(Playing of Jose, Can You See, The Star Spanglis Banner)
RUSH: That is Jose y Los Ilegales and the Star-Spanglish Banner. All right, a couple of people I know, and I consider these guys friends, Jeb Bush and Ken Mehlman have a piece today in the Wall Street Journal, and what they do in this piece is blame Prop 187 in California for the Republicans losing political control of that state. You remember what Prop 187 was? Prop 187 was Californians were fed up with paying the health care and education and a lot of other entitlement programs for illegal immigrants and their children, and of course, the Proposition 187 was defeated and a federal judge said it was an unconstitutional proposition in the first place. The people and their expressed will was shot down by the federal government. So Jeb Bush and Ken Mehlman today say that it was Prop 187 that led to the Republican Party losing the state of California. The point that they’re trying to make is that Republican Party is going to lose its entire national base just as it’s lost California if we oppose illegal immigration, the bill that’s going through the Senate.
Heather MacDonald at the Manhattan Institute has written a response to Jeb Bush and Ken Mehlman, which is brilliant today. She said it’s too bad that they didn’t — and, by the way, Ken and Jeb Bush say that California would still be Reagan country if that were the case. That’s not at all the case. This is where everybody on the Republican side is looking at these people as potential voters and a way to expand the Republican Party missing the point here. As Heather MacDonald writes, ‘Too bad that [Jeb Bush and Ken Mehlman] didn’t read their own op-ed. Too bad they didn’t read their own op-ed. No Republican presidential nominee has won California since 1988, they report. Prop. 187 must be one powerful toxin if it can alienate Hispanics six years before it even exists.’ Republicans lost California long before Prop 187. ‘In fact, California’s transformation from ‘Reagan country’ to labor-union country is the far more likely consequence of the growing Hispanic population per se and the corresponding outflow of white Republicans to other states.’
Republicans have fled the state of California. It’s not that Hispanics are not voting Republican. It’s Republicans have fled. Listen to this. ‘In 1990, California was one-quarter Latino and 57-percent white; in 2000, it was 32-percent Latino and 47-percent white; in 2005, Latinos constituted 35 percent, and whites 43 percent, of the population.’ That is a microcosm of the demographic shifts that are likely to occur nationwide if this bill becomes law. That’s a profound demographic shift. You could still have a rising Hispanic population and a constant white population except for what? Whites are leaving. We just had Jan from Evergreen, Colorado, who used to live in California. She’s moved to Colorado. She said she fled illegal immigration. So this is a little microcosm here of what’s happened. The reason the white population since 1990 has gone from 57% to 43% — now, you might say, some of that’s abortion, a lot of libs out there, but a lot of it is flight, people are leaving the state. ‘These shifting demographics,’ Heather MacDonald writes, ‘have been accompanied by the growing clout of the Democratic party, and of California’s public-service unions, not because of some vestigial memory of 187, but because they appeal to low-wage, low-skilled Hispanics.’
California is a microcosm of what’s going to happen in this country if, in fact, this bill is to become law. I said last week we’ve lost California, we’re close to losing Florida because of this, and the nation hangs in the balance in terms of these — I’m talking political parties. This is why the Republican Party is so off base on this and doesn’t understand why this legislation is, as I dubbed it, the Comprehensive Destroy the Republican Party Act of 2007. They want to sit there and try to tell us that Prop 187 made it possible for all these Hispanics, angry at that legislation, to join the Democrat Party? Wrong. They are low skilled. They are uneducated. They are low wage. That’s the Democrat constituency! They are not entrepreneurial. ‘Yes, they are, Rush. Look at the risks they’re willing to take to cross the border and so forth.’ California will give you a good look through the looking glass as to what’s going to happen. ‘Los Angeles politics,’ Ms. MacDonald says, ‘are now closely intertwined with the unionized Left, now that Latinos in 2005 made up 47 percent of the population and whites, 30 percent.’ Don’t anybody misinterpret this.
