Adios, America: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole (46 page)

But as soon as memories faded, the media began relentlessly rewriting the story of Proposition 187 as a catastrophe for the GOP. If I didn’t know better, I’d say the media don’t want the GOP to win landslide victories.

Republicans fall for it every time.

Nearly twenty years later, after the 2012 presidential election, the RNC paid $10 million for a report that concluded: “To broaden its appeal, the party
must . . . embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform. If we do not, our party’s appeal will continue to shrink.” (I could have told them how to lose for, say, $8 million.) It all sounds vaguely familiar . . . wait—I remember! That’s the exact advice given to Wilson in 1994 by the
New York Times
, the Republicans’ dearest, most trusted friend in the whole wide world.

In fact, however, if Romney had won 71 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2012, instead of 27 percent, he still would have lost. On the other hand, had he won just 4 percent more of the white vote, he would have won.
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So what did Reince Priebus, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, John Boehner, and all rich Republicans decide their sole mission should be after the 2012 election? Win a few points more of the Hispanic vote! The
Washington Post
’s Chris Cillizza was totally impressed. He cited the report’s conclusion, saying: “That’s 100 percent right.”
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And when Chris Cillizza tells Republicans they’re on the right track, the party had better sit up and listen!

Pete Wilson’s victory on the back of Proposition 187 ought to be studied by today’s GOP like General Eisenhower’s Operation Overlord. Not only was it a stunning success in defiance of the
Times
’ predictions, but contemporary America has nearly the exact same demographic makeup as California did in 1994—a.k.a. “the California Republicans Swept with an Anti–Illegal Alien Initiative.” In 1994, California was 75 percent white, 12 percent Hispanic, 6 percent Asian, and 7 percent African American.
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Today, the American electorate is 72 percent white, 10 percent Hispanic, 3 percent Asian, and 13 percent African American.
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Will any rich Republican donor ever notice?

BUSH EMPTIES THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

President Bush’s record-breaking 40 percent of the Hispanic vote in his 2004 reelection is cited as a model for Republican office-seekers. Let’s review: Reagan ticked off the only minority group that mattered in 1984, and won a historic landslide; Bush sucked up to Hispanics and barely won his reelection as a wartime president running against a complete nincompoop.
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And look at what Bush had to do to get 40 percent of the Hispanic vote! He carried his half-Mexican nephew, George P. Bush, around on the campaign trail as if he were an extra appendage, giving him a primetime slot at the Republican National Convention for a speech delivered partially in Spanish. He was the first president to give weekly radio addresses in Spanish and also added a Spanish-language page to the White House website. He campaigned—in America—with Mexico’s president. He held a huge Cinco de Mayo fiesta at the White House. He gave speeches to the racist National Council of La Raza, promising $100 million in federal funds to speed immigration applications.
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Bush’s Hispandering didn’t even win him a majority of Hispanics! But it did tick off his base, leading to a blowout loss for his party two years later.

The conservative Christian base that had carried Bush to victory in 2004 turned against him with a vengeance over amnesty, wiping out Bush’s party in the House, Senate, and state governorships. In the 2006 election, only 77 percent of conservatives voted Republican, compared with 91 percent of liberals who voted Democrat.
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Thirty-six percent of voters said they cast their votes specifically to oppose Bush—and he wasn’t on the ballot. That’s even more than the 27 percent who voted to oppose Bill Clinton in the 1994 Republican sweep of Congress.
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It’s hard to argue that Bush’s betrayal of conservatives on immigration was not the central factor in Republicans’ catastrophic 2006 losses. Other than Bush’s obsessive fixation on passing amnesty, there wasn’t much new that year.
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Liberals like to tell the story of how their courageous opposition to the Iraq War finally won the public’s hearts and minds, ushering in a Democratic Congress in 2006, but that’s not what public opinion surveys show. Dozens of Gallup polls on the Iraq War from the moment we invaded in March 2003 to June 2014 show public support for the war declining from 75 percent to 50 percent two years into the war, then mostly remaining in the 40s thereafter.
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It was Bush’s neurotic demand that the Senate take up “comprehensive immigration reform” in March 2006 that enraged Americans. A
Washington Post
–ABC News Poll in April 2006 showed more Americans approved of Bush’s handling of the Iraq War than approved of his handling of immigration.
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In nearly every poll on Bush’s handling of immigration that year, about 60 percent of the public disapproved, with only 25 percent approving—the latter figure giving us a rough estimate of how many Americans acquire their opinions exclusively from the
New York Times
or the
Wall Street Journal
.

       
   
Newsweek
, May 11, 2006: 61 percent “disapprove[d] of the way Bush is handling immigration policy”; only 25 percent approved.

       
   
New York Times
/CBS News poll, May 4–8, 2006: 58 percent “disapprove[d] of the way George W. Bush is handling the issue of immigration”; 26 percent approved.

       
   
Pew Center for the People and the Press, April 7–16, 2006: 62 percent “disapprove[d] of the way George W. Bush is handling the nation’s immigration policy”; 25 percent approved.

       
   
Time
magazine poll, March 29, 2006: 56 percent “disapprove[d] of the job President Bush is doing in handling the immigration problem”; 25 percent approved.
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