In which we weave our tweets into a seamless narrative arc: I’m worried that Obama is losing the sequester fight. Polls show voters agree with him, but don’t seem to care much about the whole alleged spending cut apocalypse. Meanwhile the White House’s amped-up application of Firemen First principles is so clumsy it’s backfiring. Even a slanted NBC/WSJ poll–offering voters the alluring option of “working together” to avoid the sequester cuts–showed 46% effectively saying, “Screw ‘working together’! Give us the cuts.”
My worry, of course, is that if GOPs win the sequester they might be more willing to hand Obamaa (far more significant) victory on immigration amnesty.
It looks like the best way now for GOPs to pull out a humiliating, resentment-breeding defeat on sequester is to make it a debate, not about whether the government can be cut by a couple of percentage points, but about whether GOPs are willing to shut the whole government down. Luckily, the “continuing resolution” deadline of March 27th gives them a last-minute chance to restore their vote-losing reckless and irresponsible cred.
If they’re smart, of coure, they will find a way to continue the Continuing Resolution and keep the government open while letting the sequester happen unassisted. Here’s hoping they’re not smart.
P.S.: That makes it both sides I’m hoping aren’t smart. Even money in D.C. …
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The Sound of One Hand Backtracking: An L.A. Times news story accidently prints its all purpose correction koan–
“An earlier version of this post said X. Actually, it’s X.”
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Michael Barone notes that many fewer Mexicans say they want to emigrate than in previous years, presumably because the Mexican economy is in pretty good shape. He then extrapolates to an implicitly anti-anti-amnesty conclusion:
That’s why I don’t expect to see ever again a wave vast of migration from Mexico on the scale of that between 1982 and 2007, even when (or if) the U.S. economy starts growing robustly again. Mickey Kaus seems to assume that another such wave is inevitable. I guess we’ll see who’s right. [Emphasis on revealingly tendentious terms added ]
But of course we don’t need to see a vast wave “on the scale of” the ’82-2007 surge to wind up with millions of new unskilled undocumented immigrants, bidding down bottom-end wages and agitating for Amnesty III. A smaller wave will do. And there are countries other than Mexico whose desperate citizens might be drawn by the prospect of the next “comprehensive” amnesty.
More important, you don’t need to think another wave is “inevitable” to want a secure border (“enforcement”) to come before amnesty. You just have to think it’s possible, and that prudence requires we not bet our immigration policy on Permanent Mexican Economic Growth. …
Barone knows all this, of course. But a certain …what did Bob Woodward call it? … not entirely conscious urge seems to overtake Republicans, even conservatives as astute as Barone, or Charles Krauthammer, when they are in the midst of Hispanic Panic and would really, really, like to find a way to say “yes” to amnesty. … [Update: On further review, I agree with Alert Reader R who says this last paragraph is unfair–Barone is mainly making a demographic point, not a pro-amnesty argument. Still!]
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