We’re not talking here about race. We’re talking about demographics and how demographics affect political parties. Trying to disabuse people of the notion that arriving hordes of low wage, unskilled, uneducated people are going to be become conservative Republicans… the evidence isn’t there. ‘The idea that Prop. 187, now 12 years old, is driving this massive shift is fanciful. California provides a glimpse of the likely political future if poor Hispanics continue to be the fastest-growing demographic in the country.’ This is exactly why the Democrats love this! It’s exactly why they’re going to be able to remake the country in their own image. I’m sure Jeb Bush and Ken Mehlman are being honest. I’ll betcha they really think we lost California because we made these arriving Hispanics mad, Prop. 187, exactly what’s going to happen, they think, with this. But the evidence tells a different story.
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RUSH: Dadelut dadelut dadelut dadelut! One more global warming story or two, get it out of the way, move on to other things.
(Playing of ‘Jose, Can You See?’ the Star Spanglish Banner)
RUSH: Once again, that’s Jose y Los Ilegales and the ‘Star-Spanglish Banner.’ Today in the Wall Street Journal, one of the editors of the Wall Street Journal, Dan Henninger, has written a piece that, frankly, ladies and gentlemen — with all due respect, I love the people at the Journal, many good friends of mine are over there — I’m in shock at this piece. I know the Journal has its audience. It’s a business audience, and business is very much pro-illegal immigration. Nevertheless, this is the editorial page. Let me read you just some excerpts of this. ‘The state with the highest percentage growth of immigrants in those five years [2000-2005] was South Carolina, at 47.8%. Rounding out the top 10 high-growth immigrant states, all up more than 30%, are New Hampshire, Tennessee, Arkansas, Delaware, Alabama, Georgia, Nebraska, Kentucky and North Carolina. (If you really want to get away from it all, head to Wyoming — dead last with about 11,000 foreign-born and 49th in growth with a -5% rate.)’ which is why people will move there.
‘What that list of states with high rates of in-migration tells me,’ writes Mr. Henniger, ‘is that immigrants, legal or illegal, go where there’s work. They constitute what in one of the few felicitous phrases in economics is called ‘labor-force participation.’ A study last September by the Pew Hispanic Center tracked migration flows back to 1990 and found that the most notable factor affecting the rise and fall of total migration numbers was the state of the U.S. economy. What this in turn suggests is that the best way to stanch the flow of illegal immigration would be to drive the growth rate of U.S. GDP back toward zero… Labor-force participation is as American as apple pie. This country, as the saying goes, was built on work. And that may be precisely why Congress is having a hard time passing an immigration bill…. No wonder it’s hard to pass a bill. It’s hard because Congress is trying to elevate one American value, respect for the law, by demoting an American value that up to now has been an unambiguous, uncontested ideal — respect for work, for labor. The tension here,’ he writes, ‘is especially difficult for conservatives,’ because we’re conflicted here over the rule of law and the American value of the rule of law. He’s talking about the divide in the conservative ranks on this.
‘Why, then, would Republican politicians and conservative writers want to run the risk of undermining, perhaps for a long time, their core belief in the broad benefits of free-market economic forces in return for a law that hammers these illegal Mexicans?’ When I read that, I said, ‘I don’t believe that somebody from the Wall Street Journal misses it like this.’ They need to read Dr. Sowell. There’s no free market in terms of illegal labor. We don’t just let anybody that produces a good or service flood the country with it. There’s no free market when it comes to illegal products. We have all kinds of regulations and standards. We don’t let poison food come into the country, but to compare illegal immigration to free markets and other things is to exhibit (I just can’t believe I’m going to say this) a lack of understanding about free markets! ‘Conservatives also argue,’ he writes, ‘with considerable force, that any conceivable path to citizenship or guest-worker status for these workers … would be ‘amnesty’ and so make a mockery of the rule of law. But so massively setting aside years of principled, market-based argument — the environment, pharmaceuticals, labor, antitrust — to thwart these movements of immigrants is a risky proposition.’
