In his recent column Don’t Let Harry Reid Rent Space In Your Head! [January 30, 2007], VDARE.com editor and stalwart — and my good friend! — Joe Guzzardi wrote:

Reid has proven repeatedly that he can’t count votes. If he could, none of the proposed 2006 and 2007 amnesties would ever have come to the floor. All were soundly defeated—a total embarrassment to the Democrats.

Of course, we all hope Joe’s main prognostications in his article are dead on, but his paragraph above is not quite right, and it’s important. In fact, S.2611 — best described as comprehensive amnesty, with all the trimmings — handily passed the Senate on May 25, 2006. The country was saved, literally, by the House Republicans, who simply refused to take up the Senate-passed bill.

Instead, then-Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL), in his finest hour, organized a series of hearings by House committees around the country, including even one in Montana, to gauge public sentiment. Presumably Hastert knew what they would find, since that year he’d attained personal clarity:

Every state is a border state, and every town is a border town. I’ve just returned from a very informative trip to the southern border, but everywhere I travel around this country, illegal immigration is a top concern. It’s a top concern among Americans because they want our southern and northern borders to be secure.

After the round of hearings ended in late summer, we heard no more about S.2611. Because the Republicans controlled the House, the country was allowed to live (at least for awhile). But those same Republicans were too timid to actually campaign on their country-saving feat in the mid-term elections that fall and, thus, lost their majority, to the wonderment and disgust of many.

The Republicans’ fecklessness at this potential hinge-point in our national life was the subject of some memorable posts by writer Lawrence Auster, including this post, wherein he despaired:

Through all of 2006 I urged the House Republicans as strongly as I could from this tiny perch to publicize their opposition to the Senate immigration bill, S. 2611. They had heroically stopped the bill cold in the House, refusing even to go into a House-Senate conference, an almost unprecedented act of defiance. But they did not inform the voters that they had done this. In fact, they seemed ashamed of having done it. In a classic example of seizing defeat from the jaws of victory, they allowed the media to spin the story as, “Do-Nothing Congress Fails to Pass Immigration Reform,” instead of as, “House Republicans Stand like a Stone Wall against the Worst Bill in American History.”

Back to S.2611: The bill’s proponents (McCain, Kennedy, Martinez, Reid, and Specter being primary traitors) first had to invoke cloture, to end debate. That takes 60 votes, and they won 73 - 25. Then the bill actually passed the Senate 62 - 36.

This illustrates the ability of legislatures to put on a show for the mostly-inattentive public. The crucial vote was cloture. Then some senators who’d voted for cloture (a “procedural” vote) to shut down debate, thus assuring the bill’s passage, voted against the bill, proper. This would let them later claim to press and public that they’d been against amnesty and, in fact, had voted that way. (See this related discussion about our 2007 success against death-sentence-by-amnesty.)

I took those vote totals from the page for Montana’s Sen. Baucus [scroll down for year 2006 votes] at the Americans for Better Immigration website.

Here I bring up a further cautionary note on what Joe Guzzardi wrote: Baucus, who’s been in Congress since 1975 and the Senate since 1979, has had a generally lousy record on immigration votes. But, likely anticipating his 2008 re-election run, he got religion in 2007, voting against amnesty at every turn. (In fact, Montana was the only state with two Democratic senators who both stood strong against amnesty in 2007.) Now that he’s been resoundingly re-elected to his sixth term, whether we can count on Baucus’s vote going forward, as Joe does, is an open question.

Undoubtedly what was crucial last time was concerted pressure from constituents, as Baucus acknowledged here. Further, field staff members in Bozeman told several of us that the DC office and all seven field offices across the state were inundated with calls that were 100% against amnesty.

So read — and take heart from — Joe’s analysis of our prospects. But please don’t think he’s giving you leave to retire from the fray! A civilization is at stake.

(By the way, Montanans may be interested in this.)

Many VDARE.com readers are familiar with Plyler vs Doe, the decision that requires school boards to provide education to juvenile illegal aliens, regardless of expense. Reading an old Dan Seligman column recently, I was reminded that the Supreme Court that wrote that decison was “bitterly divided.”

