Immigration Prof Blog noted an article that gave me the chills. It states that Lou Dobbs will be the biggest influence on American voters in the 2008 presidential election - that the elites of both parties are underestimating his influence on everyday Americans.
Perhaps this is so. Our defective public education system has not taught students to think criticially or see the long term consequences of dangerous public policy. Its natural for this voting generation to be swayed by Mr. Dobbs' silver tongue. What is so incredible about all of this is that he fragrantly publicizes mis-information about immigration - has been confronted with this and refuses to correct his statements... and people continue to believe him!
If one were to believe in re-incarnation, who would Lou Dobbs have been in a past life?
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‘Lou Dobbs voters' will decide '08
By: Christopher Gacek
Politico.com
October 22, 2007 03:42 PM EST
CNN anchor Lou Dobbs may be the most important person in the 2008 presidential election aside from the candidates themselves. The bundle of concerns that Dobbs and his audience have about globalization, trade, diminished American sovereignty and immigration will be ignored by politicians at their own peril.
The elites of the Democratic and Republican parties don’t realize the deep political vein Dobbs has struck. In fact, they tend to be quite scornful of him. Nevertheless, the presidential candidate who pursues and captures the “Lou Dobbs voter” will win the 2008 election.
In 1980, Dobbs began his career at CNN, where he gained national prominence hosting “Moneyline.” Currently, his “Lou Dobbs Tonight” reviews the daily news while focusing on stories related to U.S. sovereignty, immigration and trade policy.
The program includes an ongoing, popular segment called “The War Against the Middle Class.”
Dobbs is denounced by conservatives as a protectionist, but this is grossly inaccurate. Reciprocity is the key to Dobbs’ thinking on trade. That is, he believes the Congress should reject agreements that give other countries the right to charge higher tariffs than the United States can for the same or similar products.
Dobbs’ thunderous jeremiads focus on the nonreciprocal trade provisions that our trade negotiators routinely accept.
For example, on July 9, Dobbs reported that the Chinese-made Chery car will face a 2.5 percent tariff when entering America, while U.S. cars imported into China will be taxed at 25 percent.
Dobbs is also highly critical of U.S. immigration policy. It isn’t just that the lawlessness of mass illegal alien migration offends him but that Washington and Wall Street elites are allowing immigration (and trade) policies to undermine America’s own political, economic and cultural institutions.
Dobbs is an American who prefers his own nation to multinational and supranational political institutions — he is not a “globalist,” and neither are American voters.
The fact that the Beltway establishment’s full-court push for immigration amnesty was defeated twice this year by an alternative-media-led populist rebellion indicates the political power of these issues. It isn’t just about immigration.
Middle-class families are deeply concerned about the impact of globalization — i.e., nonreciprocal arrangements for open borders allowing people and goods into the U.S. — on their ability to survive economically.
The politics of the Lou Dobbs voters are still fluid, because neither party has moved to gain their support. The Democrats are too busy kowtowing to immigration interest groups as they look to import future voting blocs, and the Republicans are too beholden to big business globalists, trade ideologues and open-border libertarians.
The pre-Clinton Democrats could have approached these voters on trade issues, but Democrats have abandoned the New Deal party. President Bill Clinton and his Treasury secretary, Robert Rubin, turned the Democrats into a European-style corporatist party committed to globalism.
Consequently, they signed off on NAFTA, the World Trade Organization and most-favored-nation status for China — all items for which GOP senators and representatives provided congressional majorities.
The Democratic presidential candidates are no better. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards oppose measures to meaningfully stop illegal immigration. It won’t help that a spokesman for Sen. Clinton attacked Dobbs after a recent Spanish-only debate held in Miami.
On trade, the House Democrats have taken the lead in slowing down the trade agreement sausage factory, but it is hard to imagine that a Clinton II administration would be different from that of Clinton I in this regard.
The GOP may not be able to adapt, either. The party depends on a donor base that wants to import cheap illegal labor while moving manufacturing jobs to lower-cost locales abroad. Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Mitt Romney have been weak on illegal immigration in the past. Romney seems to be taking a tougher line now, but on the “Glenn Beck” show recently, Giuliani defended his record supporting “sanctuary cities” in New York.
All three show little understanding of the effects of trade on the middle class. Fred Thompson looks tough on immigration but has not indicated an awareness about our trade problems.
Only the GOP candidates polling in single digits — Duncan Hunter, Tom Tancredo and Ron Paul — might appeal to the Lou Dobbs voter on both trade and immigration. This goes to a deeper point about the GOP.
Even though evangelical voters are being blamed for waning party support in states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois and Michigan, it is the “values voters” — e.g., supporters of traditional marriage in Ohio’s November 2004 referendum — who are saving the GOP in the industrial states, where many voters have clearly been alienated by the party’s trade policies.
There is no doubt that the pro-marriage voters defeated John F. Kerry in Ohio.
For both Democrats and Republicans, winning the Lou Dobbs voter would greatly increase the chances of victory in November 2008. The question becomes: Will either party make the necessary changes to reach for the brass ring?
Christopher Gacek, J.D., Ph.D., is a senior fellow at the Family Research Council; the views expressed are his own and do not necessarily represent those of the FRC.
previously posted on Immigration Prof Blog
cartoon: http://i.b5z.net/i/ui/4000668/i/lou_dobbs_55_ezr.JPG
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