Look, I’m not that smart, folks. Let’s admit it. I’ll be the first to admit this. I’m not that smart. I just do not think that this is what I’m thinking or saying in my opposition to illegal immigration. It’s not based on this. You know, the market is intrinsically tied to our overall culture that, these lauded workers are literally refusing to fit into and to assimilate into — and, frankly, I think our market is bigger and stronger and deeper than Mr. Henninger does and that it can withstand and adapt itself to using legal citizens who have immigrated from Mexico who share the vision of the United States, instead of those who are here just to bleed us dry. It’s a very shallow argument. I was stunned that this got published, and stunned that they think this. It’s as tough for me to say. These Journal people are some of my best friends. One of the things they have to recognize is we have a huge welfare state in this country now. The United States has become, among all other things that it is, a huge welfare state — and of course, the doors to that welfare state are opened up to these formerly illegal immigrants. If you do open those doors then the free market is not going to be so free because your taxes are going to have to rise exorbitantly in order to handle the influx of these low-wage, unskilled and uneducated people.
If you really want to talk about free markets, it seems to me you start in Mexico, don’t you? If you want to really talk about free markets, you start in Mexico and other countries that refuse to reform their tyrannies, their dictatorships, or their social-economic policies, but this notion that opening our borders here is going to lead to free markets in Mexico? We’ve disproved that! That doesn’t happen. Free markets are the result of the proper distribution of capitalism. You don’t redistribute capitalism by opening the doors and the borders of this country and expanding your own welfare state. I just don’t get how these people are missing this. They want to talk about free markets all over the place. In the meantime, we’ve got a welfare state that’s going out of sight out of control, and we think that opening borders and allowing all these people from around the world — from Mexico, wherever — illegal, uneducated, low wage, unskilled, whatever you want to say, how is that somehow is going to spread capitalism? It does no such thing, and of course, the primary reason for poverty around the world is the unequal distribution of capitalism. Open borders are not going to promote any of the things the Journal stands for: limited government, the traditional conservative ideals, fiscal policy, rule of law. Open borders promote none of these things! I was disappointed. I tried to get through this show without talking about this today, but I have a duty to do it and did it.
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RUSH: Bill in Union, New Jersey, welcome to the EIB Network.
CALLER: Yes, Rush, are you there?
RUSH: I’m there. Yes.
CALLER: Rush, I’ve been trying to get through to you for years. You are my idol, and I finally got through to you, but the reason why I got through was a negative reason, and it’s bothering me. You are using that parody that you’re doing lately, it is great, it’s making me laugh, I agree with you all the way, but you’re using the national anthem of the United States. And it kind of hurt me.
RUSH: It hurts you to hear the national anthem —
CALLER: Used in a parody. It’s almost like burning a flag or something.
RUSH: Burning the flag. Interesting. Well, I’m sorry that it affected you that way.
CALLER: Well, it did.
RUSH: Well, but you know that I mean no disrespect.
CALLER: I know that, but the thing is, well, when I heard the Spanish version of the national anthem, that got to me, too.
RUSH: Yeah, but that was at least with the real words, as far as we know it was the real words.
CALLER: That’s what I wanted to say.
RUSH: Well, I appreciate that. Now you’re making me feel bad here.
CALLER: I didn’t want to.
RUSH: I meant no disrespect to the national anthem, Star-Spangled Banner. You know, we’re into illustrating absurdity here by being absurd. We thought that was a good way of doing it. I’ll take your complaint under advisement and I’ll ask trusted staff what they think. You are the first to say anything about it.
CALLER: I just hope I’m not causing trouble, that’s all.
RUSH: Well, you’re not causing trouble. I love finding out what the audience thinks.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: It’s great to hear from patriotic people like you. In fact, in fact you said you’ve been trying for a long time to get through, and now you finally got through and it was something negative.
CALLER: Yeah, a negative thing.
RUSH: Well, I’m sure you have a positive thing you’d like to say. You could end the call on a very pleasurable note.
CALLER: All I can say is, you are my guiding light in everything. Okay? Except this one thing.
RUSH: (Laughing.) I appreciate that. Gee, I hadn’t even thought of that, that it might hurt people’s feelings that they think we’re making fun of the national anthem, which we’re not. I mean the purpose of the Star Spanglish Banner is not to make fun of it. Well, yeah, blame it on white satirist Paul Shanklin. (Laughing.) I had nothing to do with it. I was minding my own business and it showed up. It’s not my fault, Bill. Keep a sharp eye for the video on YouTube.