A bitterly divided Supreme Court ruled in 1982 that the children of illegals are entitled to a public education, at least through the 12th grade and maybe beyond. The ruling was unclear about college, but legislatures in New York and California have guaranteed illegals a right to attend public institutions of higher learning. We shall rashly state that the Supremes’ logic in the case, Plyler v. Doe, was unfathomable. It presumed to rest on the Constitutional right of all persons to ”equal protection of the laws,” but it was definitely stretching things in asserting that the Fourteenth Amendment required states to provide identical treatment to those who lived there lawfully and those who did not.[ILLEGAL RIGHTS, by Daniel Seligman, Fortune Magzine, June 27, 1994]

How can you tell that Court was bitterly divided? Well, you count the votes, (5-4) and you read the dissent, which was written by Chief Justice Burger. How bad was Plyler? Well, Sandra Day O’Connor joined in the dissent. One important point is that we’re not dealing with the children of illegal alines, but with illegal alien children. (And teenagers, of course.)

“Both the opinion of the Court and JUSTICE POWELL’s concurrence imply that appellees are being “penalized” because their parents are illegal entrants. Ante at 220; ante at 238-239, and 239, n. 3 (POWELL, J., concurring). However, Texas has classified appellees on the basis of their own illegal status, not that of their parents. Children born in this country to illegal alien parents, including some of appellees’ siblings, are not excluded from the Texas schools. Nor does Texas discriminate against appellees because of their Mexican origin or citizenship. Texas provides a free public education to countless thousands of Mexican immigrants who are lawfully in this country.”

[BURGER, C.J., Dissenting Opinion, SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATE,S 457 U.S. 202 Plyler v. Doe]

If you are interested in what was actually said by Peter Brimelow at the National Press Club, you can watch it on YouTube, courtesy TalkRadio News.

Earlier this month, I sent the letter below to the local newspaper. It was published although the editor changed Immigration and Customs Enforcement to lower case letters. They are sort of clueless up here where I live. Today I picked up my copy of the biweekly paper and the headline on page A2 reads, “Child rape suspect likely fled to Mexico.” Too bad I don’t work for the Sheriff’s Department. Linda

To the Editor, Whidbey-News Times:

The article, “Rape suspect leaves trail of evidence” describes Vicente Campos-Duenes, the suspect, as “a Renton man.” He is not from Renton although he may have lived there. He is from Mexico as his wallet, found at the scene, contained “a Mexico federal ID card.”

These cards are usually held by Mexicans living in the U.S. illegally. They use them to get drivers’ licenses, open bank accounts and obtain taxpayer ID’s and employment. Mexicans legally in the country have green cards or U.S. visas or some other valid, U.S. ID showing the right to be in our country.

The Island County Sheriff might do well to contact Immigration and Customs Enforcement to prevent Campos-Duenes from fleeing to Mexico. Hopefully, that has already been done.

Linda Thom

New York Times Editorial Board is enraged at conservative activist Marcus Epstein, denouncing him as a “white supremacist.” (See Mr. Epstein’s picture at right, which, being a world-class investigative journalist, I was able to unearth on MarcusEpstein.com after about 15 seconds of Googling. Maybe if Carlos Slim had given the New York Times another $200 million, the Editors would have had the journalistic resources to find it themselves.)

His thought crime? He put together a press conference on the politics of immigration last week, in which conservative intellectuals and leaders dared to suggest that running more John McCains is not the road to GOP electoral victory. As part of its Two Minutes Hate, “The Nativists Are Restless,” the NYT’s editorial board fulminated:

It included Bay Buchanan, former adviser to Representative Tom Tancredo and sister of Pat, who founded the American Cause and wrote “State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America.” She was joined by James Pinkerton, an essayist and Fox News contributor who, as an aide to the first President Bush, took credit for the racist Willie Horton ads run against Michael Dukakis.

Actually, Jim Pinkerton always gives credit for first bringing up Dukakis’s Willie Horton problem to Al Gore, the Nobel Peace Prize winner.

