Praising Immigrants, Bush Leads Conservative Appeal for G.O.P. to Soften Tone

[struggle4progress]

By JULIA PRESTON
Published: December 4, 2012

... Former President George W. Bush weighed back in to the discussion on Tuesday by calling on policy makers in Washington to revamp the law “with a benevolent spirit” that recognized the contribution of those who moved here from other countries.

Mr. Bush spoke at the opening of a conference highlighting the benefits of immigration hosted by an institute in Dallas that bears his name and by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. He described immigrants as a bedrock of the nation’s economy, providing new skills and ideas while filling critical gaps in the labor market. But he also presented the question in more human terms in a state that has been a home to huge numbers of immigrants ...

Richard Land, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s policy arm, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said Tuesday at a news conference here that immigration was a “moral issue.” He warned Republicans that “if they want to be a contender for national leadership, they are going to have to change their ways on immigration reform.”

The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, the president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, the largest organization of Latino evangelicals, portrayed the Republicans’ dilemma in biblical terms. “They must cross the proverbial Jordan of immigration reform,” he said, “if they want to step into the promised land of the Hispanic electorate” ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/05/us/praising-immigrants-george-w-bush-leads-conservative-appeal-for-gop-to-soften-tone.html

[Third Doctor]

1. It sad when a really conservative President

looks moderate next the present GOP.

[struggle4progress]

2. It's a split between the older nativist and the newer business wings of the GOP

Since that group has become a traditional part of the conservative coalition, the GOP needs the racist nativist xenophobes for bean-counting reasons, and the GOP also hopes to maintain some populist reputation by appealing to the group

Under the old southern Jim Crow model, discrimination produces an exploitable underclass, which may benefit some sectors of the economy, like agriculture. The current version of the old system might be called Juan Crow: the exploited class has changed, but the general theory remains the same

Then there's the more modern business wing, that is more interested in profits than ideology: they prefer cheap labor, but they don't necessarily like the PR from association with the nativists. These folk primarily care about limiting taxes on business and limiting government regulation -- so their populist appeal is along the lines of "no taxes" and "government off my back"

GWB always got into office with the help of big business: he has nothing against the perpetual recreation of an exploitable underclass, but neither does he have any particular ideological dedication to racist nativism or to Juan Crow style schemes for reproducing an exploitable underclass

But GWB just isn't very bright. One irony is that Rove's campaign strategy for him was always to jettison more and more of the potential independent centrists, in favor of extremist wackos, like the nativists