[Peter Brimelow writes: I met Mike Scruggs [Email him]at Stanford’s business school when he was only just back from Vietnam in 1970. In recent years, we reconnected through the miracle of the internet and he has written for VDARE.COM several times. He just sent me this assessement of the immigration issue’s impact on the upcoming South Carolina primary.]

I only live about 10 miles from the SC border and about 50 miles from Greenville, SC. Greenville is more conservative, more white, more religious, and more Republican than most of the rest of SC.

Ron Paul has a lot of support, but I predict about half of them will vote for somebody else because they don’t think he can win and want to make sure another candidate does not win–usually McCain, sometimes Huckabee. One person told me his wife–a conservative/religious activist who favors Paul–was planning on voting for Romney to try and prevent McCain or Huckabee from winning.

Paul’s foreign policy positions-or at least his perceived foreign policy positions–hurt him badly. He needs to distinguish his position from the standard Democrat position. This is a region that respects military personnel, veterans, etc. (except for the city of Asheville).

Also Paul often addresses what seem to many people to be esoteric economic issues, when what they want to hear first and more directly is 1. What is he going to do about immigration 2. Jobs, 3. specifically how he plans to exit Iraq, etc. He needs to put propositions first and explanations second.

Although many of the political activist sorts including conservative Catholics and Evangelical Protestants are on to Huckabee (wary of his record), most Protestant Evangelicals are not on to Huck’s record and favor him so far.

A sizeable number of them feel that because he is a born-again Christian, he will automatically do the right thing.

Several weeks ago at a Republican County Executive meeting in Hendersonville an older fellow was called on to give the prayer before beginning (probably not a practice in northeastern states). I almost fell out of my chair and did drop my clip-board when he prayed something like this.: “Lord please bless our President because he is a born-again Christian, and we know he will do the right thing.” It would not be unusual to pray for the President at a Republican meeting in the South–although Bush is seldom mentioned at any Republican meeting now–but the prayer expressed a certain common belief that anyone who is (or claims to be) a born-again Christian will automatically “do the right thing.”

This was particularly shocking to me because Bush expresses universalist beliefs in many interviews. Universalism is definitely not orthodox Christianity–it is at best heresy. Anyway, this sort of thing works to Huckabee’s advantage. Thompson can call him a liberal all day long with a long list of documentation, but it will go right over their heads and Huckabee’s halo will not be tilted a bit. By no means every evangelical in the South makes such a presumption, but it is common enough to give Huckabee a strong advantage.

There are more road and street signs for Paul than other candidates. Paul’s supporters also tend to be Christians, but of a more biblically and politically informed variety.

Several Paul supporters thought Huckabee will win. I did not see a single Thompson sign–probably not in his campaign budget. Thompson also faces the “can’t win” hurdle because of his slow start. However, Thompson should do reasonably well. With more money and effort he could win.

Some big name Republicans are going for McCain–reportedly the Governor and Speaker of the House.

Many people only know McCain is a war hero. They look at you in disbelief, if you tell them his record. They cannot believe that he could be pro-amnesty or lying to them.

Not a single person I saw in the largest mall was wearing any hint of partisanship. Few cars have any political bumper stickers. In fact, I don’t recall seeing any political bumper stickers. Perhaps they are content to let Fox News name the winner.

But I think there are also more people here and in Greenville who are very frustrated with the Republican field in general.

In South Carolina, McCain’s horrible immigration record and his constant dissembling on it is his Achilles heel - if voters find out about it.

Steve Sailer has a post, too long to reproduce here, about how Francis Crick, James Watson’s DNA partner, was of the same opinion as James Watson on race and IQ–here’s a letter Crick sent to John T. Edsall, who had signed an anti-William Shockley letter. You’ll see that he was threatening to resign as an overseas associate of the American National Academy of Science:

22 February 1971

Dr. John T, Edsall
Fogarty International Center
National Institutes of Health
Bethesda, Maryland 2 0014

Dear John,

I have been very distressed to see the letter to the President of the National Academy by you and six other Academy members regarding a Proposal by Dr. [William] Shockley [Nobel laureate in physics]. Like you I have not published anything on the population problem, but f have become fairly familiar with the literature of the subject. I have also talked to Dr, Jensen when he visited the Salk Institute recently.

