February 02, 2008

Memo From Mexico, By Allan Wall

Why Is John McCain’s "Hispanic Outreach Director" Still Involved in Mexican Politics? Because That’s How McCain Likes It.

John McCain is now the front-runner for the Republican nomination. He has the momentum, the media like him, and he’s got some big name endorsements (from Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nancy Reagan, and drop-out candidate Giuliani, among others). Will McCain and his so-called "Straight Talk Express" take the nomination?

Here in Mexico, I haven’t thus far seen much interest in the McCain candidacy. The media has been reporting his success in the Republican primary, though he’s not yet well-known among the populace. As a rule, the Democratic candidates Hillary and Obama are better known than the Republican candidates.

And I predict that when general election time rolls around, the Democratic candidate will be the favorite here as usual, and not the GOP standard bearer, whoever he may be. McCain will turn out like President Bush, who despite his pandering to Mexico, is not well-liked here. For that matter, McCain won’t achieve a breakthrough with U.S. Hispanics either, any more than Bush did.

At VDARE.COM, we cannot endorse candidates. But we can and do evaluate them and their platforms, to see how they measure up on the National Question. Then you can vote for whom you like.

In other words, "We Report, You Decide".

The consensus here at VDARE.COM is, and has been for years, that John McCain, when it comes to the National Question, is not on our side. If you want the border secured, if you want immigration reduced, and if you want the immigrants already here to assimilate, then John McCain is NOT your man.

That’s not an endorsement or an anti-endorsement, it’s just a fact.

And veterans, don’t forget, just because a candidate is a veteran, or even a former prisoner of war, doesn’t mean he’s doing what is right for America today. Benedict Arnold was a war hero.

For years McCain has done his best to thwart border control and to discourage assimilation. Just click this link  and see the many articles written about McCain at VDARE.COM. None of them positive. They started with  Señor McCain, by Peter Brimelow, February 15, 2000, just after VDARE.com was founded, and continue up to McCain Means: Amnesty, Taxes, Liberal Judges, First Amendment Erosion, Free Trade Dogma, War, By Pat  Buchanan, January 24, 2008, with lots of detail in between.

McCain has a horrible record on immigration. Americans for Better Immigration give him a grade of D  (for both his Career grade and Recent grade).

For years McCain has supported bilingual education. He opposed Proposition 200 in Arizona.

But it’s not just McCain’s bad voting record, and his negative leadership in promoting McCain-Kennedy and other horrible amnesty bills in recent years (which were all thankfully defeated). It’s not just the man’s rude intolerance to those who don’t agree with him. It’s McCain’s attitude, his outlook, his eagerness to put foreigners ahead of Americans. 

A little exchange on the O’Reilly show in 2001 sums up this attitude:

O'REILLY: In Arizona you have the highest dropout rate in the country, all right? -- You have an educational system in dire trouble. You have about a million arrests on the border, the jails are overflowing. Now, you've got to put the American people ahead of the Mexican people because this is the USA, am I wrong? (Loud applause, cheers and whistles from audience)

MCCAIN: Well, Bill there are many Hispanic citizens of my state of Arizona who are proud of their culture and their heritage, and I'm not sure they would exactly agree with you.

So in answer to O’Reilly’s question: McCain doesn’t think U.S. citizens should have the preference over foreigners in U.S. territory.

Remember those massive illegal alien marches in 2006? John McCain supported them. In a visit to Little Rock, Arkansas, Mike Huckabee’s stomping ground, McCain visited the folks at ¡Hola! Arkansas, a Hispanic newspaper, and told them

"I hope that the marches motivate us to move ahead with the legislation... I believe that these demonstrations—that any citizen [sic] has a right to demonstrate peacefully—is one of our fundamental rights in America that has a beneficial effect and that gives us a sense of urgency to approve the final legislation."

Well thanks for standing up for the rule of law there John.

Recently, McCain has altered his tune a little. He’s trying to convince voters he will secure the border. But it’s not convincing to anybody who knows John McCain’s record.

On his campaign website McCain has the gall to claim that

"I have always believed that our border must be secure and that the federal government has utterly failed in its responsibility to ensure that it is secure. If we have learned anything from the recent immigration debate, it is that Americans have little trust that their government will honor a pledge to do the things necessary to make the border secure."

Well, that’s either a big lie or a major lapse of memory (you decide). Back in 2003 John McCain told Tim Russert that "…we cannot protect our own borders".

James Fulford has put together several contradictory McCain quotes, you can see them here .

For more evidence of where McCain’s heart is: the candidate selected Juan Hernandez (of whom I did a profile on VDARE.COM in 2002) as his campaign’s "Hispanic Outreach Director."

Who is Juan Hernandez and why is it significant that John McCain picked him to be his "Hispanic Outreach Director"?

Juan Hernandez is more than your average garden variety Open Borders booster. Hernandez is a dual (U.S.-Mexican) citizen, born in Fort Worth, Texas. It was Hernandez who, in 1996, introduced George W. Bush and Vicente Fox. (See photo of the threesome here).

In the Mexican administration of Vicente Fox, Hernandez served as head of Fox’s Presidential Office for Mexicans Abroad. In that capacity, Hernandez was a tireless advocate for amnesty, driver’s licenses for illegal aliens, and most importantly, the non-assimilation of Mexican immigrants and the Mexicanization of the U.S.

