What's Wrong with the National Review?

Congratulations to the National Review! In a year when Republicans haven't a clue whom to vote for, they've found their candidate: Mitt Romney. At this moment, I think that the former governor--in spite of being unpopular in his home-state of Massachusetts, changing his position on every major issue that matters to social conservatives, being a notably well-polished follower (as opposed to a leader) and, inconveniently, raising taxes during his tenure--is probably the most likely of candidates to get the nomination. I don't have any major gripe with this; he's a lot better than some of the other guys (think Fred Thompson).

But that isn't really what I want to consider. What I want to look at, instead, is one quote in the NR that I find particularly disturbing. In their endorsement article, the editors write "[while Romney] has not talked much about the importance of resisting ethnic balkanization . . . he supports enforcing the immigration laws and opposes amnesty" (1). "Balkanization" means "divide" according to Webster's Dictionary, but what the editors' sentence translates to, more or less, is that Romney is a viable candidate because he wants to keep Mexicans out of the country. If there is anything that I am most ashamed of in the conservative movement (in which I consider myself to be a moderate) it is our hostility toward immigration generally and immigration of people of color in particular.

Now that NR has flexed its paleoconservative muscles, reinforcing a stereotype that (if he did anything good) Karl Rove labored to overcome, we ought to ask where this racial strand in conservatism comes from. There have always been anti-immigrant tendencies in America. Benjamin Franklin, for example, thought that the German immigrants of the eighteenth century were some of the stupidest people whom he ever met; the early black-activist, Booker T. Washington, tried to build an uneasy alliance with whites by redirecting their hostility toward immigrant unions; and in the twentieth-first century, Tom Tancredo runs on a single issue platform trying, along with his plan to bomb Mecca and Medina, to tie together September 11th and illegal immigration.

Republicans certainly have racial baggage which is not easily overcome. But, if we are to continue to win in national elections and protect such rights like life, liberty and property, then we must build a coalition that does not seek to represent 12th century Europe, but rather 21st century America. All else being held equal, the only significant factor that would make Hispanics tilt Democrat as opposed to Republican is their economic standing, but as the Red state and Blue state coalitions demonstrate, economics does not always decide people's elections. People of the Midwest and South are not known for being particularly affluent, and yet they still consistently vote in the financial interests of the affluent (the opposite is also true.)

Furthermore, as Francis Fukuyama has pointed out, radicalism in this country has not tended to spring from minority groups, but rather from the white, intellectual, urban elite; the people who think they know what is in the best interests of the poor and minorities but are actually out of touch with them (this is why books with titles like What's Wrong with Kansas? get written.) The Republicans are losing a huge market gap by throwing the Hispanic vote to the Democrats; furthermore, with men like Romney and others of the right-wing elite, importing workers is at least fiscally advantageous. It is a pity, but if the Republicans cannot realize what may be their only opportunity not to alienate the Hispanic vote for two generations, then maybe they will deserve their defeat next fall.