Unlike you and your colleagues I have formed the opinion that there is much substance to [Berkeley psychologist Arthur] Jensen’s arguments. In brief I think it likely that more than half the difference between the average I.Q. of American whites and Negroes is due to genetic reasons, and will not be eliminated by any foreseeable change in the environment. Moreover I think the social consequences of this are likely to be rather serious unless steps are taken to recognize the situation.

While any present conclusions are tentative, it seems likely that the matter could be largely resolved if further research were carried out. I should thus like to know two things. Would you and your colleagues please state in detail why they think the arguments put forward by Jensen are either incorrect or misleading. Secondly, would they please indicate what research they think should be done to establish to what extent “intelligence” is inherited. This is surely the important point, and is equally valid for a country without a racially mixed population.

The most distressing feature of your letter is that it neither gives nor refers to any scientific arguments, but makes unsupported statements of opinion, This, I need hardly remind you, is politics, not science. The voice of established authority, unsupported by evidence or argument, should have no place in science, and I am surprised to find that you, of all people, should put your name to a letter of this character written to the Academy on a matter of scientific research. I am cure you will realize that if the Academy were to take active steps to suppress reputable scientific research for political reasons it would not be possible for me to remain a Foreign Associate.

Steve Sailer’s iSteve Blog: Francis Crick, James Watson’s DNA partner, was also guilty of IQ-race crimethink

By contrast, as Steve points out, last year no-one stood up for James Watson.

A question that should be asked of all the candidates

“Have you ever been depressed?”

It’s time to drop two bad ideas that have dominated thinking about Presidential and VP candidates and depression:

1. That depression should automatically disqualify you (as with McGovern dropping Eagleton in 1972).

2. That if you’ve never been hospitalized or given electroshock treatment for emotional problems, nobody should pay any attention to them (as with the almost complete press silence in 1992 while Ross Perot was riding one of the most spectacular manic-depressive cycles in American history, going from nowhere to leading the polls to going into crazed seclusion to coming back strong and getting the highest 3rd Party percentage of the vote since Teddy Roosevelt).

To take the example of the candidate I’m most familiar with, Barack Obama, it sounds from his two books like he had at least two fairly strong depressive episodes: in New York City in the early 1980s and after his defeat in the Democratic primary for Congress in 2000. (I might also speculate that his first book, which has all the hallmarks of the depressive artist, was written not long after another depression, while his Up-With-People second book reflects an up phase.) That’s hardly unusual, but it’s worth understanding more about his (and all the other candidates’) psychological history. After all, we’re choosing a President here.

Obama could conveniently be the first to break the code of silence on this topic–he could just go on his pal Oprah’s show and talk about his feelings. I’m sure it would help him at the polls with the female-dominated Democratic electorate.

Recently I gave a stern lecture to the Chandler City Police about enforcing immigration laws. It’s always nice to be able to say, “see, I told you so!”.

Rob Sanchez told Community Services Director Mark Eynatten that the city’s tennis courts need repairs. He also urged Police Chief Sherry Kiyler to enforce immigration laws.

“I don’t want what happened in Phoenix to happen in Chandler ,” he said, referring to immigration protests in front of a furniture store.

I spoke mostly to Chief Sherry Kiyler, and told her that there will be severe social consequences if the city continues to give illegal aliens sanctuary. I warned her that Chandler could explode like Phoenix , and that means that city police will be spending their days in riot gear to arbitrate protests between day laborers and those of us who demand that immigration laws be enforced. I told Kiyler that if she thinks the police have better things to do than to arbitrate protests and to arrest illegal alien criminals that commit serious crime, then they had better end the insane sanctuary policies of the city.

Now, the breaking story–the Chandler serial rapist may have been an illegal alien, and guess who broke the story? To see Kiyler in action go to this link.

See Police say they have the Chandler rapist and more news here.