December 14, 2007
Huckabee, Hillary and the (illegal) elephant in the room
Peggy Noonan's piece in today's Wall Street journal concentrates on Huckabee's rise -- a result of his background as a preacher appealing to a narrow-but-influential portion of the GOP base -- as well as Hillary Clinton's seeming fall from invincibility -- a result of, well, her being herself.
At the very end of the essay, Noonan changes topics.
It is clear in Iowa that immigration is the great issue that won't go away.
Members of the American elite, including U.S. senators, continue to do damage to the public debate on immigration. They do not view it as a crucial question of America's continuance. They view it as an onerous issue that might upset their personal plans, an issue dominated by pro-immigration groups and power centers on the one hand, and the pesky American people, with their limited and quasi-racist concerns, on the other.
Because politicians see immigration as just another issue in "the game," they feel compelled to speak of it not with honest indifference but with hot words and images. With a lack of sympathy. This is in contrast to normal Americans, who do not use hot words, and just want the problem handled and the rule of law returned to the borders.
Politicians, that is, distort the debate, not because they care so much but because they care so little.
Hillary Clinton is not up at night worrying about the national-security implications of open borders in the age of terror. She's up at night worrying about whether to use Mr. Obama's position on driver's licenses for illegals against him in ads or push polls.
A real and felt concern among the candidates about immigration is a rare thing. And people can tell. They can tell with both parties. This is the real source of bitterness in this debate. It's not regnant racism. It's knowing the political class is incapable of caring, and so repairing.
I agree with Noonan's analysis regarding Huck and Hill: they're both stinkers, and if either gets the nomination it'll be disastrous for both parties.
But the more troubling concern is the realization amongst the electorate that the issue that matters most to them -- to us -- doesn't matter at all to the frontrunners in either party.
And that's disheartening -- and ultimately very, very damaging to the very idea of participatory politics, because if the People's supposed-representatives don't give a darn about what we think is important, then the very act of voting, of bothering to pretend that there's a tinker's damn difference between the big spending, pro-illegal immigration amnesty Democrat and the big-spending, pro-illegal immigration amnesty Republican, disappears.
If it matters to us, it has to matter to them.
Is anyone really paying attention?
'Cause it sure sound like they're just paying lip service.
Posted by Mike Lief at December 14, 2007 07:53 AM
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