The latest tact for the Amnesty crowd is to purport that you don’t really care about the issue of illegal immigration. To wit, Timothy Rutten, the L.A. Times media critic and not really one to be mistaken for a conservative, rips CNN for their conduct of the Republican debates last week (read article here).
He starts off O.K. by questioning the legitimacy of debate topics revolving around the factual validity of the Bible and the Confederate flag (btw, Mitt Romney is apparently going to be giving a speech Thursday regarding his Mormonism. The official editorial position regarding Mitt’s Mormonism here at BwD is: We don’t care. In fact, of all people, the late Reverend Jerry Falwell put it best when he said after meeting with Romney earlier this year, “We’re voting for the the Commander-in-Chief not the Sunday School Teacher-in-Chief”. Well put, Rev, well put) but then he veers wildly off-course by taking CNN to task for spending what he felt was too much time on illegal immigration. He contends illegal immigration being a hot button issue for CNN’s Lou Dobbs as the reason for all the time wasted on something, in his opinion, you don’t care about.
He then cites a Pew Center poll which supposedly reveals immigration being way down the list of things that Americans are concerned with currently, trailing the War in Iraq, the economy and health care.
Firstly, in this context, a polling to gage the concerns of “Americans” is not the same as a polling of “Republicans” and particularly not the same as “Republicans willing to watch these excruciatingly painful CNN-YouTube debates”. One cannot take the alleged concerns of “Americans” as the equivalent to “likely Republican primary voters.”
Secondly, would it be kosher to dare question these poll results? Afterall, because you didn’t care, the Rube Goldberg Amnesty Bill was dragged kicking and screaming into the light from behind the closed doors of the Amnesty cabal and bludgeoned to death by a listless, disinterested electorate.
And two of the leading Presidential contenders from both parties have, for the time being, changed their tune on illegal immigration because you really are not interested in the subject. Hillary Clinton finally came out against driver’s licenses for illegals because New York voters gave a collective shrug regarding this issue and John McCain has now come out against the very Amnesty Bill he helped write because you were just too busy to be bothered reading some of the fine print.
Is that how it really works? Is that what these polls actually reveal about us?
Political strategists and politicians have always relied on polls but something about all this does not add up. Whether it’s the exit polls in the ’04 Presidential elections that indicated Kerry was comfortably ahead of Bush or this poll referenced above, we can’t help but feel that because of perhaps unreliable sampling or skewed questioning, the strategists aren’t able to pull their heads out of the numbers long enough to see what is glaringly obvious to the rest of us.
Combine the above with strategists and politicians shoe-horning “public opinion” into their own template or narrative and you have a system where the politicians become increasingly distant, imperious and unaccountable. Kind of sounds like we're there now, huh?
He starts off O.K. by questioning the legitimacy of debate topics revolving around the factual validity of the Bible and the Confederate flag (btw, Mitt Romney is apparently going to be giving a speech Thursday regarding his Mormonism. The official editorial position regarding Mitt’s Mormonism here at BwD is: We don’t care. In fact, of all people, the late Reverend Jerry Falwell put it best when he said after meeting with Romney earlier this year, “We’re voting for the the Commander-in-Chief not the Sunday School Teacher-in-Chief”. Well put, Rev, well put) but then he veers wildly off-course by taking CNN to task for spending what he felt was too much time on illegal immigration. He contends illegal immigration being a hot button issue for CNN’s Lou Dobbs as the reason for all the time wasted on something, in his opinion, you don’t care about.
He then cites a Pew Center poll which supposedly reveals immigration being way down the list of things that Americans are concerned with currently, trailing the War in Iraq, the economy and health care.
Firstly, in this context, a polling to gage the concerns of “Americans” is not the same as a polling of “Republicans” and particularly not the same as “Republicans willing to watch these excruciatingly painful CNN-YouTube debates”. One cannot take the alleged concerns of “Americans” as the equivalent to “likely Republican primary voters.”
Secondly, would it be kosher to dare question these poll results? Afterall, because you didn’t care, the Rube Goldberg Amnesty Bill was dragged kicking and screaming into the light from behind the closed doors of the Amnesty cabal and bludgeoned to death by a listless, disinterested electorate.
And two of the leading Presidential contenders from both parties have, for the time being, changed their tune on illegal immigration because you really are not interested in the subject. Hillary Clinton finally came out against driver’s licenses for illegals because New York voters gave a collective shrug regarding this issue and John McCain has now come out against the very Amnesty Bill he helped write because you were just too busy to be bothered reading some of the fine print.
Is that how it really works? Is that what these polls actually reveal about us?
Political strategists and politicians have always relied on polls but something about all this does not add up. Whether it’s the exit polls in the ’04 Presidential elections that indicated Kerry was comfortably ahead of Bush or this poll referenced above, we can’t help but feel that because of perhaps unreliable sampling or skewed questioning, the strategists aren’t able to pull their heads out of the numbers long enough to see what is glaringly obvious to the rest of us.
Combine the above with strategists and politicians shoe-horning “public opinion” into their own template or narrative and you have a system where the politicians become increasingly distant, imperious and unaccountable. Kind of sounds like we're there now, huh?
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5 comments:
This is nothing new! They, the politicians, don't listen to us, the constituency, in any way, shape, or form so it comes as no surprise that when they want immigration to be a non-issue they just wish it so and it is.
This is nothing new! They, the politicians, don't listen to us, the constituency, in any way, shape, or form so it comes as no surprise that when they want immigration to be a non-issue they just wish it so and it is.
This is nothing new! They, the politicians, don't listen to us, the constituency, in any way, shape, or form so it comes as no surprise that when they want immigration to be a non-issue they just wish it so and it is.
Nothing says passion like a triple post. ;)
But you're right, Paull... Its apparent after the ass-kicking the Amnesty cabal took this summer that they simply want this to fade away for the time being.
... one more thing. The gratifying part of this was that they DID listen. We got up in their collective faces and they backed down. We may have to keep doing it but that's what a representative democracy is all about, right?
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