The GOP's Amnesty Caucus Raises the White Flag

On Monday, Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Jeff Flake and Marco Rubio emerged with an offer of a Republican surrender [1] to Barack Obama.

We will accept amnesty for 11 million illegal aliens, said the four, but you must get serious about securing the border [2] against yet another invasion. Only after an independent commission [3] agrees the border has been secured will the 11 million be given green cards and put on a path to citizenship.

The next day in Las Vegas [4], Obama, reveling in victory, instructed [5] the four waving their white flags that the defeated do not dictate terms.

Get cracking on comprehensive reform now, Obama instructed Marco and John, or I send my own bill to the Hill, granting amnesty to every illegal alien, with no preconditions. Putting the 11 million illegal aliens on a path to U.S. citizenship should begin not after the border is better secured, but the day the bill is signed.

In a pointed lecture to Rubio, the Great Hispanic Hope [6] of the GOP, Obama said, "We have done more on border security in the last four years than we have done in the previous 20."

A graduate [7] of the Saul Alinsky school, Obama can smell the defeatism in the Republican Party. And he knows how to treat supplicants begging for a fig leaf to cover the nakedness of their capitulation.

But why are the Republicans surrendering their "no amnesty" stand, which has been party policy since America rallied to the GOP's opposition to amnesty in 2007, when a national grass-roots uprising routed McCain, Teddy Kennedy, Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush himself?

McCain fears the future. We got 27 percent [8] of the Hispanic vote [9] in 2012, and the reason is our position on illegal aliens, he argues. Until we get this behind us, we will never again get the 40 percent of the vote Bush got. Either we capitulate to Obama and La Raza [10], or we are doomed.

Why is McCain wrong?

He is wrong on principle. Should a majority of women tell pollsters they are against overturning Roe v. Wade, does the party abandon its pro-life stand and cease calling [11] for Supreme Court justices who might overturn Roe?

What kind of party is that? What kind of people do that?

Who thought in 2007 we could rout the establishment [12] of both parties? [13]

Washington is not invincible. But you cannot rally the people if you are not prepared to lead and fight.

Republican capitulation on amnesty is not going to win Hispanic votes [14], but it will demoralize the party base [15]. McCain, the amnesty champion today and in 2007, [16] got 31 percent of the Hispanic vote against Obama.

Why is he an expert on what the party should do?

When those 11 million illegals have completed their path to citizenship and become voters, why should they, or the millions more family members they will have brought in by then, vote for the GOP? Hispanics are not small-government people. They believe in and benefit disproportionately from Big Government.

Some 53 percent of Hispanic children are born out of wedlock, and 52 percent of Hispanic families are headed by single women.

Big Government provides their kids with Head Start before school, free K-through-12 schooling, Pell Grants and student loans for college, and two or three free meals a day at school for the kids.

Big Government provides food stamps [17], welfare for mom [18] and earned income tax credit checks should she work. Big Government subsidizes her housing and provides free health care for the family through Medicaid [19].

A Pew Hispanic poll found that by 3-to-1, Hispanics would favor a big government [20] with more services to a small government with fewer services.

Why would these folks vote for a Republican Party that promises to downsize the Big Government upon which they depend for sustenance, security and survival? Why would they vote for a party that is going to cut capital gains, income and inheritance taxes they don't pay?

The 11 million illegals, who came with nothing [21], are poorer [22] than the Hispanics who are already citizens.

When we make citizens of them and the family members they bring in, our welfare state will explode and the social safety net will sag under the weight of millions of new beneficiaries.

Republicans win between 27 and 40 percent of the Hispanic vote. Add 10 million new Hispanic voters, and Democrats will realize a net gain of 2 to 4 million new voters.

There goes the Southwest [23], and there goes the presidency, forever. [24]

Amnesty would be the greatest victory for mass lawbreaking in U.S. history. It would reward those who broke our laws and make fools of those who waited in line back home to come to America.

And this is about more than economics. It is about our sovereignty, our security, our national culture and our national identity.

This fight is not yet lost, and even should we lose, is it not better to go down fighting than to ask for terms from Barack Obama?

 Patrick J. Buchanan [25] needs no introduction [26] to VDARE.COM readers; his books State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America [27],  and  Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? [28]  are available from Amazon.com