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As featured on p. 218 of "Bloggers on the Bus," under the name "a MyDD blogger."

Saturday, January 05, 2008

The Immigration Fizzle

One thing you're not hearing a lot out of the Iowa caucuses is the importance of the immigration issue, now that the anointed winners were Mike Huckabee and John McCain, the two least fervent immigrant haters among the candidates. That may have been why Lou Dobbs lost his shit on CNN the other night and tried to leave the stage.

If you look at the entrance poll, you see that Huckabee, Romney and Thompson came 1-2-3 among those who saw immigration as the most important issue, in roughly the same numbers as the final results (36-30-18). And you see this for a variety of issues. To me that means it was not decisive. Though Huckabee ended up coming out with this "deport every illegal in 120 days" scenario, and had a splinter of Minuteman support, he was hammered over the immigration issue for weeks on the air in Iowa by Romney. And it just didn't matter.

Republicans in New Hampshire also pay lip service to concern over illegal immigrants, but they do it in a polite way, so that you know they're not being racist.

I spent much of last night talking to Republican voters in Nashua, and, as would be expected, a fair number of them brought up their concerns over immigration. Surprisingly, though, the word "immigrant" never came up. Nor did "Mexicans," "Spanish," "jobs," or "precious bodily fluids." Instead, I kept hearing "terrorism." Every one framed their concerns in terms of terrorism, as if there were hundreds of al Qaeda cells in Tijuana, just waiting to stream past the gates as soon as a puking frat boy sufficiently distracts the border guards.


This is so they don't appear as ugly. Chalking it up to "terrorist" activity means that you're just a good American who doesn't want to be attacked, not someone who wants to stop the Mexicans from polluting the country. There's certainly a radical middle who thinks that our problems could be solved through increased whiteness, but it's extremely narrow. Winning political issues don't need a cover story. Immigration does.

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