Michael Gerson is a former George W. Bush staffer who thinks the key to the GOP is Bush's "compassionate conservatism", aka, social conservatism and big government policies. In other words, he's a mess.

Naturally Gerson supports amnesty. Unlike most amnesty supporters he has the decency to admit that to win over Hispanics the GOP can't be as conservative as the base wants it to be. Not exactly a surprise coming from a Team W guy.

Such an adjustment depends on Hispanic voters being gettable by Republicans — which many restrictionists deny. Hispanics, it is argued, are inherently favorable to big government. But there is some paradoxical hope to be found for the GOP in the recent collapse of its appeal among Hispanics. This did not happen because immigrant groups became more liberal or more welfare-dependent. It happened because Republicans seemed more hostile to their interests. Clearly there is some elasticity in Latino political opinion. A GOP political strategy might begin by removing the stick they have put in the eye of a rising demographic group — the main political argument for supporting immigration reform.

This won’t be enough. While appealing to Hispanic voters is not like appealing to Manhattanites — it doesn’t involve the abandonment of social conservatism — it does require a populist economic agenda. Recent immigrants are naturally concerned about a working social safety net, a working public education system and a working job-training system. Republicans will need to offer serious reform proposals in these areas. And this requires a positive, active, market-oriented role for government that competes with more centralized and bureaucratic Democratic approaches.

Here's the biggest problem Gerson has...Hispanics NEVER supported the GOP in great numbers. Even in the W. Bush years, Hispanics voted overwhelmingly for Democrats.

A little bit of history of the Hispanic vote in presidential elections.

1984 66/34 Democrats
1988 70/30 Democrats (this was the first election after the last amnesty when
it should have paid off most for Republicans)
1992 61/25 Democrats (Perot was 16)
1996 72/21 Democrats (Perot was 6)
2000 62/35 Democrats (Buchanan 1, Nader 2)
2004 53/44 Democrats (Nader 2). Bush's support may have been as low as 40%.
2008 67/31 Democrats
2012 71/27 Democrats

If you average those numbers you'll see that the GOP traditionally gets about...31%. So Romney wasn't exactly that far off. Granted, this is a crude way of looking at it given the increase in the percentage of Hispanics, about 2% in 1988 up to 9% this year and lots of other factors, but it gives you a ballpark.

Yes, Romney was on the low end of the average but he still did better overall than McCain even though McCain got greater support from Hispanics.

George W. Bush is the outlier, not the average the GOP can expect. But even in 2000 when he won an above average share of the Hispanic vote, he still lost the popular vote.

In many ways W. was the perfect candidate for Hispanics. He had long connections to the community in Texas, he tried to speak Spanish (terribly by all accounts), was a social conservative and supported a big, activist government.

Want to lose Hispanics by a smaller than usual margin? Great nominate a guy like W. who governed as he advertised, ""We have a responsibility that when somebody hurts, government has got to move."

People always talk about education reform as the key to winning Hispanic and back votes but it hasn't worked for 30 years, I'm not sure why anyone will think it will work in the next 30.

As I've said many times, there may well be reasons to pass amnesty but keeping the GOP as the (at least theoretical) party of small government isn't one of them.

At least Gerson is honest(ish) enough to admit that winning Hispanic votes means giving up on small government. In fairness to him, that was never his goal.

If you think W. is the rightward maker of where the GOP can or should be, then amnesty makes perfect sense.

Posted by: DrewM at 08:01 AM | Comments (241)
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I know the right has a love/hate/mostly hate relationship with Mitch McConnell. For whatever issues conservatives may have with the guy, one thing he's a stalwart on is the First Amendment. You know the Supreme Court Case that dealt with the horrendous McCain-Feingold bill? It's called McConnell vs. Federal Election Commission. Yeah, he sued all the way to the Supreme Court to take on John McCain.

McConnell is giving a speech at AEI today taking on the left and he's naming names a lot of conservatives never get around to, like Media Matters.

On the outside, thereÂ’s a well-documented effort by a number of Left-wing groups like Media Matters to harass and intimidate conservatives with the goal of scaring them off the political playing field and off the airwaves.

