Could The Immigration Issue Hurt The Democrats - Road to the Middle Class

THE USUAL procedure after a big showdown like the immigration bill that was just withdrawn in the US Senate is that it means bad news for the Republican Party. Remember how the gender gap has always been a Republican problem, not a Democratic problem.

Of course, the withdrawal of the bill by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, writes Julie Hirschfeld Davis provoked the usual response.

The defeat set off a bitter round of partisan recriminations, with Democrats and Republicans each accusing the other of killing it.

Oh well, I guess we will all survive it.

But it is clear that US politics is entering the post-Bush era, and it is also evident that the tectonic plates are shifting.

The interesting thing about immigration is that it is Republicans who are most opposed. Yet you would think that rank-and-file Democrats would have the most at stake and be the most damaged by competition from low-wage immigrants.

What gives? Why don�t we hear from the Democratic rank-and-file? My feeling is that lunch-bucket Democrats don�t have a direct voice in politics. They are only represented by elite-led interest groups like organized labor and AARP. The netroots operate at the individual level, but they are clearly college-educated liberals, not ordinary workers.

Theda Skocpol, defenestrator of Larry Summers, wrote about this in Diminished Democracy. She realizes that modern democratic politics is conducted by memberless cadre lobbying groups. In the old days politics was driven by the leaders of big membership organizations.

You could argue, of course, that the reason the Republican Party picked up a majority in the past quarter century was because unhappy Democrats could never get their leaders to listen to them. As elite anti-war liberals and feminists talked to each other about liberal issues Reagan Democrats left them on national security and patriotism and religious Democrats left them on abortion and school prayer.

Suppose that in the next few years secure-border Democrats leave the party on the issue of immigration. Is it possible? Who knows? Nobody ever asked the rank-and-file Democrats for their opinion.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

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