No Joy For The GOP - And It May Get Worse
02/06/2008
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There's no joy in the conservative/ Republican MSM/ blogosphere after Super Tuesday. The GOP is obviously profoundly divided, with little enthusiasm and the marked tendency to break along quarrelling tribal lines (Huckabee gets Southerners, Romney gets the Mormon-tinged Intermountain West) that I've noted before. American political parties are very hard to kill off, but the vital signs here are unmistakably not great. Thanks a lot, Dubya.

This matters, because even VDARE.COM's Democrats are deeply pessimistic that their party will embrace patriotic immigration reform.

It's possible, of course, that the GOP nominee may have learned from his experience in the primaries how powerful the immigration issue is, and exploit it in the general election. McCain is probably too pig-headed, but Huckabee has shown himself remarkably adaptable.

And it's also true that a McCain-Clinton race is a perfect foil for Ron Paul, if he does make his rumored Third Party run - and is not scared off the immigration issue by the political correctness obviously endemic in the libertarian Establishment.

You have to marvel at the role luck plays in politics. Why didn't two War On Terror types (McCain and Giuliani) take each other out rather than two Amnesty opponents (Romney and Huckabee)? (Why, for that matter, did Bush and not Reagan have political sons?)

And you have to acknowledge that the MSM's ability to create celebrity candidates is still a force. But the internet has not yet begun to fight.

I stick with my conclusion yesterday: the big news is that immigration is showing up as an issue in opinion polls. Reluctantly, but increasingly, politicians will have to navigate around it. Probably in the end a new party will arise to deal with it.

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