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 Editorials | April 2006 
Sheriff Bush Blinks in a Mexican Stand-off
 Andrew Sullivan - The Sunday Times
| | Mexican President Vicente Fox (C), U.S. President George Bush (L) and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper pose after their joint news conference at the conclusion of their two day summit in Cancun last week. (Jason Reed/Reuters) |
When President George W Bush visited Mexico last week for a summit with its president, Vicente Fox, it was just like the good old days. Before 9/11 Bush’s primary foreign policy focus was going to be Mexico. He knew the place well, having been a border-state governor. He’d also crafted an electoral strategy in Texas and nationally that could appeal to Hispanic immigrants, legal and illegal.
He would appeal to their religious faith and their social conservatism by repeating such platitudes as “family values don’t stop at the Rio Grande”. He would dole out federal funds to Latino pressure groups and churches. He would appoint a Latino attorney-general, Alberto Gonzales. He would propose humane measures that would help guide the 11m or so illegal immigrants to eventual American citizenship.
That, indeed, is still the goal. And so far it’s worked well. Bush lost the Hispanic vote to Gore in 2000 by a margin of 30 points. By 2004 Bush lost the same vote to Kerry by a mere eight. That’s a big political achievement in four years — and given the potential growth of Hispanic voting it may mark a historic realignment.
The trouble is: like many other first-term alliances this Hispanic-Republican coalition has begun to creak dangerously in the second. What Bush has discovered is that it’s hard to hold on to an extremely conservative white Southern base, and yet also reach out to minorities, like African-Americans, Muslims, gays or Latinos, that have long been part of the Democratic party spectrum. Muslims were lost not long after 9/11. Gays disappeared after the federal marriage amendment. Blacks baled out after Katrina. Now Latinos look antsy with the prospect of serious immigration reform.
And you can see why. The rhetoric coming from the Republican right on immigration is not something likely to warm the hearts of Latino immigrants — legal or illegal. Listen to conservative talk radio, or watch the big cable news populists, and you will soon hear about our “broken borders”, the “hordes” of “illegals” who are coming to America to deprive Americans of well-paid jobs. You’ll hear demands for a Sharon-like wall to keep the Mexicans out; or support for vigilante groups who track down illegal migrants.
You’ll hear demands to deport all illegals, imprison employers who hire them, and criminalise the activities of those groups, like many Catholic churches, who provide aid and services to illegal entrants. Yes, these demands are about illegal Latinos, not legal ones. And the case for law enforcement is a legitimate one. But it’s hard to avoid hearing racist generalisations, xenophobia and paranoia.
Hence Bush’s problem. Any concession to the Latino bloc, such as the sensible plan to give 11m illegal residents of the US some kind of guest-worker status, is regarded by the right as rewarding illegal activity. Any concession to the white base, such as beefing up the border fence and patrols, can be spun as anti-Hispanic.
Republican establishment types remember what happened to Pete Wilson, the former Republican governor of California, who won re-election by campaigning against illegal immigration. The catch was that his anti-immigrant rhetoric subsequently decimated Hispanic support for the Republicans and handed California to the Democrats for a generation.
Bush’s predicament was only worsened last weekend when hundreds of thousands of immigrants and immigrant-supporters rallied across the country to protest at a potential tightening of immigration laws. This not only rallied the Democratic base, it also outraged base Republicans. They focused on what seemed to be anti-American sentiment in the parades, on public defence of law-breaking, and on visual images that seemed to summon up the very rhetorical “hordes” the talk show hosts fear.
The president in the past has benefited from polarising the electorate with inflamed culture-war debates. But Hispanics are not like gays. There are many, many more of them. And they cannot be written off as an iffy constituency in order to solidify another, more reliable one.
So what can Bush do? The rational solution is a pretty obvious one: beefed up border control and a guest-worker programme. The trouble is that Republican congressmen in the House of Representatives are increasingly vulnerable at the polls this November. They need both to shore up their base, and to distance themselves a little from an increasingly disliked president during a troubled war. Most of them have few Hispanics in their own districts, and little incentive to compromise.
Yes, you can try to appeal to the religious right by citing Hispanic social conservatism. But that’s not what really motivates the base to vote. They tend to vote against people and things: against terrorists, against gays, against Hollywood, against liberals, against immigrants. This is the base Bush has built; and it is a hard one to build a progressive, inclusive immigration policy on top of.
The president will try. He has Republican allies in senators like Arlen Specter and John McCain. The Republican business establishment will back him too — it needs and likes the cheap, exploitable labour of illegal immigration. With unemployment at less than 5% it has a point. But no solution this year will avoid a damaging split of the Republican coalition that has emerged under Bush.
If the president is lucky, the issue will get kicked down the road, as Senate and House fail to find a compromise, and he’ll keep most of the Hispanic inroads he has so far achieved. But any other development will hurt the president badly.
The debate itself wounds his party. Every time a Republican congressman stands up to inveigh against illegals the Hispanic vote veers to the Democrats. Every time a Republican senator speaks in favour of guest-workers and inclusion, a white male Southerner decides not to bother voting this November. It’s lose-lose for Bush. |
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