NPR reports:
The White House won’t allow any new oil drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico for at least the next seven years because of the BP oil spill.
A senior administration official told The Associated Press on Wednesday that drilling leases won’t be considered in the waters off Florida as part of the change. He spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision hadn’t been announced yet.
This is a reversal of the administration’s October decision to lift the drilling ban. Because what America needs right now is a loss of jobs and a constriction of the economy in response to a one-off accident that left no long-term damage.
Much is being muddled in this discussion. Sen. McCain’s initial position on immigration did not take border security into account. His later position acknowledged the hue and cry over secure the borders first.
In all the “findings” from election results sifting, Hispanics made their votes (mostly for Obama) on issues other than immigration. Immigration was not topic A for Hispanics, not even topic B-F. To suggest that Hispanics are a monotheistic voting block is unjust.
As for Gov. Palin’s position, she did not specifically articulate her views. The presumption is that she too is in favor of securing the borders first, which the majority of Americans agree with. She previously spoke out, quite correctly, that you don’t simply throw out tens of millions of illegal migrants but that you provide a path to citizenship.
As for Peter, he himself is the paranoid. He takes one Georgia congressman’s asinine comment and generalizes it to cast dispersions on everyone else.
Don’t worry, Peter, we will be nice, ‘kay.
McCain turned off a lot of people who don’t want open borders. Schwarzenegger swept Red State SoCal on an anti-tax, anti-illegals platform in 2003, taking Riverside, San Diego, San Bernardino, Ventura, and Orange Counties by wide margins. Bush also won in all of these counties in 2000 and 2004.
McCain got creamed in all of them, except Orange County, were he barely won.
The biggest media outlet in SoCal is not the LA Times, it’s KFI radio, which is heavily anti-tax and anti-illegals. The station was heavily anti-McCain this year, most especially during drive time when millions of SoCalers are driving on the free way.
And for all of his open borders rhetoric and efforts, McCain did worse even among hispanics than Bush.
Well, for starters, this post is a superb — even humorously perfect — example of how we’re kicking our own tail with semantics and tendentious labels, just as if we were Democrats.
John McCain’s posture as the model for being “pro-immigration reform,” with the implication that people who oppose it are “anti-immigration reform”? Give me a break. Reform can mean “legalize people who are here illegally,” or it can mean “start enforcing the laws we have, but do not enforce.” Either one is, in fact, a reformist measure, since it proposes to not continue down our current path.
Opposing McCain doesn’t mean being anti-reform. It means opposing the reform measures McCain advocates. The converse is true of opposing an “enforcement-first” policy. We’ve never had an enforcement-first policy; we don’t have one now. Adopting one would be a reform. It’s the policy you oppose, not “reform.”
McCain (and Bush, for that matter) called a policy that did not include enforcement “comprehensive reform.” This was a political maneuver to seize the rhetorical ground of “comprehensiveness” from others, many of whom would actually have accepted some level of amnesty for illegals, if the reform package had, in fact, been comprehensive, and included genuine, effective enforcement elements.
Continuing the name-calling and invidious categorization of Republicans and conservatives is extremely unhelpful. Either we’re the party of saying what we mean and discussing the issues straightforwardly, or we’re just a bunch of better-adjusted, more literate Democrats.
From The Corner:
No Immigration Mandate [Mark Krikorian]
A new Zogby poll shows only about a third of Obama’s voters supported him because of his backing for an amnesty, while two-thirds either voted for him despite his support for amnesty (15%) or it wasn’t a factor at all in their decision (51%). Interestingly, among McCain voters, 59% did it despite his amnesty stance, 28% didn’t care, and only 11% supported him because of his backing of amnesty. The respondents overall backed enforcement over legalization by 3 to 1, but they were also asked whether those positions were less important to them than a year ago — 11% of enforcement supporters backed it less intensely than a year ago, but fully 20% of amnesty supporters were less committed. Press release here, and pdf of results here and here.
No Immigration Mandate [Mark Krikorian]
A new Zogby poll shows only about a third of Obama’s voters supported him because of his backing for an amnesty, while two-thirds either voted for him despite his support for amnesty (15%) or it wasn’t a factor at all in their decision (51%). Interestingly, among McCain voters, 59% did it despite his amnesty stance, 28% didn’t care, and only 11% supported him because of his backing of amnesty. The respondents overall backed enforcement over legalization by 3 to 1, but they were also asked whether those positions were less important to them than a year ago — 11% of enforcement supporters backed it less intensely than a year ago, but fully 20% of amnesty supporters were less committed. Press release here, and pdf of results here and here.
