12/12/2007
Ryan Lizza has an article on the return of "nativism" to Republican politics (the Council on Foreign Relations calls it a "must read"):
McCain gets animated whenever he discusses the immigration issue. After a town-hall meeting in Anderson, South Carolina, he recalled how the Irish were discriminated against in America. As he quoted a placard that hangs on the wall of an aid’s office (“Help Wanted — No Irish Need Apply”),[VDARE.com note: This is a myth.] he jabbed his finger in the air with such emphasis that he knocked my voice recorder to the ground and erased our conversation. “It was immigration” that hurt his campaign, he said when he continued, after a series of apologies on both sides. “I understand that. I was told by one of the pollsters, ‘We see real bleeding.’ “
There were two major factions in the immigration debate in Congress. A ["fragile"] bipartisan coalition wanted a bill that included tough border-security measures, which everyone favored, as well as more controversial provisions concerning temporary-worker permits for undocumented aliens and a way for them to attain citizenship. Conservatives, led by Tom Tancredo, a Colorado congressman and Presidential candidate, demanded a bill that dealt only with security. McCain seems torn by how to address the issue, and he makes a small but telling concession to the Tancredo faction when he argues that security legislation must indeed come first. “You’ ve got to do what’ s right, O.K.?” he told me. “But, if you want to succeed, you have to adjust to the American people’ s desires and priorities.”[The Political Scene: Return of the Nativist: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker]
From McCain’s point of view, you have to either "adjust to the American people’ s desires and priorities," — or pretend to do so until you get elected.
It’s too bad you can’t copyright titles — the title Return of the Nativist, a typical headline writer’s switch on Thomas Hardy’s Return of the Native, has been used before: by blogger Tom Watson in 2006, by Paul Starr in the New Republicin 2004,in a speech by anthropologist Renato Rosaldo the same year, (both men were attacking Samuel Huntington) and … by me, here on VDARE.com, in 2001. Of course, I was the only one to defend nativism past and present.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.