Conventional wisdom turns out to be wrong, big surprise

I like the Wall Street Journal but sometimes they do get it wrong:

CHARITON, Iowa -- Barack Obama had just ended his stump speech before a friendly audience in this tiny southern Iowa town when Stephen Scott's hand shot up with a question. Would Mr. Obama, as president, have signed last summer's failed "amnesty bill" for illegal immigrants, Mr. Scott, a local landscape painter, asked testily.

Mr. Obama cautiously walked through a long answer that ended with a plan to give legal status to long-established illegal immigrants. "There. Another question," he said, shutting down discussion.

The debate over how to deal with illegal immigrants split the Republican Party two years ago, infuriating its social-conservative base and driving away Hispanic voters. It could be even more perilous for Democrats.

Democratic strategists believe that Hispanic voters could swing a decisive handful of states -- including Florida, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada -- to the Democrats in 2008, ensuring the election of a Democratic president and cementing a Democratic majority for years to come. But the party's blue-collar, middle-income and African-American supporters are increasingly angry about illegal immigration, much of it Hispanic.

Democrats "are pretty jumpy on the issue," says Rep. Luis Gutierrez, an Illinois Democrat who pushed for immigration overhaul in the House. "They would prefer to allow the Republicans to shepherd the Hispanic votes into the Democratic column without having to scare away a single other voter themselves," he says.

As best I remember my very first post on illegal immigration made the point that the Democrats were attempting to build a permanent majority by granting amnesty to illegals already here and to open our borders to even more Third World immigration. Bring in as many illiterate peasants as possible and get as many of them as you can on the dole and they will keep returning Democrats to power for at least the next 100 years. I am frankly surprised to hear a Democrat congressman come out and admit, in so many words, that the idiot Republicans were playing right into their hands.

However there was one set of FACTS which were always out there that anyone could have checked on, but few people bothered. That is that LEGAL immigrants do not support ILLEGAL immigration. People who jump through the hoops and wait in line and shell out the money to come to this country legally and then become naturalized citizens tend to be even more patriotic than natural born citizens and they tend to despise those who circumvent the law by coming here illegally and then demand to be given special treatment.

The fact that Democrats were nearly unanimous in their support for amnesty and that it was only opposition from Republicans that killed amnesty is not lost on those who got here the right way. In a recent article The Telegraph took note of this fact:

Minutes after taking the Pledge of Allegiance, new American citizens are urged to register as voters by Democratic activists who see them as natural party supporters who could hold the key to the 2008 election.

But with increasing illegal immigration threatening the economy and security of the United States, many legal immigrants anxious to uphold the laws of their adopted country are moving towards the more hard-line immigration stance of Republicans.

Even in California’s Democratic-controlled San Diego, sizeable numbers of America’s newly-minted potential voters said that illegal immigrants should be penalised rather than given an easy route to citizenship as most Democrats advocate.

“For a long time, immigration was OK,” said Sarah Wright, 49, a seamstress from Mexico who arrived in the US legally in 1986.

“But now, no more. A lot of really bad people come from Mexico and commit crimes.

“People are coming in and having two, three, four babies and going on welfare. Some are making money here and spending it back in Mexico.

"That’s not right. They should go back to Mexico and get a permit.”

Mrs Wright, whose American-born husband Ed served in the US Navy, was one of 1,591 people from 89 countries who became citizens at a ceremony in San Diego’s Golden Hall on Tuesday.

Nearly two thirds of them were from Mexico, whose border is just 17 miles from the city.

During the 40-minute ceremony, performed by a judge, the new citizens waved American flags, sang “America the Beautiful” and raised their rights hands as they repeated the oath to “abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty” of another nation.

Some men wore ties emblazoned with the stars and stripes while many women dressed in red, white and blue.

After the oath, some wept, others hugged one another and many turned to the public gallery and flashed broad smiles.

New citizens love this country and even though it causes left-liberal Democrats to froth at the mouth when you say it the fact is that if you are are a true patriot (which means that you love this nation exactly the way it is rather than the way if would be if people like you were able to get control of it and remake it into a totally different kind of place) and you love the United States you are going to be a Republican.

I know that there are genuine patriots who are Democrats, but they tend to be older folks who can remember WWII who are trying to maintain a nostalgic connection to a Democrat Party which now exists only in their memories.

This issue could very well be a major deciding factor in next year's general election and it will help the Republican Party (unless it is stupid enough to nominate someone who was mayor of a sanctuary city).