Immigration will break the right

"It's simply impossible for any political party to win if it has to choose between money and votes." Thomas F. Schaller - Salon

David Seaton's News Links

Any left wing analysis going way back into the 19th century would tell you that the top-hatted, cigar chomping, cartoon capitalist uses xenophobia to divide and manipulate the working class: playing on and encouraging their nativist sentiments in order to better exploit them. I imagine any little Cuban "young pioneer" in Havana learns that before he finishes third grade.

With globalization all that has been turned on its head. The money wants all the cheap immigrant labor it can get and all the outsourcing all over the world it needs to provide it with what Marx called the "huge reservoir of surplus workers"... and it doesn't want its political operators to turn off the supply. The natural tactic is to talk xenophobic, but continue to liberalize. This is what Sarkozy seems have done to win the Le Pen votes, but if he doesn't throw them some red meat soon, they will know they've been had and turn on him.

I think that the contradiction between the cosmopolitan money and the xenophobic base will inevitably split the right in Europe and lead to a growth of neo-fascist parties and in America the issue may very well hamstring the Republicans... Marx would probably say that they would have to start a war to resolve the contradiction. Iran anyone? Stay tuned. DS

Could immigration really be the issue that finally cracks the Republican base? - Salon
Abstract: For the past three decades, Republicans have carefully sidestepped the kinds of issues that could divide a party's followers from its Beltway elites -- and expertly deployed the same wedge issues against the Democrats. Now the party's 2008 front-runners are in trouble, one of Karl Rove's long-term strategic goals is in doubt, and the foot soldiers are close to open revolt, all thanks to one uniquely radioactive wedge issue. Could Limbaugh's warning about a great unraveling be true? "The Republican strategy on immigration has been one of the great failures of modern politics," says Simon Rosenberg, president of the New Democrat Network, which has organized a systematic outreach campaign to Hispanic voters. "What's going on in the Republican Party is a debate between the strategists who want to win and a part of their base that is extremely xenophobic." Immigration is especially perilous for the GOP because it is what might be called a "double-edged" wedge issue. It not only pits the party's base against a large and quickly growing pool of potential new Republicans -- 41 million Hispanics -- but also pits two key parts of the existing base against each other. The Wall Street wing of the GOP, which finances the party, wants to keep open the spigot of pliant and cheap Spanish-speaking labor. It finds itself opposed by much of the Main Street wing, which provides millions of crucial primary and general election votes and would like to build a fence along the Mexican border as high as Lou Dobbs' ratings or the pitch of Pat Buchanan's voice. And it's simply impossible for any political party to win if it has to choose between money and votes. READ IT ALL

Losing it

"You run this town because people think you run it."
Miller's Crossing - quoted by Tony Karon in Haaretz

David Seaton's News Links
When we talk about the war in in Iraq being a disaster, we are talking about a lot more than the terrible suffering of the human beings directly involved, we are talking about the crumbling of a system in which we are all stakeholders. Make no mistake: this massive loss of international influence will directly affect the average American's wallet. He or she is going to be sore as hell. DS

Zakaria: Preview of a Post-U.S. World - Newsweek
Abstract: Two things were missing from this year's world Economic Forum at Davos: snow (which arrived eventually) and America-bashing (which did not). There were, of course, lots of American businessmen, activists and intellectuals filling the panels and halls of the conference. There were even a few senior American officials—though no star speaker. But, for the first time in my memory, America was somewhat peripheral. There were few demands, pleas, complaints or tantrums directed at the United States. In this small but significant global cocoon, people—for the moment at least—seemed to be moving beyond America. "There has always been a talk by a senior American official as one of the centerpieces of the Forum," said a European who has advised the Forum for many years—and who asked to remain anonymous because of his relations with U.S. officials. "And in the past, people eagerly anticipated who that would be—Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice. This year, almost no one inquired. We expected disappointment. But there was none. No one even noticed."(...) The ball for every problem is in everybody's court, which means that it is in nobody's court. The problem is that this free ride probably can't last forever. The global system—economic, political, social—is not self-managing. Global economic growth has been a fantastic boon, but it produces stresses and strains that have to be handled. Without some coordination, or first mover—or, dare one say it, leader—such management is more difficult. The world today bears some resemblance to the 1920s, when a newly globalized economy was booming, and science and technological change were utterly transforming life. (Think of the high-tech of the time—electricity, radio, movies and cars, among other recent inventions.) But with Britain declining and America isolationist, that was truly a world without political direction. Eventually protectionism, nationalism, xenophobia and war engulfed it. In a provocative essay in Foreign Policy three years ago, the British historian Niall Ferguson speculated that the end of American hegemony might not fuel an orderly shift to a multipolar system but a descent into a world of highly fragmented powers, with no one exercising any global leadership. He called this "apolarity." "Apolarity could turn out to mean an anarchic new Dark Age," Ferguson wrote, "an era of waning empires and religious fanaticism, of economic plunder and pillage in the world's forgotten regions, of economic stagnation, and civilization's retreat into a few fortified enclaves." That might be a little farfetched. But for those who have been fondly waiting for the waning of American dominance—be careful what you wish for. READ IT ALL