An internal Media Matters memo from January 2010 showed the extent to which these tactics have been turned into a science. In it, we learned of the group’s plan to conduct opposition research into the lives of on-air news personalities and other key decision makers at Fox News, and to coordinate with 100 or so partner groups to pressure the network’s advertisers and shareholders, get this, “by the threat of actual boycotts, rallies, demonstrations, shame, embarrassment and other tactics on a variety of issues important to the progressive agenda.”

Its multiple databases could also be used, the memo said, to remove what it describes as “chronically problematic media figures,” or “to preempt programming” … altogether.

Then, of course, thereÂ’s the widespread effort to stifle speech from within the government itself, something the Obama Administration has been engaged in from its earliest days.

On the ginned up out rage over Citizens United.

Looking back, the IRS scandal helps explain a lot of the things this administration has done. You all remember the President wagging his finger at the Supreme Court during his 2010 State of the Union address. Well, I assure you this little piece of presidential theater wasnÂ’t done for the ratings. There was a good reason the President and his allies devoted so much time and energy to denouncing the Citizens United case. But itÂ’s not the reason they gave. I realize this may be shocking to some of the interns in the crowd. But the fact is, the CourtÂ’s decision was actually fairly unremarkable.

All it really said was that, under the First Amendment, every corporation in America should be free to participate in the political process, not just the ones that own newspapers and TV stations. In other words, there shouldnÂ’t be a carve-out when it comes to political speech for folks who own media companies. It was a good and fair decision aimed at leveling the playing field.

The real reason the Left was so concerned about Citizens United was that they thought it meant more conservatives would start to form what are known as social welfare organizations — something they’d been doing, with groups like Planned Parenthood and the Sierra Club, for years. And what’s notable about social welfare groups is they don’t have to disclose their donors.

That was the main concern of the President and his allies. They weren’t interested in the integrity of the process. If they were, they’d have been just as upset at Left-wing groups for maintaining the privacy of their donors. What they really wanted was a hook that enabled them to stir up outrage about conservative groups, so they could get their hands on the names of the folks who supported them — and then go after them. Citizens United provided that hook.

As a longtime political observer and First Amendment hawk, I knew exactly what the Democrats were up to with their complaints about this decision. IÂ’ve seen what the loudest proponents of disclosure have intended in the past, and itÂ’s not good government. ThatÂ’s why the FEC has protected the donor lists of the Socialist WorkerÂ’s Party since 1979. ThatÂ’s also why the Supreme Court told the State of Alabama it couldnÂ’t force the NAACP to disclose the names and addresses of its members back in the 1950s.

The President could claim, as he did six months after wagging his finger at the Supreme Court, that “the only people who don’t want to disclose the truth are people with something to hide.” But the fact is, there’s a very good and legitimate reason that courts have protected folks from forced disclosure — because they know that failing to do so would subject them to harassment.

So the political response to Citizens United, the so-called DISCLOSE Act, wasnÂ’t really about cleaning up politics: It was about finding a blunt political weapon to use against one group and one group only: conservatives. Those who doubt this havenÂ’t been paying attention to the tactics of the Left. They must not have noticed the stories about top administration officials holding weekly phone calls with groups like Media Matters. They clearly donÂ’t know their history. And they must not have noticed the enemies list of conservative donors on the Obama campaignÂ’s Web site. Or the strategic name-dropping of conservative targets by the PresidentÂ’s campaign team.

Best quote for last...connecting Obama and government worker unions to the attacks on the right. more...

Posted by: DrewM at 06:20 AM | Comments (385)
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As of 0104 this morning, it is now officially summer. Enjoy it morons. Daylight only gets shorter from now on.

There is something missing in this article on why an increase in border patrol agents has corresponded with a decrease in apprehensions and removals. I don't know, maybe it was a no-apprehension policy? I'd sure like to know the number of "turn back south" (TBS) incidents. more...

Posted by: CDR M at 06:02 PM | Comments (764)
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Happy Friday.

Reuters analysis: the number of people working to implement Obamacare has reached into the tens of thousands, but the precise size of this workforce is shrouded in secrecy.

George Will destroys Obama for his Berlin farce.

OPM is probing USIS, the contractor that handles about 45% of background checks for U.S. government hires, including Ed Snowden's.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:49 AM | Comments (457)
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Ice Sheets

So how do you explain this Mr. Gore - Cro-Magnon SUVs?

