A post-mortem
By http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=375
Back in late May, the Axis of Amnesty seemed like an unstoppable coalition of the Great and the Good. It linked the Republican White House and the Democratic leaders of Congress, business, media, religion, and the ethnic lobbies.
And yet, put to the test in the Senate, the Bush-Kennedy Amnesty/Immigration Surge bill collapsed ignominiously—twice.
Why did the Axis of Amnesty turn out to be a paper tiger?
Sure, we immigration reform patriots had a large majority of American voters on our side. But only the naïve assume that the majority rules in modern America. While we entered the battle with both numbers and morale, the Axis of Amnesty held the commanding heights of the institutions and had almost all the hired guns,
So what happened?Well, as Napoleon said: “In war, moral factors account for three quarters of the whole; relative material strength accounts for only one quarter.”
What the Axis didn’t have was any Americans below the elites who actually cared enough about the amnesty bill to write their Senators.
Let’s review each component of this mile-wide-but-inch deep coalition of special interests to see why its overall strength was so vastly overrated.
* The MainStream Media
The good news for the Axis of Amnesty was that the MainStream Media consistently demonize patriotic immigration reformers. But that was about all the good news they enjoyed. Just about the only steadfast partisans were obviously self-interested or delusional fringe interests like the immigration lawyers, La Raza, and economists.
* Illegal immigrants
The huge illegal alien demonstrations in the spring of 2006, with their vast sea of Mexican flags, just made actual voters more adamant in saying “No mas” to illegal immigration. But they intimidated and motivated the Establishment.
But where were the marchers this year?
The dismal failure of illegal immigrants to turn out in the streets was the most striking change from 2006 to 2007. According to the Los Angeles Times, [15 Police Officers Injured in Clash With Demonstrators in LA, By Teresa Watanabe and Francisco Vara-Orta, May 2, 2007 the May Day march of the illegals dropped from 650,000 in 2006 to 35,000 in 2007. Similar declines were seen nationally.
Then, after the collapse of the Bush-Kennedy bill in mid-May … practically nada.
The single most important reason for this unexpected collapse: probably the fact that the old House bill threatening to make being an illegal immigrant a felony was not on the table this year. Only “a path to citizenship” was being debated. Illegal aliens don’t want to be deported, but, in contrast to the sentimental propaganda about them, they don’t care much about citizenship (or America either, for that matter.) They are, in the most part, patriotic Mexican nationals here merely for the money.
Illegal aliens also, evidently, don’t long to be “brought out of the shadows”. They don’t see all that much in it for them. That’s because they have a better understanding of economics than do many of their elite supporters.
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/070729_amnesty.htm