Let Them In_ The Case for Open Borders - Jason L. Riley [61]
SAY ANYTHING
With Bush still in office, and Democrats sympathetic to his position running Congress, there was a possibility of moving forward on the issue. But it didn’t happen, in large part because Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham were having none of it. Nor were Hugh Hewitt, Dennis Prager, Mike Gallagher, Glenn Beck, Bill Bennett, Michael Savage, and other popular radio personalities with millions of listeners. Some of us watched in disbelief as principled conservatives morphed into reactionary populists. These profiles in courage used immigration to declare their independence from Bush at a time when he was highly unpopular. Gee, how brave.
Limbaugh and Bennett, who normally worship at the political altar of pro-immigrant Ronald Reagan, were instead urging Republicans to follow in the footsteps of Pete Wilson. Ingraham regularly denounced the Republican “elites” supporting comprehensive immigration reform at the supposed expense of America’s working class. Ingraham, self-styled enemy of “elites,” is a Connecticut-bred, Ivy League-educated, former Supreme Court law clerk. But on immigration, she sounded like Sally Field in Norma Rae.
And then there were the conservative talkers who took cues from Ann Coulter and simply relished in stoking racial and ethnic divisions. Beck described Mexican illegals as either “terrorists,” or people who “can’t make a living in their own dirtbag country.” Michael Savage repeatedly called on listeners to “burn the Mexican flag” in opposition to immigrants. “Go out in the street and show you’re a man, burn ten Mexican flags,” he said. “Put one in a window upside down and tell them to go back where they came from.”
Michael Medved, one of the few pro-immigrant conservatives on the air, told me, “The behavior of people on talk radio has been so despicable and so irresponsible that it really makes me question what passes for the conservative movement today.” Medved said many of these conservative shock jocks don’t really believe what they’re saying and that some—like Limbaugh, Hannity, and Prager—had adopted a much more moderate tone on immigration in the past. While Medved personally rejects the populist allure of restrictionism, he certainly understands the temptation. “You can light up the phone lines instantly with immigrant-bashing,” said Medved. “You get callers right away.” Medved’s worried, however, that there will be a political price to pay on the right at some point in the future. “It’s a very, very sick underbelly of American conservatism, and unless we confront it and make it clear that it has no place in the Republican Party, we are going to go the way of the Know-Nothings.”
Fred Barnes, a veteran conservative journalist at FOX News and The Weekly Standard, also credits the talk radio drum beat with helping to kill immigration reform last year. “The ability of talk radio to produce noise on the right when they agree is remarkable,” said Barnes. “They can generate mail. They can generate phone calls.” Barnes, too, thinks there will be repercussions. “The defeat [of the Senate bill] will have lasting damage for the simple reason that Hispanics were paying attention to it. For some reason opponents of immigration don’t think they are. But my impression is that immigrants say, ‘We’re either welcome or we’re not.’ And the average person doesn’t distinguish between Bush and the party.”
The base was feeling blue, and with immigration talk radio hosts found an issue where the public agreed with them. “But sometimes political issues get out of hand emotionally, and this one did,” says Barnes. “You couldn’t reason with these people. Conservatives got themselves into a position where you couldn’t talk