by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cGonna be some hard times coming down.\u201d One way of making sense out of nonsense in this new age is simply to believe the opposite of what you read. I have been doing that and it often works.<\/p>\n Latinos \u2014 Please Vote for Us\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n Take the sudden Latino vote obsession. I don\u2019t think not supporting the Dream Act, as we are told, factored in much at all in the Republican defeat \u2014 or at least no more than losing by the same margin the Asian vote, or (by a slightly smaller margin) the youth vote, or (by a much bigger margin) the black vote.<\/p>\n These groups, to the extent they exist as definable and predictable cohorts in the age of assimilation, integration, and intermarriage, mostly were Axelrodded. By that I mean that after six months of a vicious campaign \u2014 spiced up by a Sandra Fluke (on death\u2019s doorstep due to lack of free condoms) or a Joseph (\u201call white folks are going to hell\u201d) Lowery \u2014 and after four years of quotes like \u201cfat-cat bankers on Wall Street, \u201cyou didn\u2019t build that,\u201d \u201cfair share,\u201d \u201cnation of cowards,\u201d \u201cmy people,\u201d and \u201cour enemies,\u201d these groups more or less resented the older, and supposedly whiter, male establishment. In that sense, a decent fellow like Mitt Romney was reduced to a cutthroat, outsourcing, racist, tax-cheating, felon-committing epitome. (Our goddess Nemesis noticed \u2014 so beware, Mr. Axelrod and Mr. Obama, she is an all-powerful, take-no-prisoners deity with a long memory.)<\/p>\n Since the election, I have talked to all sorts of non-white and young people; most, after such a barrage, voiced a sort of Obama-fed feeling of \u201cthings are going our way and this is our future.\u201d That such chauvinism is racialist and just as bad as the old white\/alright racism matters nothing. But until these groups are jumbled up \u2014 following the path of Italians who, after immigration from Sicily and Italy ceased, fragmented culturally and politically due to economic success \u2014 we are in for some strange times.<\/p>\n In my area, voters were just as mad that Romney wanted legal immigration for those with skills, education, and capital. You see, that too sounded \u201cracist,\u201d or at least threatening to the system that has been letting about \u00bd million to 1 million annually in illegally from Latin America, the vast majority without a high school diploma.<\/p>\n Numbers are what the immigration issue is about, after all. When I go to the bank and someone speaks an indigenous Oaxaca dialect and cannot read the information on the check (and on rare occasions endorses with a mark), I am apparently seen as a racist to think that the country might benefit from one Croatian immigrant, with a PhD in electrical engineering, allowed legal entry for every three who can\u2019t speak English (or sometimes Spanish) and crossed into the country illegally.<\/p>\n As far as the grand bargain, the Dream Act, comprehensive immigration reform, or whatever the rubric of the day that a clueless Republican establishment employs: just imagine the opposite to learn the truth. If the Republicans were to agree to amnesty for, say, two million who were brought here as children and are in school or in the military, do you really think the \u201cLatino community\u201d in response would celebrate and then also agree to deport those who did not qualify? Or do you imagine the deal would at least result in deportation for those entirely on public assistance or with a criminal record? Did the Reagan-era Simpson-Mazzoli Act amnesty lead to 1) an end to calls for amnesty, 2) closing the border, 3) a surge in Latino support for Republicans, or 4) none of the above?<\/p>\n Does a conservative message of lower taxes, less government, and fewer regulations really appeal to Latinos\u00a0en masse<\/em>, who define La Familia values as something that includes a big and paternalistic government, along the Spanish\/European model? Out here I see no difference in rates of abortion, divorce, criminality, or illegitimacy between whites and Latinos, and suspect the latter may have higher rates. So family values are defined somewhat differently from the Republican silk-stocking view that Latinos are natural Republicans \u2014 if only (fill in the blanks). Again, I would like the Democrats to introduce the Dream Act, and then watch whether closed borders, E-Verify, and deportation of criminals were part of the deal. That is not to say one should not talk in softer tones and be magnanimous; but one is fooling oneself if one believes a cheap Dream Act endorsement would mean anything.