Matthew Yglesias slightly underestimates conservative grassroots and eggheads
Leftie blogger Mattew Yglesias credits National Review with being more of a conservative magazine and less of a partisan talking-point rag, as it is sometimes described by detractors left and right.
But so what, wonders Yglesisas? Does the magazine’s opinions actually count? Do any conservative thoughts count in the G.O.P.?
National Review has consistently shown a lot more critical distance from the Bush administration than has FOX News, conservative talk radio, or even The Weekly Standard (whose intellectual integrity is massively dragged down by Fred Barnes; otherwise they’re not so bad). I’m not, however, aware of any instances where Bush set about to do something they didn’t like (the Medicare bill, the energy bill, the farm bill, McCain-Feingold, etc.) and this inspired any non-trivial number of Republican legislators to stand up and do anything about it. Not, of course, that we should expect political magazines to have some massive practical ability to influence the course of legislation. But if almost all the conservative intellectuals feel one way about something, you would expect at least some conservative politicians to feel the same way.
In practice, however, the only thing that seems to have a causal influence on the behavior of the GOP’s elected officials is the consensus view of corporate lobbyists. If they like something, it happens. If they don’t like it, it doesn’t happen.
He’s largely right, but there is at least one example of how egghead and grassroots conservatives have repeatedly monkeywrenched the machinations of Bush and his corporate backers: Immigration reform. Bush has pushed for amnesty and guest worker programs ever since 2001, action items that are very high on Corporate America’s agenda, and he’s been rebuffed every time. Part of this can be explained by the 9/11 Muslim terrorist attacks against New York and Washington, D.C., but mostly it is because of the loud and widespread oppostion among conservatives. Not only that, Congress has also repeatedly, if not consistently, authorized the Administration to enforce immigration laws more strictly than the President has shown much interest in doing.
These are no small things for a couple of reasons. One is that American employers want a stable supply of wage-depressing immigrant workers of all skill levels. Another is that Bush is anxious to increase his family’s support among Hispanics, who will likely make up some 10-15% of the electorate by the time the next Bush (P.) rolls off the presidential assembly line (compared to a paltry 6% in last year’s election). As is so often the case with Bush, immigration reform is both personal and business.
(As a matter of policy, chances are that Universal Health Insurance would be a better vote snagger among Latinos than virtually unlimited immigration, but that hare brained idea would luckily clash with other corporate interests, so at least that’s one fight we won’t have to deal with in-house).
