’t create just policy.  Even those who seem willing to grant “amnesty” insist on “sealing the borders” first.  That is the approach Ronald Reagan took: “The people that are already here can become citizens, but that’s it.”

In the real world, however, people keep crossing the border no matter how many walls we build or how dangerous the passage.  Moreover, in their shoes, we would do the same–if we could summon the courage, that is. (more…)

Normal Republicans have always favored immigration reform

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Although you would never know it from watching television during the past five years, Republican report for comprehensive immigration was strong before the Tea Party made the issue toxic.  Or so says Molly Ball.

Why Republicans Are Suddenly Pro-Immigration Reform

Molly Ball

The Atlantic

November 14, 2012

The GOP establishment has long wanted to pass comprehensive immigration reform but been cowed by its activist base. Tuesday’s election gave them an opening.

Republicans lost the election in part because Mitt Romney drew record-low support from Hispanic voters, who made up a record-high proportion of the electorate. Within days, top Republicans have figured out what to do about this: Support immigration reform!

The chorus of prominent voices has been stunning: From Sen. Marco Rubio to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, from television and radio host Sean Hannity to columnist Charles Krauthammer. To some on the left, this looks like the most craven sort of opportunism — the GOP scrambling for a quick PR fix to its deep-seated demographic problems. (more…)

The military scandal nobody wants to talk about

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By Alan Bean

As I write, America is mesmerized by the sins of General David Petraeus, the man who reportedly turned around the Iraq fiasco.  As this BBC story suggests, Americans have always venerated our generals, electing exactly ten of them to the presidency.  Although we haven’t elected an ex-general to the nation’s highest office since 1952, military men like Colin Powell and Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf have been talked up as presidential possibilities.  As the gap between the military and civilian life widens, our love affair with the American general grows apace.

Apart from America’s love affair with the military, the rock star-groupie relationships between women like Paula Broadwell and Jill Kelley and generals like Petraeus and John Allen would be hard to believe.  Why are these women fighting over these men?  And why are we so shocked to learn that a talented egoist like Petraueus would be seduced by an adoring and beautiful biographer like Ms. Broadwell?  Why are we on pins and needles as the email relationship between Allen and Kelley is probed for evidence of romantic dalliance?   (more…)

The Conservative War on Prisons: how an unlikely coalition of evangelicals and libertarians changed the politics of crime

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By Alan Bean

I heartily commend this well-crafted article on the unlikely evangelical-libertarian coalition that created the Right on Crime movement. David Dagan and Steven M. Teles appreciate that liberal organizations like the ACLU, the Open Societies Institute and the Public Welfare Foundation carried the torch for criminal justice reform during the dark ages (1980-2000) of tough-on-crime politic and ever-expanding prison populations.  But liberal politicians have been too afraid of the soft-on-crime label to associate themselves with the reform movement; in fact, Democrats like Bill Clinton built careers on out-toughing the conservatives.

Real political change required a bi-partisan approach, and this meant that the impetus for reform had to come from the political right.  Democrats will vote for change, but only if conservatives give them political cover.  Conservatives, especially in deep-red states like Texas, don’t have to worry about looking soft.

But it goes deeper than that.  The initial inspiration for the reform movement came from the evangelical world.  Pat Nolan, an evangelical Catholic Republican who once carried a torch for the lock-’em-up movement, went to prison in 1993 on corruption charges.  Nolan still claims he was innocent (and I am inclined to believe him) but, like many defendants, he accepted a plea deal rather than roll the dice with a jury.  In the joint, Nolan encountered the brokenness that is the American criminal justice system.  Because he was plugged into the evangelical world of Chuck Colson’s Prison Fellowship and the Republican political establishment, Nolan found ways to make things happen. (more…)

The Southern Strategy breathes its last

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Melinda Henneberger’s analysis is a strong version of the standard take-away analysis coming out of this week’s election.  You can still win big by appealing solely to white voters in the South (due to the kind of racial resentment Henneberger describes) and in portions of the West (because the minority population is relatively low), but you can no longer win at the national level without addressing the concerns of minority voters.  AGB

The end of a long, ugly road for the GOP’s Southern strategy

Posted by Melinda Henneberger on November 8, 2012 at 7:37 pm

Ann Romney said one thing during her husband’s presidential run that no one can dispute: “This is hard,” she said of the slog. (Actually being president is hard, too, as George W. Bush once noted 11 times in a single debate.)