<\/p>\n The truth is that the present system of illegal immigration is quite logical and thrives because too many are invested in it, well aside from corporate employers. California is a permanently blue state. Latino leaders, many of whom can no longer speak Spanish, represent a vast underclass of illegal aliens whose numbers warp all statistics on Latino achievement and become a permanent argument for set-asides, more government help, higher taxes (cf. who just voted for California\u2019s higher taxes?), affirmative action, and changing demography. Why simply give that up, and join a party of the melting-pot, up-by-the bootstraps, self-reliant, shrink-the-government types? To go to Parlier or Orange Cove is to drive through a maze of federal\/state clinics and government facilities, many eponymously named by those who secured the government funding for them. No, I am sorry: I don\u2019t see a natural Hispanic constituency for what Mitt Romney was trying to offer. I also confess that stupid ads like Lena Dunham\u2019s sex-equals-voting-for-Obama ad and stupider ones like the African-American garbage collector who said Romney never talked to him at the curb worked.<\/p>\n The Rich<\/strong><\/p>\n I sense the same misinformation about the \u201cwealthy\u201d and the \u201cjob creators:\u201d Just think the opposite and the truth emerges. Most in the top brackets voted for Obama; eight out of the ten wealthiest counties did at least. Many of the people I know in Silicon Valley, who this year passed on the signs and bumper stickers, nonetheless voted for Obama. The fact is that the Democratic Party, to generalize, is largely now the subsidized lower classes who pay no federal income tax and receive a growing array of federal largess coupled with, on the other end, a technocratic blue-state elite making over $200,000 annually. If taxes go up under Obama, at least theirs will, too. Another truth: the Republican Party is basically made up of a shrinking middle class and upper middle class, flanked on both ends by Democrats who, for various reasons, on one end, either do not appreciate their success or, on the other, hate them for their hoity-toity, un-PC tastes and culture. Yet how strange that the two ends of the Democratic coalition have so little to do with each other \u2014 a partnership based on cynical opportunism on both sides. All that is missing are the Roman tribunes, or perhaps the wealthy\u00a0demagogi<\/em>.<\/p>\n What Lost the Election?<\/strong><\/p>\n Marco Rubio would not have won the Latino vote this year. A ticket of Condoleezza Rice and Herman Cain would not have won the black vote. Bobby Jindal and Nikki Haley would not have won the Asian vote. Obama, in brilliant fashion, marketed himself as the above-the-fray great healer and our post-racial future, while his surrogates waged the most vicious race-, class-, gender-divisive campaign in history. More likely, what lost the race for Romney \u2014 a decent and strong candidate \u2014 was instead the failure of the white working classes to turn out to vote\u00a0en masse<\/em>.<\/p>\n Why so? I was in Michigan, near the Ohio border, for all of September, and each night was stunned by the variations in the class warfare ads, mostly brilliant and effective in painting Romney as your kill-Detroit, wet-suited, jet-ski-setting, multi-home employer \u2014 a veritable John Kerry, John Edwards, or Ted Kennedy \u2014 and \u201cus\u201d as a disabled, homeless, starving, and out-of-work collective victim as a result. Millions, who did not prefer Obama, just stayed home and thought that they would pass on voting for the guy who had too much money and gave them their pink slips. In 2004 they saw Kerry as the wet-suited wind surfer;\u00a0in 2012 it was Romney<\/a>[1].<\/p>\n News That Was No News<\/strong><\/p>\n I also assume that what we do not read in the proverbial mainstream media is the news and\u00a0what we do is not<\/a>[2]. So there was not much about\u00a0record gas prices<\/a>\u00a0[3], the Katrina-like plight of\u00a0the Sandy victims<\/a>\u00a0[4] still without power, the rising unemployment rate, or the impending \u201cfiscal cliff.\u201d Here are some other non-news items.<\/p>\n Iran and the Drones<\/strong><\/p>\n Now we learn that before the election Iran attacked a US spy drone in international waters. Why was this not known before the election? (Yes \u2014 that was rhetorical question.) And what actually was the result of that other drone crash, whose site we chose not to bomb\/destroy, and thus the plane was perhaps sent to be reverse-engineered by the Russians or Chinese? And just how many have we killed with drones? Are the targets confirmed terrorists who brag of their crimes of the sort like the three who were water-boarded \u2014 or merely suspected terrorists who go up in smoke along with anyone unlucky enough to be near them when the judge\/jury\/executioner drone missile hits? Do the Left\u2019s civil libertarians care about this, or care about it to the degree to note also that the administration had jailed the video-producer whose free expression supposedly caused the riots in Benghazi? Speaking of which\u2026<\/p>\n Benghazi<\/strong><\/p>\n We have a history of presidential second terms that explode in a scandal lingering from the first (e.g., Watergate) or due to\u00a0hubris\u00a0<\/em>(cf. Reagan\u2019s with Iran-Contra, or Clinton\u2019s with Monica) deteriorating into scandal or just fizzling out (Bush and Katrina\/the Iraqi insurgency). I used to think that the Libyan crime (not beefing up security when earlier requested, not immediately sending over help from the annex, not sending in relief during the various seven hours of assaults, etc.) was dwarfed by the cover-up (by all means protect the administration narrative of Libya as success\/al Qaeda as impotent\/Arab Spring as wonderful\/the slayer of bin Laden as cool and competent commander-in-chief).