On Friday, conservative actor James Woods let America know exactly what “#DACA is about” in one devastating tweet that included a meme depicting Senate Minority Schoolmarm Chuck Schumer ‘saying,’ “It’s very simple to understand actually – If Americans won’t vote for Democrats, then we’ll import people who will.”
The tweet has since gone viral, and for good reason since it speaks to the heart of the immigration debate going on in America. Granted, even “Cryin’ Chuck” wouldn’t be so obvious as to say those exact words, but that doesn’t mean he and his fellow liberals aren’t thinking them. Nor does it mean the concept isn’t driving everything they do when it comes to shaping America’s immigration policy. It’s not often that one can speak of another’s motives with pure and unflinching certainty, but if there ever were such a time, determining liberal motives on immigration is indeed one of those rare cases.
In an article entitled “A Permanent Democratic Majority” penned after the Obama wave election of 2008, Salon’s Alex Koppelman wrote:
“The long-promised Latino realignment may have become reality. Coveted by Karl Rove, courted by George W. Bush, the fastest-growing sector of the American electorate stampeded toward the Democrats this November. New Mexico is only the most striking symbol of a nationwide trend that helped flip as many as seven states and 85 electoral votes into Obama's column. Latinos formed their largest share ever of the national electorate, 9 percent, and their numbers are poised to increase in every election to come. They also voted by their largest margin ever for the Democrats, 67 to 31 percent. If that pattern continues, the GOP is doomed to 40 years of wandering in a desert.”
Koppelman also noted that Salon’s experts “credited the Hispanic vote with delivering Colorado and Nevada to Obama.”
Thankfully, an Obama backlash that finally convinced red state voters to actually stop sending Democratic lawmakers to Congress as well Donald Trump’s ability to pick up three key Rust Belt states and eke out a victory in 2016 prevented that predicted ‘desert wandering’ from transpiring quite as expected. But that doesn’t mean Democrats aren’t playing the long game, nor does it mean they won’t eventually win it.
Consider:
From 9 percent of the 2008 election, Hispanics made up 10 percent of America’s electorate in 2012 and 11 percent in 2016. That number will rise dramatically if 2-3 million DACA recipients are granted citizenship.
With all his pandering, George W. Bush only managed to win around 40 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2004, and “Amnesty” John McCain did ten points worse four years later. Generally, around two-thirds of Hispanics will vote Democratic in any given election.
This trend is magnified in the West, where Hispanics comprise a greater percentage of the population. Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico, all states George W. Bush carried in 2004, haven’t so much as leaned Republican since then.
For the first time in decades, Republicans picked up less than 50 percent of Arizona voters in 2016, only winning the state by less than four percentage points. In an article about the Hispanic voting bloc in the west penned before 2016’s election, the Colorado Independent predicted that Arizona could become a “battleground state” in 12 years.
It’ll likely be much sooner than that.
Texas, a state George W. Bush carried by 61.1 percent, was won by Trump by a relatively razor thin margin of 52.2 percent. Most pundits seem to agree that it’s only a matter of time before Texas turns blue.
Texas...
Let that sink in.
And do we really need to go into what the hell has happened to California?
No matter how you slice the data, anyone who studies these issues at any depth will agree that: 1.) Hispanics comprise an ever-growing share of the U.S. electorate, 2.) Hispanics tend to vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, and 3.) Hispanics are a key reason for many states’ shift from red to blue in national elections.
This is not to say Republicans shouldn’t try to win as many Hispanic voters as possible, as long as they do so using real, common-sense, conservative arguments and not political pandering. Nor is it to in any way disparage Hispanic voters who vote Republican (and often quite heroically, I might add, given today’s political climate) or even the Democrat-leaning majority of Hispanics. It’s their right, of course, to vote how they choose. However, it’s also America’s right to allow in and grant citizenship to whom it will.
There was once a time when Democrats stood for ordinary, blue-collar Americans. That time is long past, and has since been replaced by standing for everyone in the rest of the (Third) world, so long as they’re willing to come here and vote for their Big Government policies.
Victor Davis Hanson puts the shift at around 2010, writing, “At that point, around 2010 or so, the old Democratic and progressive admonitions about illegal immigration cutting the wages of the poor, impeding unionization, and siphoning away social welfare entitlements from the citizen poor were finally and completely jettisoned (along with the language once used by Jimmy Carter and the Clintons).”
Granted, as Democrats continue to garner an ever-declining percentage of America’s native-born voters, can anyone really blame them for trying to import, legalize, and naturalize as many people as possible from groups that historically vote for Big Government?
Maybe not, but it doesn’t mean Republicans should allow them to get away with it.
“Fredocons” (thank you, Kurt Schlichter) like Jeff Flake, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Karl Rove who think the GOP can somehow win a majority of Hispanics by adopting a liberal immigration policy should consider the words of the indefatigable Heather McDonald: “It is not immigration policy that creates the strong bond between Hispanics and the Democratic party, but the core Democratic principles of a more generous safety net, strong government intervention in the economy, and progressive taxation.”
In other words, in order to win a majority of Hispanics, Republicans would have to, well, become Democrats!
As President Trump and Republicans in Congress negotiate a deal on the children brought to America by their illegal immigrant parents, they should be reminded that, by granting millions of Democratic-leaning voters a path to citizenship in this country, they could very well be signing their own political death warrants.
And in the process, creating a “permanent Democratic majority” that will eventually bring America to its knees.