Effecting change in the GOP will take more than denouncements from left-leaning activists who’d cut off their hand before voting for a Republican under any circumstances. The Wall Street Journal reports on an interesting coalition regarding immigration:
[Free-market] Conservative, tea-party and libertarian groups have joined liberals in fighting a signature Republican bill in Congress that would crack down on illegal-immigrant workers. The legislation, they argue, would hurt businesses and employees while expanding government regulation.
Many LGBT activists have been peddling the line that small-government, low-tax tea party groups are racists, homophobic social reactionaries. That’s not only wrong, it’s counterproductive for long-term coalition building (but not so counterproductive if your goal is purely partisan).
14 Comments for “Coalition Building, for Real”
posted by Houndentenor on
Wait, what?
So the people who rant on about illegals think it’s hunky dory for businesses to knowingly hire illegals? That makes no sense to me.
posted by another steve on
Why do you assume it’s the same people? The social right Republicans are not the same as tea party activists. The tea party groups have not taken stands on issues unrelated to government spending, taxes and regulation.
posted by Houndentenor on
I make that assumption because here is South Texas everyone I meet who is a Tea Partier is also a social conservative.
We have a huge level of hypocrisy on the issue of illegal immigration. It’s obviously a serious problem that we can’t secure our borders. (Aside from the usual illegal immigrant issues, it means that international terrorists could be getting in an out of our country using the same methods.) So why does the right want to protect employers who knowingly hire illegal workers? If it weren’t for those jobs, we would not have nearly so many illegal immigrants. Trying to seal the border without removing the incentive to risk so much to get here is an exercise in futility. Moreover, I frequently hear people (down here, anyway) rant about the illegal immigrants who I know for a fact have hired workers from the Loew’s parking lot to do work on their property who they freely admit were probably not here legally. (And indignant that they would negotiate for the rate they wanted for working!) It seems that many people want it both ways. They don’t want illegals showing up in emergency rooms or their children attending public schools, but they are perfectly happy to pay them cheap wages to care for their children or remove storm debris from their property. I find the hypocrisy perplexing to say the least, but I find it typical of the Tea Party types I encounter.
posted by another steve on
I make that assumption because here is South Texas everyone I meet who is a Tea Partier is also a social conservative.
South Texas isn’t the U.S. But there’s also a difference in being a social conservative, and the agenda of tea party organizations, which have avoided taking stands on social issues.
As for the government’s “E-verify” system, it is hugely intrusive on employers, and doesn’t work well to boot. Employers are forced to be agents of the government in ferreting out illegal aliens (kind of totalitarian, no), and liable if they slip up. That’s not the kind of society I want to live in. And I’m happy to work with tea party people against it.
posted by BobN on
You better pack your bags, then, cuz you’re already in a country that forces employers to be agents of the gubmint, regarding hiring illegal aliens and all sorts of other issues.
Guess you’ve never employed people or you’d know that.
posted by Houndentenor on
One other thing…if the Tea Party has not taken a stand on these issues, why is it that when the Tea Party elects candidates at the state level the first thing they do is pass legislation on social issues? It’s naive to think that the two groups are closely tied. They might avoid the topic during the election (although I notice that Tea Party poster girl, Michelle Bachmann has plenty to say on those topics), but their actions once in office tell us the whole story.
posted by another steve on
If we don’t try to work with folks like tea party activists on issues where we might be able to bring them around (i.e., the federal government shouldn’t tell states what they can and can’t do regarding marriage), then nothing is ever going to be acheived. The religious right has been making a concerted effort to get the tea party to go along with it. And we should just let them?
And not all tea party politicians are Michele Bachmann. Ron Paul voted to end Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. He says he supports DOMA, but then cites the section saying states should be able to decide whether to recognize marriage or not — he has not said he supports the section that forbids the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages, and I believe he could be lobbied to vote against that section. But if we refuse to engage, then we have nobody to blame but ourselves.
posted by Houndentenor on
You are right about Ron Paul. But I just watched the clip of the audience booing the gay soldier in last night’s GOP debate. Not all Tea Partiers are homophobes and racists. Just most of them. Call me when the likes of Brown are the norm and not an anomaly. The GOP is moving in the opposite direction of the one you want it to. I’m perplexed as to why you can’t see that. I hear the N word from Tea Party types. Don’t tell me they aren’t racist.
posted by BobN on
What nonsense. If you’re a small business owner, the thing you want most is an easy, reliable, legally sufficient method of verifying the employment eligibility of your applicants and new hires. Calling this system a “burden” is absurd. (And, keep in mind, I’m not even a supporter of the idea.)
posted by Houndentenor on
Let’s not be naive. A great many businesses of all sizes rely on illegal workers. The reason we aren’t doing anything about illegal immigration is that so many businesses like the cheap labor who won’t complain about workplace safety and other issues. We can either accept illegals as part of our business model or agree to do something about it. But we can’t have it both ways.
posted by BobN on
Oh, believe me, I’m not naive about that. I look back and laugh at myself for taking the immigration status of my employees so seriously. We ran a company that required high-level language skills in everything from French to Chinese to Russian to Arabic, so we hired a lot of recent immigrants, mostly professional people back home who were working towards accreditation in their professions here.
We were meticulous in our record keeping. Then you hear about chicken-industry mega-corps advertising directly in Mexican newspapers and doing everything but running their own bus line to bring people in illegally.
posted by Jorge on
Mr. Smith said it didn’t make sense to rely on “the paper-based, error-prone” system currently used by employers, when a “successful, Web-based program is available.”
I realize unfunded mandates are unpopular these days, but it looks like we’re aiming to exchange one mandate for an easier one. So what’s the problem here?
The bill could probably use some tweaking. There’s no need to pass an imperfect bill right away, although I find this story annoying. It is federal law for employers not to hire illegal aliens. The idea that businesses are part of the problem but not a part of the solution is ridiculous. This is exactly what’s wrong with libertarians: they know everything about every problem but they’re not willing to actually do anything about anything. And yes this really is just an example of the Republican party as a whole being hypocritical on the immigration issue. The party cannot impose discipline on this issue.
posted by Houndentenor on
You’re hilarious. Of course business is part of the problem. Do you think people would risk so much to get into the US if there were no jobs here for illegals? Yes, the borders need to be more secure, but so long as there is a job waiting for someone who gets here any way they can, they will keep coming. Whole industries (hello, RESTAURANTS!) depend on illegal workers for their business model to work.
If you aren’t going to prosecute employers for hiring illegal workers, then you aren’t serious about illegal immigration.
posted by Scott L. on
The notion that the “Tea Party” movement is independent of the Republican Party base is a myth. They are essentially one and the same. The polling data on this is considerable, e.g.,
http://www.gallup.com/poll/141098/tea-party-supporters-overlap-republican-base.aspx
(Intro from Gallup link above): “There is significant overlap between Americans who identify as supporters of the Tea Party movement and those who identify as conservative Republicans. Their similar ideological makeup and views suggest that the Tea Party movement is more a rebranding of core Republicanism than a new or distinct entity on the American political scene.” (Click the link to see the numbers for yourself.)