<\/p>\n Now I am not so sure. Why did we even have a consulate in a secondary port city, when most countries had pulled their embassies out of Tripoli? Why, on the night of his death, was our ambassador meeting with a Turkish diplomat in Benghazi? Who delayed our team at the airport \u2014 and why? Why was an annex, with a large CIA contingent, even nearby? Why did the annex people apparently want to keep a firewall between themselves and the consulate? Who actually were the terrorists? Who paid them and what exactly was their mission? Were we destroying the Gaddafi arsenal, or rounding it up for anonymous resale? And if so \u2014 to whom?<\/p>\n The Rev. Joseph Lowery<\/strong><\/p>\n Did Pastor Lowery, who swore Obama into office (Rev. Wright had apparently given up his Obama privileges),\u00a0really say<\/a>\u00a0[5] right before the election that \u201call white folks\u201d were \u201cgoing to Hell\u201d and \u201cI don\u2019t know what kind of a n****r wouldn\u2019t vote with a black man running\u201d? Did that matter? And is it the sort of language that an Eric Holder finds offensive, or at least as offensive as an anti-Muslim video? Rev. Wright, Rev. Pfleger, Rev. Jackson (who just said that the Tea Party wished to \u201coverthrow our government, engage in secession, sedition, segregation and slavery.\u201d), Rev. Lowery \u2014 all raise the same question: does Obama know any pastor who can speak without offering racist commentary?<\/p>\n The crux for the next four years is whether\u00a0we become California<\/a>\u00a0[6] or transform into\u00a0a sort of socialist Germany<\/a>\u00a0[7], where the work ethic, fiscal sobriety, and ingenuity trump counter-productive energy and social policies. In other words, will the frackers, horizontal drillers, farmers, engineers, Silicon Valley, Napa Valley, the American farm belt, the coal industry, Boeing, Apple, and Caterpillar just keep chugging along, pulling the rest of us into the accustomed prosperity despite, rather than because of, us? Will the American spirit, like German industriousness, override socialist redistribution, or succumb to it?<\/p>\n As far as why a majority voted as it did, I prefer the wisdom of the Old Oligarch, Plato on Democratic Man, or Tocqueville to the latest spin from Republican grandees.<\/p>\n Also read:\u00a0What Obama Should Have Done Before, and Won\u2019t Do Now<\/a>\u00a0[8]<\/p>\n URLs in this post:<\/p>\n [1] in 2012 it was Romney:http:\/\/www.bostonglobe.com\/opinion\/2012\/07\/05\/mitt-romney-jet-ski-gop-candidate-kerry-moment\/r6uMevWRjSQ3e9Qkz6Wj7I\/story.html<\/a> \u00a92012 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media \u201cGonna be some hard times coming down.\u201d \u2014Kris Kristofferson,\u00a0Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid One way of making sense out of nonsense in this new age is simply to believe the opposite of what you read. I have been doing that and it often works.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[96],"tags":[12,1045,181,151,1031,1039,128,32,131],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-5S","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":353,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-latino-vote-obsession\/","url_meta":{"origin":364,"position":0},"title":"The Latino-Vote Obsession","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 15, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Postelection panic among conservatives about the Latino vote has reached the point of absurdity \u2014 and mostly reveals the na\u00efvet\u00e9 of detached political grandees who know little about the ideology and motivations of those they are now supposed to adroitly woo. Republican postmortems\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Immigration"","block_context":{"text":"Immigration","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/immigration\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":182,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/winning-the-latino-vote\/","url_meta":{"origin":364,"position":1},"title":"Winning the Latino Vote","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 8, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Over