Here’s one campaign call, though, that should never have been a head-scratcher: Running on white resentment is not a winning strategy, and the next Republican who tries it will lose, too. (more…)

Now, this is encouraging . . .

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By Alan  Bean

An exit poll conducted for the Associated Press contains this surprising result:

Only 3 in 10 voters said that most illegal immigrants working in the U.S. should be deported, while nearly two-thirds said such people should be offered a chance to apply for legal status.

Voter opinion depends a great deal on the way the question is phrased, so a different question might have received a less generous response.  But if 65% of the nation thinks undocumented residents deserve a shot at citizenship, Congress has a mandate for comprehensive reform.  Let’s hope they make the most of it.

I said ‘amen’ to this

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“… the spirit that has lifted this country from the depths of despair to the great heights of hope, the belief that while each of us will pursue our own individual dreams, we are an American family, and we rise or fall together as one nation and as one people.”  Barack Obama’s acceptance speech, 2012

Can Republicans romance Latinos?

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By Alan Bean

Like many of you, I switched to a different network on election night whenever a commercial came along (I hate commercials as much as I hate political ads).  The talking heads on every station were sounding the same message: due to changing demographics, the Republican Party must reach out to minorities if it is serious about long-term survival.

Democrats won over 90% of the African American vote and close to three-quarters of the Hispanic vote (over 80% if non-Cuban Americans are excluded from the calculation).  And this after President Obama largely ignored the criminal justice system (a major problem for black voters) while presiding over the unprecedented mass deportation of undocumented residents.

Obama wins the minority vote (including 62% of the Asian electorate) by sitting back and letting Republicans be Republicans. (more…)

Why white people like Republicans

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By Alan Bean

The American electorate is more racially divided in 2012 than at any time in the recent memory.  This encourages the simple conclusion that white Americans prefer Mitt Romney to Barack Obama because Mitt is white.  But a recent report by the Public Religion Research Institute paints a far more complex portrait of the white American voter.

As has been widely reported, white women are about equally divided between the two candidates; it’s the men who break strongly for Romney.   In 2008, Barack Obama carried a higher percentage of the white vote (41%) than any Democratic candidate since Jimmy Carter in 1976.  Moreover, working class whites give Mitt Romney a favorability rating of 45% compared to Barack Obama’s 44%; among college educated whites, both men are favored by 49% of those surveyed.  If white America throws its support behind the Republican candidate in tomorrow’s election (as they assuredly will) it has little to do with a birds-of-a-feather firing of mirror neurons.

The white electorate divides sharply along five distinct fault lines: education, gender, age, geography and religion.  The Public Religion Research Institute Survey compares the white working class to college educated whites.  College educated white voters favor Romney, but by a scant 2 points; the white working class favors Romney by 13 points (48-35).

In other words, when we are talking about “the white electorate” we are primarily talking about white working class voters.  In this election, 80% of minority votes will go to the Democrat; Romney will be the overwhelming favorite of the white working class; and white college educated voters will fall somewhere in between these extremes.  Since white middle class voters comprise 36% of the voting population, their clout is difficult to exaggerate.  White college educated voters account for 21% of the electorate, black voters, 11%, and Latino voters, 13%. (For the poll under discussion 11% of white voters are neither working class or college educated).

As we have seen, white women are far more likely to favor Obama than their brothers, boy friends and husbands; and this applies just as much to the white middle class (41%-41%) as to white college educated women.  White working class males, on the other hand, will favor Romney by 27 points (57%-28%).  It should be noted, however, that working class males making less than $30,000 divide their votes evenly between Obama and Romney while working class males who have received food stamps in the past two years, favor Obama by a margin of 48% to 36%.  The authors of the study use this data to argue that the white working class, contrary to popular opinion, do not always vote against their perceived interests. (more…)