Posted by
NOTLEGALROADKILLYET on Saturday, February 24, 2007 10:40:44 PM
The Broadmoor puts on quite a spread as could be expected of a Five Star Hotel. Laura Ingraham was the dinner speaker and gave a pretty rousing speech that was geared to a conservative audience. When it came time for the Q&A, she got an unserious marriage proposal, which drew a good laugh.
It is clear that she was the right speaker for this audience.
One of her major messages was that to be successful, the Republican Party should move farther to the right. She also thought that for the Democrats to be successful, they should also move to the right.
I wished I had a crystal ball as I listened to this message because it didn't seem to make sense to me. Crystal balls prevent blog authors like me from writing really dumb stuff, which may be about to happen.:
It seems to me that the Democrats were successful this last cycle because they had recruited candidates which matched their districts. In short, after a long leftward tilt, they did lurch rightward. No, that doesn't mean that the public will notice a more moderate Democrat party. On the contrary, the fuzzy headed liberals are still in power, and the folks who put them there are the moderates.
If that strategy worked for the Democrats, and it did, it seems counter-intuitive to have her proposing the opposite strategy for the Republicans. Moderate Republicans would put conservative Republicans in power.
On the subject of immigration, she claimed that a majority of Americans wanted strong controls and wanted a fence built.
I made hundreds of phone calls this past summer to Republicans around the state. For part of that time I was using a seven question survey. One question was on immigration and another was on the fence. If my survey is big enough, and I think it is, only about one-half of Republicans want a strong immigration policy.
Even more astounding is the fact that of the half that wants a strong immigration policy, only half of those wanted a fence. The other half were concerned that building a fence sent a "Berlin wall" like image to the world.
When the Republican Congress authorized the fence, it could have funded it. It didn't.
Politicians live and die by polls. It seems reasonable to assume that the Republicans in Congress were getting the same message that I got-that actually building a fence would potentially lose Republican votes. Authorizing, but not funding the fence wouldn't be the first cynical act by Washington politicians.
OK, so why would Laura Ingraham's experience and view of the issue and mine be so different? I think it may be the selection process. She listens to a self selected sample of callers who are doubtless strongly anti-immigration and pro-wall.
My sample, other than being registered Republicans, was totally random. Each day when I arrived to make phone calls, I took sheets off a pile of call sheets and made the calls. That evening, other volunteers made calls from the same pile, meaning that my selection of call sheets was randomized based on the number of intervening calls made by other volunteers.
We've had an intervening election, and the election results bear out my observations. They do not support Laura Ingraham's claims on the subject.