Standoff, page 12
Gun rights advocates seemed to be in hiding. A few days after the shooting, NBC News invited thirty-one senators with “A” ratings from the NRA to appear on Meet the Press. Not one accepted. Yet despite public outrage, gun control legislation was difficult to pass. Once again, the problem was not public opinion. The public was supportive of measures such as bans on semiautomatic handguns (favored by 52 percent in the Washington Post–ABC News poll taken just after the Connecticut massacre) and on high-capacity ammunition clips (favored by 59 percent).
As in the past, intensity had shifted following a sensational incidence of gun violence. Gun control supporters started issuing threats: you’d better support new gun control measures, or else you’ll pay a price. But that kind of anger is hard to sustain. Politicians worried: If I support new gun controls, it may be popular right now, but will I pay a price two years from now when only gun owners vote the issue?
“These events are happening more frequently,” Connecticut Independent senator Joseph Lieberman said. “I worry that if we don’t take a thoughtful look at them, we’re going to lose the pain, the hurt, and the anger that we have now.”
Intensity is not the only problem. In 2013 a new problem emerged: insularity. More and more legislators represented safely partisan districts. According to statistician Nate Silver, the percentage of safe districts doubled from twenty-eight in 1992 to fifty-six in 2012.3 Republicans from safe districts didn’t face serious competition from a Democrat. The threat they faced was from a Republican primary challenger.
In 2014, according to the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago, Republicans were twice as likely as Democrats to have a gun in the household (50 percent for Republicans; 25 for Democrats).4 That difference has been widening since the 1970s. Gun ownership declined among Democrats as the party lost many of its rural and conservative supporters. The gun culture has roots in the frontier mentality: we’re out here on our own, and we rely on guns to protect ourselves and our families.
Especially if the government fails to protect its citizens. A Republican congressman from Texas told the Financial Times that he wished the principal of Sandy Hook Elementary had been armed. “I wish to God she’d had an M4 in her office, locked up, so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out . . . and takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids.”
Foreigners can never quite understand why Americans are so attached to their guns. Many gun rights supporters see guns as the ultimate defense against tyrannical authority. The question came up when I appeared on an Australian television show called Planet America, a title that captures the alien nature of the United States to non-Americans. I explained that guns represent individual freedom—something Americans value more than any other people in the world. If you are forced to give up your gun, you become less free.
I have been to gun shows and talked to gun owners. Often they defend gun ownership as the ultimate guarantee of individual rights. Some have told me, “If Jews in Europe had had guns, there would have been no Holocaust.” And “If blacks in the South had had guns, there would have been no slavery.” That, I explained to my Australian hosts, is a uniquely American mentality.
Following the shooting at an Oregon community college that took nine lives as well as the life of the shooter in October 2015, Obama urged Americans who want to see stronger gun laws to become single-issue voters. “Here’s what you need to do,” he said. “You have to make sure that anybody that you are voting for is on the right side of this issue.” And if they oppose new gun laws? “Even if they’re great on other stuff, you’ve got to vote against them.” Gun rights activists do that. For supporters of gun control, however, guns are not usually the sole voting issue.
In fact, Obama quickly undermined his appeal when he compared gun laws to the conservative effort to shut down the federal government unless Planned Parenthood was defunded. “You can’t have an issue like that potentially wreck the entire US economy, any more than I should hold the entire US budget hostage to my desire to do something about gun violence,” he said. “That would be irresponsible of me.” Gun rights activists don’t care about being “irresponsible.” They care about winning.
Following the Aurora, Colorado, shooting in 2012, in which twelve people in a movie audience were killed and seventy others injured, Sarah Palin said, “Restricting more of America’s freedoms when it comes to self-defense isn’t the answer. Not when you consider what the reality is. Bad guys don’t follow laws.” A radio commentator in Washington, DC, denounced the shootings as outrageous and unconscionable but called them “the price we pay for freedom” in the United States.
Immigration
In the 1920s, Republicans made a catastrophic error by writing off the immigrant vote. Beginning in 1928 with the Democrats’ nomination of Al Smith, the first Roman Catholic candidate for president, immigrants and their descendants became the core of the New Deal Democratic majority that dominated American politics for nearly fifty years. A century later, Republicans may be making the same mistake again.
The controversy started before Donald Trump. During the 2012 Republican primaries, Mitt Romney said he would veto the proposed DREAM Act (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) that would allow illegal immigrants brought to the United States as children to become citizens. Romney criticized the Texas law that permitted some undocumented students to pay lower in-state college tuition. He talked about making life so difficult for illegal immigrants that they would “self-deport.” He said that Arizona’s tough immigration law could be a model for the nation.
The rapid growth in the nation’s Latino population can mean two different things politically. In the long run, it is likely to mean more Democratic voters, as more Latinos become citizens, register, and vote. In the short run, it has meant a backlash against illegal immigrants. Which reaction predominates—backlash or empowerment—depends on what part of the country you consider.