Steven Pinker on the Tragic Vision vs. the Utopian Vision

They are the different visions of human nature that underlie left-wing and right-wing ideologies. The distinction comes from the economist Thomas Sowell in his wonderful book "A Conflict of Visions." According to the Tragic Vision, humans are inherently limited in virtue, wisdom, and knowledge, and social arrangements must acknowledge those limits. According to the Utopian vision, these limits are products of our social arrangements, and we should strive to overcome them in a better society of the future.

Out of this distinction come many right-left contrasts that would otherwise have no common denominator. Rightists tend to like tradition (because human nature does not change), small government (because no leader is wise enough to plan society), a strong police and military (because people will always be tempted by crime and conquest), and free markets (because they convert individual selfishness into collective wealth). Leftists believe that these positions are defeatist and cynical, because if we change parenting, education, the media, and social expectations, people could become wiser, nicer, and more peaceable and generous.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:13 PM | Comments (622)
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Ummm...

Police plan to go back to the home of New England Patriot's tight end Aaron Hernandez today with another warrant based on evidence that "he destroyed his home security system,'' an investigator close to the case told ABC News.

The investigator, and other law enforcement sources, confirmed that the security system - which included video surveillance - was smashed intentionally.

And a cell phone used by Hernandez was handed over to investigators "in pieces'' by his attorneys, the sources said.

There's a perfectly logical explanation for this: He murdered someone.

via @comradearthur

Aaron Hernandez' Role Model: A true legend of football.

Posted by: Ace at 04:59 PM | Comments (334)
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Redlines.

The Democrats' Redlines are respected, and ours are ignored.

I'll say this about the Democratic representatives: They are actually representing their constituents' interests and beliefs, while ours are conspiring about how best to trick us.

Posted by: Ace at 04:07 PM | Comments (308)
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You can't stop him, you can only hope to contain him.

Just a quick thought here: Once you've succeeded -- or have been thought to have succeeded, at any rate -- it's almost impossible to unsucceed, isn't it?*

Media watchdog Howard Kurtz, host of CNN's "Reliable Sources" for 15 years, said Thursday that he's jumping to Fox News Channel.

Kurtz will host another Sunday morning media criticism show to replace the current "Fox News Watch." He'll also appear as an on-air analyst across the network during the week and write a column for the network's website on social media news and industry trends.

FoxNews seems to really like picking up mediocrities after they've been fired from other ventures. We're not talking about picking up high-quality veterans off the wires. We're talking about, at beast, no-surprises journeymen like Kurtz or shambling wrecks of groaning incompetency like Juan Williams.

Eh. Good luck to them, I guess.

* Even that idiot Keith Olbermann has a job doing baseball commentary again.

Posted by: Ace at 03:27 PM | Comments (220)
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This is the most awesome presidency in history.

Stock, bonds, commodities, and currencies around the world got destroyed today. Today's drop in the S&P 500 was the worst one since 2011.

Today's calamity was really an extension of yesterday's sell-off, which appeared to be triggered by comments made by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. Specifically, he said that the Fed could begin to taper, or gradually reduce, its quantitative easing program as early as later this year. In other words, they would be scaling back on their monthly purchases of $85 billion dollars worth of mortgage bonds and Treasury securities.

Some argue that the most devastating news was the surge in an obscure Chinese interest rate called SHIBOR, or the LIBOR of China. In 2008, surging LIBOR rates preceded the global credit crunch, causing the global economy and financial markets to spiral.

So we've got that to look forward to.

I find that last point ominous. Seems to me that the US often pulls the rest of the world out of a global recession. But the US hasn't done that. We're limping along. We're not in "recovery" and we're certainly not in growth.

So there's really no backstop, except for other big countries like China.

Posted by: Ace at 02:41 PM | Comments (254)
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Enough of this sad farce.

Senator Brian SchatzÂ’s (D-HI) filed an amendment for the immigration bill Wednesday that would allow stateless people in the U.S. to seek conditional lawful status if their nations have been made uninhabitable by climate change.

I wrote more at the link (at Breitbart).

Time for the phone lines.

Dear Washington, DC:

You're not that smart, and we're not that dumb.

via @lilmissrightie

Posted by: Ace at 02:09 PM | Comments (218)
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