There’s evolution in politics. There’s revolution in politics. Then there’s shape-shifting like that whachamacallit creature in the movie The Thing. Wisconsin governor Scott Walker has spent a lot of time walking back his longtime support for amnesty, explaining his recently stated opposition to it by telling Fox News’ Chris Wallace on March 1, “My view has changed. I’m flat out saying it. Candidates can say that. Sometimes they don’t.” It smacked of refreshing candor. The problem is that his view apparently changed again.
Just two weeks later.
The Wall Street Journal reported on the comments, made at a private dinner with business-oriented Republicans (the kind of people who make large campaign donations):
During the March 13 New Hampshire dinner, organized by New Hampshire Republican Party Chairwoman Jennifer Horn at the Copper Door Restaurant in Bedford, Mr. Walker said undocumented immigrants shouldn’t be deported, and he mocked 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s suggestion that they would “self-deport,” according to people who were there.
Instead, they said, Mr. Walker said undocumented immigrants should be allowed to “eventually get their citizenship without being given preferential treatment” ahead of people already in line to obtain citizenship.
“He said no to citizenship now, but later they could get it,” said Bill Greiner, an owner of the Copper Door restaurant. Ken Merrifield, mayor of Franklin, N.H., who also attended, said Mr. Walker proposed that illegal immigrants should “get to the back of the line for citizenship” but not be deported.
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After a bit of tarrying, Walker spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski eventually issued a denial, saying “We strongly dispute this account.” But three separate sources from the dinner confirmed the above to the Journal, which described the governor’s remarks by stating in its headline, “Scott Walker Adjusts Stance on Immigration….” That’s a polite way of putting it. Not surprisingly, very liberal Salon was somewhat less circumspect, but, in this case, quite accurate:
“Get[ting] to the back of the line for citizenship” is a crisp, concise summary of precisely what the 2013 immigration overhaul — which passed the Senate in a bipartisan vote but floundered in the House — would have required of … [illegal migrants]. That’s also what President Obama has called for. Walker, in other words, just endorsed the immigration framework favored by virtually all Democrats and a bloc of squishy moderate/liberal/Alinskyite/communist Republicans.
… Walker spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski … reiterated to the paper that Walker “is opposed to amnesty,” whatever that means to him, and believes that Obama exceeded his authority with his executive actions on immigration. Well, Jeb Bush says that too.
In other words, they don’t have a problem with what Obama did, just how he did it. And what Salon implies when writing about Walker’s thoughts on amnesty, “whatever that means to him,” is correct. In this relativistic era of Clintonesque wonderment about “what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is,” it’s not uncommon for politicians to indulge outrageous intellectual contortions and campaign trail lawyer-craft. To some, perhaps, it’s only “amnesty™” if illegal migrants get instant citizenship here, now, today — with a cherry on top.
Moreover, mocking the concept of self-deportation is an insult to intelligence and an example of feigned helplessness, of saying we must legalize criminality because we’re powerless to enforce the law. But self-deportation is not some nebulous, untested theory but a tried and true application of logic. As I wrote in The New American in 2012:
We get so distracted talking about how hard and uncompassionate it would be to apply the [illegal-migration] stick that we forget about simply removing the carrot. After all, what draws illegals here? There are three basic things:
1. Jobs.
2. Benefits.
3. Free schooling.
Thus, take away the jobs by ensuring that employers won’t dare hire illegals and forbid the latter from receiving benefits or from enrolling their children in school, and the problem takes care of itself. As happened in Arizona and Alabama when they cracked down on illegals, the migrants will self-deport. Ensure that their economic prospects look better in their native countries, and that’s exactly where they’ll go.
To enhance this plan further, we could also change the anchor-baby law and forbid illegals from receiving all but catastrophic medical care (no using emergency rooms for the sniffles). But the carrot will have largely been removed either way, and, once this is done, deporting the few remaining illegals would be a simple task.
The above isn’t implemented not for lack of ability, but of will. Saying otherwise is, at best, intellectually dishonest.
Conservatives had many good reasons to like Governor Walker. He boldly stood against greedy unions and defied the media, the Democrat Party machine, and out-of-state money and sources to win three elections in four years, including a 2012 triumph that made him history’s first governor to survive a recall election. But his latest evolution may be a flip-flop too far.
Salon points out an irony to the situation: While Walker was trying to woo the given business interests — comprising people who value cheap labor over secure borders and cultural integrity — “His audience could hardly have been reassured” about his campaign’s integrity “given the transparent pandering involved,” writes the site. Salon continued, “It had been mere days since he owned up to his first flip-flop on Fox News, after all.”
Echoing these thoughts from the aisle’s opposite side, American Thinker suggests that “Walker has finally broken an egg that can’t be re-shelled.” “If he was untruthful about such a key issue as immigration, telling the public one thing and private audiences another,” writes the site, “there is no reason to believe anything else he has said.”
Given the above and that Walker had quite consistently supported amnesty between 2002 and 2013, it’s safe to say it’s something in which the 47-year-old believes. It’s much as with Barack Obama and faux marriage: His 2012 announcement that he’d evolved and was now supporting the same-sex unions was big news. But the real news is that he supported them in 1996 and only pretended to change his position later to gain political advantage — and that 2008 voters were unaware of this due to their own, and the media’s, failure to scrutinize him properly.
The reality is that in a representative Republic, people do not get what they want. They get what they vote for. Politicians are content to govern contrary to the people’s will if they know that campaigning congruent with the people’s will is all that’s necessary to gain power.
Photo of Gov. Scott Walker: AP Images