Two groups of states have had higher-than-average Latino population growth. One includes states in the interior West, such as Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado. Those states have long had large Latino populations (between 21 percent and 30 percent). All three voted Republican in 2004. Latino voting power helped tilt two of them into the Democratic column in the next three elections. The third, Arizona, voted Republican in 2008, 2012, and 2016 but the margin narrowed. “Immigrants have been in those states for a long time,” Brookings Institution demographer William Frey said. “The illegal percentage of those immigrants is somewhat smaller, and people are more accustomed to having immigrants work with them, see them on the streets, see them in the stores.”
Other states also experienced higher than average Latino population growth. In Georgia, the Latino population nearly doubled in the first decade of the twenty-first century. The state started out with a very small Latino population (5 percent in 2000). It was up to 9 percent in 2010—rapid growth, but still far below the share in western states.
Frey estimated that states where the influx of Latinos was a recent phenomenon included a higher proportion of illegal immigrants. “Many of them are probably the least likely to be able to assimilate quickly into American life,” he said. Those states were “seeing people who are disproportionately illegal, disproportionately less fluent in English, and more likely to not be very well educated.”
In those states, Latino empowerment is still a long way off. Some midwestern states such as Ohio and Iowa are closely balanced between Democratic and Republican voters, so even a small Latino vote could tip them into the Democratic column. But those are also states where anti–illegal immigration backlash is strong. “In those states, I think that new immigration . . . will be a tough sell for that population and may not go down very well,” Frey said. Indeed, Ohio and Iowa both voted for Donald Trump.
Polls since 2006 have shown consistently that most Americans accept a path to legalization and eventual citizenship for illegal immigrants once a series of requirements has been met. In an October 2015 CBS News–New York Times poll, 58 percent of Americans said illegal immigrants should be allowed to stay in the United States and apply for citizenship. Only 26 percent said illegal immigrants should be required to leave. In March 2016, after Donald Trump had become the Republican front-runner, the percentage who supported deporting all illegal immigrants had grown to 36 percent, according to an ABC News–Washington Post poll; 61 percent continued to oppose mass deportation.5
Does that mean the public supports amnesty? “It is not amnesty,” said the late Pennsylvania senator Arlen Specter, the then-Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, “because the undocumented aliens will have to pay a fine, they will have to pay back taxes, they will undergo a thorough background investigation, they will have to learn English, they will have to work for six years, and they will have to earn the status of staying in the country and moving toward citizenship.”
The public’s view of illegal immigration seems to be, if they’ve been here for a while and can demonstrate that they are hardworking and law abiding, let them stay. On that issue, President George W. Bush parted company with his conservative base. “I believe that illegal immigrants who have roots in our country and want to stay should have to pay a meaningful penalty for breaking the law, pay their taxes, learn English, and work in a job for a number of years. People who meet these conditions should be able to apply for citizenship,” he said in 2006.
The conservatives’ response: “Nuts.” As Representative Cliff Stearns of Florida replied, “A path to citizenship like this is an egregious slap in the face to all those immigrants who sacrificed and respected our laws and entered legally.”
Many Democrats supported President Bush on immigration. But they saw him making no progress in convincing the Republican base. As Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid put it in 2006, “I hope the president will acknowledge how wrong the House Republican approach is to this. They are still talking the same way, Mr. President. They haven’t backed down.”
In a 2012 Republican debate, Romney said, “The answer is self-deportation, which is [that] people decide that they can do better by going home because they can’t find work here because they don’t have legal documentation.” He added, “We’re not going to round people up.”
But rounding up people is exactly what some conservatives want to do. Arizona senator John McCain told a town hall in Iowa in 2007, “If you think that you can round up twelve million people and put them in jail, that’s fine. I’d be curious where you’d build all those institutions to hold them.”
“Arizona!” a voice from the audience called out.
“Arizona,” McCain replied. “Okay, thanks. I am not amused.”
Members of Congress face strong pressure on the immigration issue—from workers who fear job losses, from Latino voters whom both parties are trying to court, from citizen activists outraged by the idea of amnesty, from business and farm groups who want more low-wage workers, and from labor, civil rights, and religious groups that defend immigrant rights. Nevertheless, a bipartisan Senate compromise on immigration reform supported by President Bush collapsed in 2007 when Republicans voted against it, 38 to 7. The senators were getting an earful from their constituents. Arizona Republican senator Jon Kyl said, “I have learned some new words from some of my constituents.” The angry response came as a shock to many Republicans. Conservative radio talk show host Bill Bennett observed, “We’ve talked to a number of Republican senators, and they confessed to being surprised by the reaction.”
What made the difference was intensity. Opponents of immigration reform feel much more strongly about the issue than supporters do. Like gun owners, they vote the issue. In a CNN poll, nearly 80 percent of Americans said they supported a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who have been in the United States for a number of years, have a job, and pay back taxes. But those who opposed that policy were more intensely motivated: 47 percent of those who opposed a path to citizenship called the issue extremely important, while only 28 percent of supporters felt strongly about it.