the last three weeks, I think I have read most of the post-election op-eds written on the Latino vote. I have studied exit polling, read sophisticated demographic analyses, and talked to as many Latinos in my hometown as I could. The result\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Identity Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Identity Politics","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/identity-politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":61,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/what-is-the-future-of-conservatism\/","url_meta":{"origin":364,"position":2},"title":"What Is the Future of Conservatism?","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 27, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Commentary Magazine First, some perspective is key. Romney\u2019s \u201c47 percent\u201d remarks and Hurricane Sandy probably turned an Obama one-percent win into the three-percent margin that he attained \u2014 especially considering Republicans kept the House and are doing well with governorships. The Romney loss was not comparable\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "GOP"","block_context":{"text":"GOP","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/politics\/conservativism\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":623,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/incoherent-immigration-reform\/","url_meta":{"origin":364,"position":3},"title":"Incoherent Immigration Reform","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 14, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Nothing about illegal immigration quite adds up. Conservative corporate employers still support the idea of imported, cheap, non-union labor \u2014 in a strange alliance with liberal activists who want the larger blocs of Latino voters that eventually follow massive influxes from Latin America.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Immigration"","block_context":{"text":"Immigration","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/immigration\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":312,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/learning-from-the-election\/","url_meta":{"origin":364,"position":4},"title":"Learning from the Election","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 30, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media 1.\u00a0Populism The Republicans have only won the popular vote since Ronald Reagan\u2019s presidency on two occasions: 1988 and 2004. In both instances, even the patrician Bushes were able to paint their liberal opponents as out-of-touch Massachusetts magnificoes. Lee Atwater turned Michael Dukakis, the helmeted\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Election 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/election-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3115,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/amnesty-revisited\/","url_meta":{"origin":364,"position":5},"title":"Amnesty Revisited","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 11, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online I\u00a0was disappointed by the president\u2019s tone more than the specifics of his proposals. Once again, he proves true to character: politicizing the issue, citing straw men, and then accusing those with whom he disagrees of political demagoguery. In truth, the political situation is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Immigration"","block_context":{"text":"Immigration","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/immigration\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6106,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364\/revisions\/6106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u2014Kris Kristofferson,\u00a0Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n
\n[2] what we do is not:\u00a0http:\/\/hotair.com\/archives\/2012\/11\/07\/matthews-sorry-for-saying-last-night-that-i-was-glad-we-had-that-hurricane-last-week\/<\/a>
\n[3] record gas prices:\u00a0http:\/\/pjmedia.com\/eddriscoll\/2012\/03\/06\/obama-in-2008-of-course-i-want-higher-gas-prices-in-an-election-year\/<\/a>
\n[4] the Sandy victims:\u00a0http:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2012\/11\/07\/chris-matthews-thanks-hurricane-sandy\/<\/a>
\n[5] really say:\u00a0http:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2012\/10\/31\/all-whites-are-going-to-hell-says-civil-rights-icon\/<\/a>
\n[6] we become California:\u00a0http:\/\/pjmedia.com\/victordavishanson\/california-the-road-warrior-is-here\/<\/a>
\n[7] a sort of socialist Germany:\u00a0http:\/\/pjmedia.com\/victordavishanson\/the-limits-of-german-patience\/<\/a>
\n[8] What Obama Should Have Done Before, and Won\u2019t Do Now:http:\/\/pjmedia.com\/barryrubin\/2012\/11\/07\/what-obama-should-have-done-in-the-last-four-years-and-wont-do-in-the-next-four-years\/<\/a><\/p>\n