This was not any sort of secret conspiracy, Hernandez spoke openly on U.S. television about wanting Mexican-Americans up to the 7th generation to "think Mexico first", He told Tom Tancredo that the U.S. and Mexico are not two countries but "just a region". (For a greatest hits anthology of Juan Hernandez soundbites, click here .)

Hernandez is no longer in the Mexican government. He now lives in the U.S.—where he can do more even damage. Hernandez continues to agitate for amnesty, as a senior fellow in the Reform Institute, in his own HispanA organization, and as a Hispanic Evangelical activist for amnesty .

Juan Hernandez now presents himself as an American. In a recent article on his own website he wrote "Most Americans, including myself..." And he joined forces with Dick Morris to write a book called  The New American Pioneers: Why Are We Afraid of Mexican Immigrants?

But notwithstanding all that, with a little research I easily discovered that Hernandez is still active in Mexican politics. He serves on the U.S. Council of the PAN the National Action Party, which recently held its convention in Los Angeles.

As for Hernandez’ blatant politicized exploitation of dual citizenship, Mark Krikorian pointed out that

"Before Earl Warren started making up emanations and penumbras of the Constitution (in this instance, the case of Afroyim v. Rusk in 1967), Hernandez would have been stripped of his American citizenship for having committed an ‘expatriating act,’ specifically ‘accepting, serving in, or performing the duties of any office, post, or employment under the government of a foreign state or a political subdivision thereof’."

But nowadays, it’s almost impossible to "expatriate" yourself. Obviously, Hernandez isn’t worried about it.

The Reform Institute, of which Hernandez is a senior Fellow, was founded by John McCain along with Bob Kerrey. It receives funding from George Soros. Officially, McCain left the Institute in 2005, so maybe that’s his excuse (though not a very good one) for supposedly not knowing about Hernandez’ more objectionable ideas and activities.

The good news is the word is out. Lately the Internet has been buzzing with the facts about Hernandez’s past activities. Now if we could just get McCain’s opponents to start hammering him on the issue…

At a campaign appearance, a lady in the audience asked McCain about Hernandez (watch here ). McCain claimed to have "no idea" about Hernandez’ controversial views.

But the truth is Juan Hernandez’ views are a perfect fit for McCain.

The plain fact is that John McCain has an unmistakable deep-seated animus against the traditional American nation. Listen to what he said in 2005 in a speech at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner:

"We are a nation of many races, many religious faiths, many points of origin. But our one shared faith is the belief that a nation conceived in an idea, in liberty, will prove stronger, more enduring, and better than any nation ordered to exalt the few at the expense of the many or made from a common race or culture or to preserve traditions that have no greater attribute than longevity."

McCain is saying that the U.S. has no common culture, it’s a good thing it doesn’t, that a nation without a culture is stronger and more enduring.

So McCain doesn’t think that culture, ethnicity or race are in any way relevant?

Well, that depends on what race or culture he’s talking about. In 2006, in a speech to the Congressional Hispanic Leadership Institute, John McCain, speaking of the Hispanic Culture, put a very different spin on things:

"This [is] one of the defining moments in American history that really does define what kind of nation we are. If there was ever such a thing as a noble cause, it is the one we are embarked on now. Anyone who is afraid that somehow our culture will be anything but enriched by fresh blood and culture, in my view, has a distorted view of history and has a pessimistic view of our future."

So, John McCain doesn’t think the U.S. has a culture, or needs a culture. But he does praise Hispanic "blood and culture" which is enriching "our culture" (the American culture he doesn’t care about).

And McCain says the Hispanicization or Mexicanization of the U.S.A. is "a noble cause" which makes this is a "defining moment in American history".

So there you have it. John McCain wants the U.S. to be Mexicanized. In that light, all his past actions, and his current associations, make perfect sense.

Why is McCain like this? Why is he so alienated from the historic American nation?

Is it because he’s from a full-time military family, in which they moved around so much they were in effect, rootless, and the military was their culture?

Is it a bad result of his POW experience?

Is it because he lived in Arizona and thought open borders was the way to win the Hispanic Vote?

Is it because he’s considered a "maverick" and mistakenly believes that mavericks support open borders? (Nowadays, real mavericks oppose open borders!)

Is it just because he thought it was the cool thing to do?

Or is he on somebody’s payroll? (By the way, a major financial supporter of the McCain campaign is Republican billionaire Jerry Perenchio, former CEO of Univision, the Spanish-language television network in the U.S.)

Is it something else, or some kind of combination of all or some of the above?

I don't know. You could psychoanalyze these guys all day and not get anywhere.

I just know that he is the way he is, and that's what we've got to deal with.

Given John McCain’s record, his associations, and his anti-American attitude, I don’t see how any informed citizen could vote for the guy. That’s not an (un)endorsement, it’s just my analysis.

But what American patriot could vote for such a man?

American citizen Allan Wall ( email him) resides in Mexico, with a legal permit issued him by the Mexican government. Allan recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq with the Texas Army National Guard. His VDARE.COM articles are archived here; his FRONTPAGEMAG.COM articles are archived here his "Dispatches from Iraq" are archived here his website is here.