The GOP Leaders and Immigration Policy

At The Boston Globe Jeff Jacoby laments Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney embodying the contemporary equivalent of the anti-immigrant Know-Nothings. The money excerpt:

The Know-Nothings today are spoken of with disdain, but their attractiveness to voters was once a powerful political phenomenon. One of Romney's predecessors as governor of Massachusetts, Henry J. Gardner, was elected three times on the American Party (the "Know-Nothing") ticket. He had plenty of company: In the 1854 election in Massachusetts alone, the Know-Nothings won every statewide office, every seat in the state Senate, virtually the entire state House of Representatives, every seat in the congressional delegation, and a slew of local offices.

It wasn't a party of single-issue yahoos. The Know-Nothings opposed slavery, supported greater rights for women, expanded constitutional liberties, mandated paid legal counsel for poor defendants, increased aid to public schools and libraries, enacted numerous consumer protections, and cracked down on corruption in public office.

But who recalls any of that today? The Know-Nothings are remembered now for one thing only: the anti-immigrant bigotry they inflamed and exploited for political gain.

Giuliani and Romney are not single-issue yahoos either. But they are letting their hunger for power overwhelm their better judgment and decency. Recklessly bashing illegal immigrants may score them points with one angry segment in the GOP base. But what are they doing to their party's reputation - and their own?

Jacoby, I'll remind you, is a very conservative columnist. This does not represent an attack from the left.

I live in the Southwest where the issue of immigration is more than just a cynical topic to scare white suburbanites and I find Giuliani and Romney's conversion to represent facile opportunism. There is no easy solution to this issue. But demonizing immigrants strikes me as a vicious and craven way to approach immigration policy. Texan George W. Bush understands this, and I don't give the president all that much credit on many issues. I don't entirely agree with Bush's immigration policies either, but at least he is making an attempt to find a solution within a context where any policy is going to lead to deep dissatisfaction.

Quick Hits While You Wait

Here are a few links to help you while away the seven hours and six minutes between now and the first pitch of the 2007 World series.:

Baseball first, of course: I would be willing to bet that no major newspaper in the country devotes as many editorials to its professional sports teams as does The Boston Globe in any given year. Yesterday's was their latest. My guess is that the conclusion that Sox fans deserve the title more than Rockies fans, however true it might be (and it is true) won't endear Boston fans to our growing legion of shrill and irrational critics.

Meanwhile, also at the Globe, Bob Hohler reminds us (as if we needed it) of the signinificance of 2004. Now forgive me while I channel Andrew Sullivan, but I can think of another guy who spent a lot of time in 2004 trying to figure out what it all means.

But enough self indulgence. john Donovan at SI has one of those position-by-position matchup charts that seems pretty reasonably to assess the relative talent levels of the two teams. All of the speculation becomes moot in a little while, though.

On to other matters.

Normally I restrict this sort of thing to the South Africa Blog (I really am full of myself today, aren't I?) but this feature on Thabo Mbeki's relationship with the media caught my eye this morning. Essentially the Mail & Guardian asked two prominent South African writers to assess that issue, and their independent conclusions are, I think, telling.

And since I am emphasizing media issues today, could the Jena 6 case prove to have an uncomfortable amount in common with the Duke lacrosse case? Craig Franklin, assistant editor at the Jena Times, argues as much in the Christian Science Monitor.

Finally, regular readers know that I am mystified by the
appeal of Rudolph Giuliani. Now this Washington Monthly piece simply adds to the suspicion many of us have about Guliani's inclinations toward a dangerous desire to centralize his own power when he has it.

Sox take Game 1 in Fenway tonight 7-2.

Why Giuliani Shouldn't Win

Over at Talking Points Memo Cafe Jim Sleeper has a provocative argument why Rudy Giuliani might not make a very good president. The argument is a bit too diffuse to sum up easily, but Sleeper looks past the easy reasons why he might not be able to win the nomination. I'm not certain he's right, but Sleeper at least adds another perspective to the discussion.