Shock! Conservatism Inc. Best-Seller Fool Me Twice Quite Good On Immigration…But Otherwise Clueless
08/22/2012
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Barack Obama has one great merit: he clarifies what American politics is all about. Far from transforming the United States into a post-racial multicultural paradise, politics in the Age of Obama is centered on race—even obsessed by it. Health care, jobs, national defense, guns, and innumerable other issues viewed in a purely tribal perspective, from the Oval Office on down. In no area is this more important than immigration.

A new book shows that even Conservatism Inc. might be beginning to recognize the demographic and political consequences of a prospective amnesty. Unfortunately, being Establishment conservatives, they still have no idea what to do about it.

The book became a New York Times   Best-Seller today: Fool Me Twice: Obama's Shocking Plans for the Next Four Years Exposed  by bestselling authors Aaron Klein and Brenda J. Elliott, previous authors of The Manchurian President .

Klein and Elliot reveal specific legislation that President Obama will impose in his second term, when, in his own notorious words, he has “more flexibility.” They track the figures within the Administration and in the shadow government of Leftist (and usually Soros-funded) think tanks that draw up the laws (and executive orders) that our noble President announces to the cheers of a fawning Main Stream Media.

Unlike websites like Breitbart.com, or other books like Paul Kengor’s The Communist, Fool Me Twice is a “vetting” of what Barack Obama actually intends to do—not simply who he is or where he comes from. Even the “extremism”-averse and testosterone-challenged policy wonks of the timid Beltway Right should be reading it.

Even more encouraging, the chapter on immigration is the best-supported, best-written, and most important part of the book.

Klein and Elliott begin with what the Administration has done so far.

Barack Obama initially promised:

I will make sure that the federal government does what it’s supposed to do, which is to do a better job of closing our borders and preventing hundreds of thousands of people to pour in [and] have much tougher enforcement standards when it comes to employers. [Where Clinton, Obama, and McCain Stand on Immigration, US News, March 17, 2008]

But after becoming president, Obama has done his best to bring in as many illegal immigrants as possible, while gutting enforcement. He deliberately circumvented Congress and weakened deportation mechanisms through executive orders and regulatory guidance. In June 2011, head of Immigration and Customs (ICE) John Morton pushed through “prosecutorial discretion,” which essentially granted de facto amnesty to vast swaths of the illegal population, including people with pregnant spouses or health problems. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano followed up with her own initiatives to limit deportations. Not surprisingly, Klein and Elliot report “historic drops” in deportations and “historic increases” in illegals allowed to stay in 2012.

Klein and Elliott believe that, in Obama’s second term, he will try to push through the policies outlined in the Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America’s Security and Prosperity Act of 2009 (CIR ASAP)proposed by Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) and Solomon Ortiz (D-TX).

Despite its name, this bill represents unilateral disarmament in the war for border security. It mandates the creation of a Border Communities Liaison Office in every border sector. These “liaisons” would actually warn “communities” in advance of any enforcement actions by border agents. Agents would also have to “confer” with “communities.” And, while Klein and Elliott don’t spell this out, these offices would serve as a jobs program for professionally-aggrieved Latino leaders in much the same way as Chicano Studies Department do in colleges. [See Why The Gutierrez Amnesty Bill Is So Bad—And Why It Might Pass Anyway, By Washington Watcher December 28, 2009]

The bill would also prohibit the military, including the National Guard, from operating on the U.S. border unless President Obama took the (unlikely) step of declaring a national emergency.

Seeing that President Obama halted   construction of even a "virtual fence"—though not without first spending $90 million on environmental studies—it’s obvious what his security concerns amount to.

The bill also takes the explicit step of defining Mexicans as a “protected class,” with more rights and privileges than those sickeningly racist Border Patrol agents trying to enforce their fascist laws. The bill mandates collection of ethnic data on border searches specifically to determine “the existence or absence of racial profiling.”

So if Mexicans are arrested in great numbers, agents could be cited for racial profiling.

Furthermore, vast swaths of the illegal population are simply exempt from deportation. This includes anyone “who has been determined by a medically trained professional to have medical or mental health needs,” anyone who provides money for their family, anyone who is pregnant (presumably to ensure their anchor babies are born without disruption), and anyone who is disabled.

Finally, the bill would enshrine in law that illegals cannot be apprehended near schools, legal-service providers, colleges, courthouses, social service agencies, or many other places.

As new reports reveal the millions of immigrants dependent on welfare payments, Obama is seeking to ensure that aliens will not be inconvenienced as they wait to line to enjoy American taxpayers’ largesse. Immigrants in the United States: A Profile of America's Foreign-Born Population | Poverty, Welfare, and the Uninsured, By Steven A. Camarota, CIS.org,  August 2012

Needless to say, for the few detainees actually detained, free health care, dental care, “hormonal therapies,” and mental health care will be provided.