No Immigration Mandate [Mark Krikorian]
A new Zogby poll shows only about a third of Obama’s voters supported him because of his backing for an amnesty, while two-thirds either voted for him despite his support for amnesty (15%) or it wasn’t a factor at all in their decision (51%). Interestingly, among McCain voters, 59% did it despite his amnesty stance, 28% didn’t care, and only 11% supported him because of his backing of amnesty. The respondents overall backed enforcement over legalization by 3 to 1, but they were also asked whether those positions were less important to them than a year ago — 11% of enforcement supporters backed it less intensely than a year ago, but fully 20% of amnesty supporters were less committed.
I believe the coordinated, highly emotional campaign was on the other side, or perhaps I missed the pro-amesty Ciceronian speeches that were declamied from the heights to live on through the ages as the final answer on how to handle the conflicting demands of identity groups and the larger commonweal. Certainly, the argument “racist if you oppose a unilateral surrender on the principle of equality of all before the law and want no special favors” isn’t exactly from Locke’s here-to-know undiscovered Third Treatise on Civil Government.
And it seems to me the opposition to amesty, far from being coordinated, was a spontaneous arousal of a populace opposed. Limbaugh and others command a large audience, but not that large.
The orthodoxy here is in fact all on the other side, which says that in these political correct times, what a favored identity group wants is what a favored identity group gets, the rest of the nation be d___ed.
I welcome a discussion of what we can do to appeal to all Americans, Hispanics included, in order to fulfill the promise of America. If Governor Palin wishes to go beyond this and deliberately throw the game because a particular group wishes it, then I wish her the best of luck in all her endeavours–which she will do without my support.
You’ll have trouble impressing some folks with Mark Krikorian. His basic posture is anti-immigration, and there are a lot of people who want border and law enforcement, but are not opposed to immigration either theoretically or viscerally.
While I wouldn’t go as far as some people do, and accuse Krikorian of “racism” and the usual list of Bad Things, his focus on the social and criminal pathologies of illegal immigrants is off-putting for a lot of us. It’s too easy to make the jump from his research, as presented, to bumper-stickerism like “Mexicans are shiftless criminals, don’t let ‘em in!” — which is not an accurate representation of the average Republican’s sentiments.
J.E. — you had bad numbers on turnout in Riverside County. Maybe you meant something else.
What were the 41% and 55% “turnout” numbers about?
You must begin with a definition of ‘immigration reform’… I believe many of us anti-McCain folks were not in the least opposed to some sort of settlement of the status of the resident illegals… the problem was, McCain wanted to do THAT without addressing the fact that doing it would bring ANOTHER FIFTY MILLION of them… yes, without addressing border security.
THAT, not the undefined ‘immigration reform’ nomenclature, is what made us mad and still does. McCain only grudgingly acknowledged us, never said ‘you were right’, only that the people had spoken, and really never planned to take care of the borders at all.
Which makes his effort to legalize the illegals only a patronizing attempt to purchase votes with taxpayer money, which is what LIBERALS do.
I’m astonished he got 48 million votes. SHould have been 18 million if not for Sarah.
Oh, and he AND Bush were happy to call us racists because we were opposed to his scheme.
Even BUSH called me a racist, on my own television, I saw and heard it and it broke my heart and made me furious all at the same time.
Hmmm.
Well as a first generation immigrant who got naturalized in 1972 I’m opposed to illegal immigration.
And if the GOP decides to support amnesty then I have no interest in having anything to do with it or them.
PrestoPundit — Hmm. I was going on numbers in a Press-Enterprise report from 5 November. I didn’t check them with the SecState numbers. If there’s a discrepancy, my apologies.
Forget about the caricature for a second. Once again we see that Palin is very much in tune with the majority of the American people. Border security plus a path to citizenship for those who are here is the majority opinion among Republicans and Americans as a whole. Most hispanic Americans have no problem accepting better border control. What was so unhelpful about the big immigration debate of 2007 was the presence of some very loud deportation advocates on the right. We were never going to deport 12 million people. But the hysterics have driven away Hispanics and Asians who would be natural conservatives (conservatism, if properly understood, being in the interest of everyone who is not a deadbeat or an elitist). That pointlessness of the whole exercise was proven by the fact that Republicans ended up nominating McCain not long afterwards. On the other hand, McCain bears responsibility for not having the right priorities and for talking down to the people (whom experience has taught not to trust the government when it comes to controlling the borders). We will never get that senatorial arrogance from Sarah Palin.