So far, so foul. But even more telling was the presence of Peter Brimelow, a former Forbes editor and founder of Vdare.com, an extremist anti-immigration Web site. It is named for Virginia Dare, the first white baby born in the English colonies, which tells you most of what you need to know. The site is worth a visit. There you can read Mr. Brimelow’s and Mr. Buchanan’s musings about racial dilution and the perils facing white people, and gems like this from Mr. Epstein:

“Diversity can be good in moderation — if what is being brought in is desirable. Most Americans don’t mind a little ethnic food, some Asian math whizzes, or a few Mariachi dancers — as long as these trends do not overwhelm the dominant culture.”

Ahhhh-ooooo-gahhh! Crimethink Alert! Ahhhh-ooooo-gahhh! When it comes to immigration, only extremists call for moderation!

It is easy to mock white-supremacist views as pathetic and to assume that nativism in the age of Obama is on the way out. The country has, of course, made considerable progress since the days of Know-Nothings and the Klan. But racism has a nasty habit of never going away, no matter how much we may want it to, and thus the perpetual need for vigilance.

It is all around us. Much was made of the Republican mailing of the parody song “Barack the Magic Negro,” but the same notorious CD included “The Star Spanglish Banner,” a puerile bit of Latino-baiting. It is easily found on YouTube. Google the words “Bill O’Reilly” and “white, Christian male power structure” for another YouTube taste of the Fox News host assailing the immigration views of “the far left” (including The Times) as racially traitorous.

Beyond parody …

Apparently Chairmanship of the Republican National Committee has become another of those positions, like being head of an Ivy League school or Governor of the Federal Reserve, to which white men of Christian heritage Need Not Apply.

The clique which controls the RNC has just ordained failed Maryland Senate candidate and professional Black Michael Steele: Michael Steele becomes first black RNC chairman By Liz Sidoti Associated Press January 31 2009-01-31

Steele was preceded by professional Hispanic Senator Mel Martinez (R-Cuba) who has apparently found masquerading as a Republican Senator - now the brilliant leadership supplied by his cronies has cost the GOP the House, Senate, and White House - too much like work. (Martinez dropped out of the RNC position in late 2007 and his assistant Mike Duncan served as stop-gap.) Martinez succeeded hereditary open borders fanatic Ken Mehlman.

There is an irony here. Steele was already being prepared for Coronation in 2006 when the Rove/Mehlman crowd realized that somebody has put some sensible immigration remarks on Steele’s Senate Campaign website. So he was dumped.

Some VDARE.com readers might hope that this means Steele will actually alter the RNC Establishment’s line on immigration. That is very dubious. He has spent the last two years licking boots in preparation for this role. As Marcus Epstein noted in his VDARE.com report on the event, Steele opposed Ward Connerly’s raising of Affirmative action at National Review’s so-called Conservative Summit in 2007

only Connerly, who has heroically led two successful state wide ballot initiatives against affirmative action, made opposing the policy a top priority. Michael Steele said affirmative action was a side issue—we needed to revitalize the black culture and it will go away.

And after the Paul/Guliani South Carolina confrontation, Pat Buchanan reported

…Michael Steele, GOP spokesman, was saying that Paul should probably be cut out of future
debates…

adding

By all means, throw out of the debate the only man who was right from the beginning on Iraq.

The childishly credulous AP report parrots Steele’s boasting

The choice marked no less than “the dawn of a new party,” declared the new GOP chairman, former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele

But notes

Steele, an attorney…was considered the most moderate of the five candidates running.

The truth is, Steele’s selection means no change. The RNC remains controlled by a faction which under the guise of “outreach” is determined to block any policy which could mobilize the GOP’s key constituency: White men of Christian heritage – and the women who love them. Their job is to contribute, vote – and shut up. The new Slave class!

In the post-Reconstruction South, there was the phenomenon of “Post Office Republicans”. These people maintained the local party machinery, did nothing, and every few years got to gobble federal patronage when the ebb and flow of national politics put the Republicans in the White House.

When politically serious white men started migrating into the Republican Party as the Democrat’s anti white bias became intolerable, their first task was to eliminate this group of parasites. It was quite difficult.

Now it needs to be done at the national level.