But why should proud members of the Party of Bush and McCain be concerned?

To their credit, Klein and Elliott do depart somewhat from Conservative Inc.’s immigration talking points. They explicitly state that the sainted Ronald Reagan’s amnesty program was

a failure: it neither stemmed the tide of illegal immigrants through the strengthening of border security, nor increased immigration enforcement against employers, as was intended.

More importantly, Klein and Elliott seem to understand what many Conservatism Inc. operatives do not: that mass immigration, if not stopped, guarantees a permanent Leftist majority. They quote Eliseo Medina, the SEIU’s international secretary treasurer and member of Obama’s transition team on immigration:

We reform the immigration laws, it puts 12 million people on the path to citizenship and eventually voters… we will be creating a governing coalition for the long term, not just for an election cycle. [Obama adviser: Amnesty to ensure ‘progressive’ rule, by Aaron Klein, February 2, 2010 Video]

Klein and Elliott also reveal a plan by the progressive think tank Demos to turn the United States Citizenship and Immigrant Services (USCIS) into a full voter registration agency. This would instantly transform “new Americans” into new voters—showing Democrats know exactly what they are doing in their long term plan to elect a new people. [Voter Registration for New Americans: New USCIS Guidance on Voter Registration at Naturalization Ceremonies, Demos.org, December 5, 2011]

So Fool Me Twice is something of a hopeful sign—because it shows Republican activists are realizing that immigration must be opposed, out of sheer partisan self-interest.

Unfortunately, the rest of Fool Me Twice is mostly concerned with economics—with allegedly terrifying scenarios such as President Obama resurrecting agencies from the New Deal or raising the minimum age.

But whatever the economic feasibility of such programs, in a time of crippling recession it is hard to argue that the Republican path to victory is repeatedly crying wolf about “socialism” and arguing that the best way to get workers back on their feet is to make sure Mitt Romney can afford another dancing horse.

It’s no surprise to anyone outside the Beltway Right that Obama’s repeated attacks on Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital are as vicious as they are successful.

Ultimately, Klein and Elliott are crippled by Republican ideology itself.

Thus when discussing the Obama Administration’s plan for H1-B visas, they note cautiously

To be fair, this progressive goal—an increase in legal immigration of highly skilled foreigners—is shared by many fiscal conservatives. Many of those in business already live in ethnically diverse American cities, and have not experienced the sense of cultural inundation of average Americans forced to adjust to large waves of illegal aliens flooding into their more ethnically homogenous communities

This strikes at the heart of the issue. The Big Business constituency funding the GOP has no interest in actively defending the historic American nation—and indeed profits a great deal from its destruction.

Although in the long run this will lead to a more anti-business Democratic majority, Conservatism Inc. seems determined to prove Saul Alinsky’s gibe that he could convince a capitalist to sell him the rope on Friday, have the revolution on a Saturday, and hang the capitalist on a Sunday.

A real attack on the Obama Administration would involve pointing out the contradiction between its supposedly protectionist trade policies and Open Borders. It would outline how the stimulus program and the revitalized New Deal of the future would function as racial set-asides and wealth transfers.

 President Obama recently acknowledged this in an interview with Black Enterprise,  where after a pro forma acknowledgment that he is not "president of black America" but "the president of the United States of America, " he said

  • "[T]he programs that we have put in place have been directed at those folks who are least able to get financing through conventional means."
  • “I’ll put my track record up against anybody in terms of us putting in place broad-based programs that ultimately had a huge benefit for African American businesses.”

Oval Office Interview with President Barack Obama, by Derek T. Dingle, August 6, 2012

Most of all, it could show that even as Obama campaigns as some kind of neo-Buchananite talking about American jobs, he is systematically displacing American workers and handing over what few jobs there are to foreigners.

But Klein and Elliot cannot take that step into Right Opposition territory—because the Mitt Romney campaign also has no answers for American workers, beyond cutting his own taxes and hoping for the best.  

Klein and Elliot could have noted how Obama Administration operates as Minority Occupation Government, deliberately displacing white American workers. However, that would mean defying the conventional wisdom, and  actually talking about issues that might help the long-suffering white working class.

Fool Me Twice thus generally sticks to Republican talking points, illustrating how Obama would promote “green” policies, cut the military, and increase federal spending to try to fuel economic growth. It contains nothing that would really speak to average Americans. Klein and Elliot prove that Obama’s second-term would be far more liberal than his first. But everyone already knows that, and Democrats are probably counting on it.

Klein and Elliott may hope that the country “won’t be fooled again” by Obama. But Republican leaders are counting on fooling American workers into saving their own betrayers yet again.

Fool Me Twice is a useful advance look at Obama’s playbook. But—except for immigration—for us graduates from Conservatism Inc., the response has yet to be written.  

James Kirkpatrick [Email him] travels around the United States looking for a waiter who can speak English.

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