I just received the latest Limbaugh Letter, and within it is Rush's interview with former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. I'm going to stretch the "fair use" doctrine to the limits by posting some rather large chunks of the text, because it is dynamite!
Speaker Gingrich:
I'll never forget -- about 1986, a group of 10 or 12 of us who were hard-charging, younger conservatives went down to the White House to gripe at President Reagan. He got us in the Cabinet room, and we all told him how things weren't going fast enough, he wasn't doing enough, things weren't changing enough. He listened to us patiently for about an hour. I knew we'd probably gone a little bit too far when at one point he said, "Well, gee, maybe I need to get shot again." And we all backed off and heartily said, "No, no! We love you. This is not about you." Then on the way out of the room, he reached over and put his hand on my shoulder. When any President puts his hand on your shoulder, you at least pay attention, but when it's Ronald Reagan, you really had the sense that history was touching you. He said, "You know, it took us 50 years to get into this mess. And I'm only going to do the first eight getting out. Maybe you guys have to do some heavy lifting after I leave."
In some ways, that was the beginning of planting the seed of the Contract with America. The Reagan wave hit and peaked in '82, '83, and then the Contract's wave peaked by August, September of '97. I think you've got to think in terms of these kinds of waves of change. To his credit, while you and I might fault the implementation, President Bush certainly tried to focus on Social Security coming off the election, to create a similar building-block kind of wave of change.
Part of the reason the subtitle of Winning the Future is "A 21st Century Contract with America" is that we need to think about what's the next big wave. What are the six or seven things which would both change Washington dramatically and be so popular with the American people that they would impose it on the politicians? Remember, by the time we passed welfare reform, 92 percent of the people according to The New York Times favored welfare reform, including 88 percent of the people on welfare. And we split the Democratic Party evenly, 101 to 101, because in the end, there were just too many Democrats who couldn't go home having voted no.
So I would say to the people who want to help design the next phase: Can we create a similar wave where people say, "Yeah, that's what I want." And you know that if you win it, you've won enough. Take welfare reform, for example. Sixty percent of the people on welfare went to school or work. We truly did change that. It was not just a temporary event. We got three or four big things done, then the wave ran out of energy. Probably what we've got to do is go back to the country and create another wave.
I cannot stress enough how correct Newt is here. Reagan did more in the first two years of his first term than in the rest of his six years, because he started off with a wave. The GOP takeover of Congress achieved a lot in the first two years, then stalled as the wave went flat. President George W. Bush came in on a lull, then with the post 9/11 wave achieved tremendous things with tax cuts and Iraq. But now Bush's wave has crested. There is a great big neap tide right now, and the next politician or group to get a wave started will probably run away with the 2008 election cycle.
What will that wave be?
I have been saying for some time now that the issue to launch the career of our next President will be immigration and border control. I can sense a groundswell of discontent, from people of both major parties, for the status quo; yet, the political leaders of both major parties continue to tow the same tired old line. They care more about satisfying illegal aliens and the crooks who hire them than national security or American culture. Even President Bush, whom I admire greatly and would gladly re-elect if the law allowed, is way out in left-field on immigration.
We need to tighten the borders. We need to deport the illegals. We need to keep track of the legal visitors. We need to integrate immigrants into our society by teaching them English. When in Rome, do as the Romans do, remember? And we need to have a process for bringing in immigrants to fill important jobs -- but we need to be able to screen them carefully, with a mechanism to identify and remove threats.
I'm not alone in thinking this. I see it repeated on virtually every conservative website. And even quite a few liberals are saying the same thing. I see more people cheering on the Minuteman Project than attacking it -- and yet, even our own conservative President is calling them vigilantes.
Most politicians, and all the mainstream media, are simply out of touch with middle America on this all-important issue; the shrewdest politicians will sense the waters rising and the next wave approaching.
What does it mean when Hillary Clinton is coming out as tougher on immigration than most Republicans?
Enter Newt:
I have a fairly comprehensive position on immigration and the border. I think the Party should absolutely adopt a comprehensive position. The Director of Central Intelligence, Porter Goss, testified to the Congress months ago that he fully expects a nuclear weapon to be driven across the border. Now, the 9/11 Commission spent all this effort asking, "Why weren't we warned? Why didn't we pay attention?" Yet here you have the Director of Central Intelligence saying, "My greatest fear is a nuclear weapon going off in an American city because it was driven across the border." Now, that strikes me as something that should have been page one of every newspaper. It should have been the lead editorial for a week. And what is our plan to secure the border?
I spell out a very simple premise. While I am totally in favor of legal immigration, which has made this a much better, healthier, and wealthier country, we have an absolute national security obligation to secure our borders, including the coasts. First, there has to be a serious professional, methodical plan to do that.
Two, to make that plan work, in my judgment, you have to have a green-card program for guest workers, who will give you an iris scan or a thumb-print, who will agree to obey the law and pay taxes, and who understand that you will deport them within 72 to 96 hours if they break the law. You have to have some kind of ability to ventilate the economic pressure, but to keep it legal and to keep it economic.
Three, you've got to change our deportation laws so that when people are here illegally, they can be gone in 72 to 96 hours. There's no ground rule that says if you break the law to get inside our system, you are then protected within our system.
Four, everybody who is here illegally has to go home and apply for the green card. You can't have people start their career working in America by breaking the law and getting away with it. It sends a terrible signal to everybody waiting at home, obeying the law, who has applied for a visa.
Finally, I am for American citizenship for first-generation immigrants who can pass the test in American history in English. We must have an absolute commitment to being a country that continues to teach American civilization, and part of that civilization is to have a common language and culture.
Newt Gingrich has spelled out in a few short paragraphs exactly what more and more Americans are beginning to feel.
The next big wave will be immigration and border control. The first credible candidate for the White House in 2008 to embrace Newt's premise is going to win his or her party's nomination in a landslide and ride the wave into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. At this moment, the only democRat who is even close is Hillary Clinton, and she is still light years away. On the GOP side, none of the major candidates are even in the same quadrant of the galaxy. The only name I can think of other than Newt is Congressman Tancredo -- and outside of his district, probably only one or two percent of the populace could even name him.
I can't think of the last President to be elected after a career in the House of Representatives. Presidents start out as Governors, or Vice-Presidents, or 5 Star Generals who won major wars. A handful had been long-term Senators. But Presidents simply don't come out of the House, not unless they get some other experience first. (update: great info here!)
Well, I'll tell you right now: if Newt Gingrich starts campaigning for the White House making immigration and border control his top issue, he will be our next President, the first in living memory to come from the House. And even a nobody Congressman like Tancredo, if he decides to run with this as his top issue, will find himself with the power to completely shift the dynamics of the primaries.
Howard Dean was the first serious democRat to run against Bush on an anti-war platform: even though he never came in close to the top of a single primary, he found the issue that motivated his party's base. Subsequently, every other democRat except for Joe Lieberman adopted the anti-war theme. Lieberman, of course, was the one serious candidate who did worse in the primaries than Howard Dean. Tancredo may not know it yet, but come primary season, he will have the power to get all the other candidates talking about immigration and borders -- if Newt Gingrich doesn't beat him to it.
I can't help but keep thinking of the line "She turned me into a NEWT!"
Posted by: Sailor Republica | Thursday, 14 July 2005 at 12:58 PM