As noted, the gun issue becomes two-sided in the immediate aftermath of a sensational incident of gun violence. Do we ever see intensity rise among advocates of immigration reform? We did in 2006, when hundreds of thousands of Latino protesters appeared on the streets all over the country. The protests were driven not by politicians and political activists but by grassroots forces—union and church leaders, Spanish-language radio hosts, plus a new political force: Latino students text-messaging one another to spread the news about school walkouts. Latinos, immigrants, and their sympathizers took to the streets to protest what they regarded as measures that would scapegoat immigrants and minorities.
Supporters of tough anti–illegal immigration measures warned that the protests would backfire. “When John Q. Citizen looked out on the streets and saw hundreds of thousands of people waving Mexican flags and demanding amnesty, I don’t think that played well in Peoria,” said Representative Tom Tancredo, a Colorado Republican. That may have been true. But the street protests also gave political voice to a coalition that wants the issue dealt with in a more humane and realistic way. The pro-immigrant coalition included businesses and labor unions that depend on immigrant workers, student protesters—and President Bush. Plus the Catholic Church and charities that could be criminalized for their efforts to aid illegal immigrants.
Opponents were relentless. The House of Representatives had already passed a bill that would make illegal immigrants and those who helped them subject to prosecution as felons. “This bill would literally criminalize the good Samaritan and probably even Jesus himself,” Senator Hillary Clinton said. At the same time, Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, Republican of Wisconsin, warned, “I think with the American people and House Republicans, a pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens, aka ‘amnesty,’ is a nonstarter.” And so it was. President Bush said in 2006, “There is a rational middle ground between granting an automatic path to citizenship for every illegal immigrant and a program of mass deportation.” So far, no one has found it.
In 2016 the issue paid off for Donald Trump in states where it mattered. Latinos made up 6 percent of the voters in Pennsylvania, according to the network exit poll. Noncollege white voters—Trump’s core—were 40 percent. He carried Pennsylvania by about 44,000 votes. Latinos were 31 percent of the vote in California, and noncollege whites, 19 percent. Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump in California by 4.3 million votes.
In 2012 Mitt Romney told a private meeting of top Republican donors in Florida that if Republicans don’t start doing better with Latinos, it “spells doom for us.” Want to see what “doom” looks like for Republicans? Look at California. In 1994 Republican governor Pete Wilson embraced Proposition 187, a punitive law that cut off public services for illegal immigrants. Wilson’s television ads showed grainy black-and-white footage of Mexican immigrants darting across the border as an announcer intoned, “They keep coming: two million illegal immigrants.” Proposition 187 passed with nearly 60 percent of the vote. It helped get Wilson reelected. Since 1994, California Republicans have paid dearly for that short-lived victory. (Proposition 187 was ultimately struck down by the federal courts.) It brought a huge wave of Latino citizenship applications and voter registration. By 2016, Latinos were nearly one-third of California voters, and 71 percent of them voted for Hillary Clinton.
After voting Republican in six straight presidential elections (1968 to 1988), California has voted consistently Democratic for president since 1992. The state has not elected a Republican US senator and only one Republican governor since 1994 (Arnold Schwarzenegger, a very atypical Republican). Even in 2014, which saw a national landslide for Republicans, Democrats swept all statewide constitutional offices in California as well as thirty-nine out of fifty-three House seats and maintained control of the state legislature.
Michael Madrid, former political director of the California Republican Party, put it this way: “Republicans did with the Latino community in about two years what the Democratic Party couldn’t do in thirty years, and that is we mobilized the Latino electorate. The problem is, we mobilized them against us.”
The same thing may be happening now on a national scale. Short term, the issue helped Trump get elected. Long term, the impact could reverse. Stuart Spencer, a veteran California political consultant, presaged Mitt Romney’s warning of doom when he alerted Republicans in 1997 that the party risks “political suicide and dooms itself to permanent minority status in California” if it does not reach out to Latino voters.6 The same prediction can be made for the country as a whole.
SEVEN
The Power of Definition
One of the best strategies for winning is to define an issue as a private matter and none of the government’s business. It often works because the belief in limited government is so deeply embedded in American political culture. The limited-government position can benefit the left as well as the right. That is what happened in two conflicts from the early 2000s: the Elian Gonzalez controversy in 2000 and the Terri Schiavo controversy in 2005.
As we saw in chapter 1, the Schiavo controversy stemmed from efforts by conservatives in Congress to keep Schiavo, who had been in a persistent vegetative state for fifteen years, on life support. Her husband, who wished to remarry, wanted to allow her to die after her feeding tube was removed. Her parents objected vehemently and found support among religious right activists and leading Republicans, including President George W. Bush and Florida governor Jeb Bush.
Public opinion about the Schiavo case was one-sided. In a CBS News poll, two-thirds of Americans said her feeding tube should not be reinserted. The consensus was revealed on a CBS News poll question: Should Congress and the president be involved in deciding what happens to Terri Schiavo? Only 13 percent said yes. An overwhelming 82 percent said no, including large majorities of conservatives, Republicans, and churchgoers. Two-thirds of white evangelicals said no. As we saw, the public regarded the issue as a case where politicians were trying to exploit an intensely personal family matter for political advantage. Politicians should stay out of it.
