Let’s go to the Mailbag and answer some questions/respond to comments from the last newsletter/missive.
Refer a friend [1]
To a prominent Democrat who asked via text about yesterday’s email with the Issues Chart from Harvard/Harris poll – where does voting rights rank in importance to voters? Well, let’s look at the chart again:
 [2] |
That’s right – #14.
To the prominent Republican (well, he’s more former GOP and currently an Independent) who lamented in an email about the change in immigration views by Texas voters.
I forgot to reference that poll done in the TX Governor’s Race between incumbent Greg Abbott and Beto O’Rourke. Abbott only leads Beto 42-40 in the Texas Lyceum Poll. [3]
Here’s the polling reference:
 [4] |
That’s a big shift and here is an NPR article right after the 2020 election entitled How Texas’ Longtime Democratic And Heavily Latino County Flipped Red. [5]
It starts with:
One of the most unexpected election results happened in Texas on the U.S.-Mexico border. President Trump made inroads in the longtime Democratic stronghold and flipped one Latino county red.
Bottom line from the mailbag?
Views change. Times change. Change brings change.
On immigration? Immigration, per se, is not the problem. We’re a pro-immigrant country but it’s the AMOUNT of illegal border crossings that is turning voters off.
There is a big difference between 1,000 – 10,000 – 100,000 – 1,000,000.
Take a look at these charts from Pew Research.
 [6] |
and it’s all across the southern border:
 [7] |
All Mexicans? Nope. Not at all.
 [8] |
Brazil, Cuba, and Haiti? The southern border is basically a port of entry now.
While it’s a ripe issue for Republicans, their consultants are concerned that some in the GOP will overplay their hand and turn off the aforementioned Independents while possibly turning out otherwise disaffected or “soft” Democrats.
After all, Speaker Nancy Pelosi isn’t exactly conceding defeat. She knows the tides go IN and OUT. Look at what she’s doing and why House Democrats in DC follow her lead:
From Punchbowl News [9]
Speaker Nancy Pelosi raised $45.7 million for Democrats in the first quarter of this year, the largest fundraising haul we’ve seen so far. That includes $38 million directly to the DCCC. Through this entire cycle to date, Pelosi has raised a massive $192 million.
Over 90 days that makes it $500,000 a DAY that Nancy Pelosi is raising.
It ain’t over ‘til it’s over – Yogi Berra.
 [10] |
TEASE ARTICLE from Bloomberg (also available at WAPO) [11] to be discussed later – Big Business and Conservatives are Headed for Divorce [12]
Still, for all its intellectual flaws, the new business-skeptical conservatism confronts the corporate world with serious practical problems. It removes a hitherto reliable safety net. Corporate types can no longer rely on Republicans or Conservatives coming to rescue them when the going gets tough, as it surely will as the cost-of-living crisis deepens.
The rising generation of conservative intellectuals, such as Oren Cass, Sohrab Ahmari, Nate Hochman, Christopher Rufo, Ben Shapiro, Gladden Pappin and Ross Douthat, are all, to varying degrees, skeptical about business and critical of “zombie Reaganites.” The fashionable causes on the right are national greatness, Catholic social thought and post-liberalism rather than Schumpeterian creative destruction. The Adam Smith ties of the 1980s are now museum pieces along with copies of Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” and Friedman’s “Free to Choose.”
MMMMM…..love me some Catholic Social Thought! Is this a good time to launch into a rant praising Fr. Heinrich Pesch? NO? Damn it…okay….just PESCH PESCH PESCH!
and a good line here:
Conservatism arose as a critique of the excesses of the French Revolution and its zeal for liberty, equality and fraternity. Today its future lies as a critique of postmodern liberalism and its zeal for a strange combination of unfettered individualism and group rights.
Or as I noted above – change brings change.
Those who did well in the Reagan/Thatcher post Cold War free market explosion #Globalism ask “What’s wrong with this picture?” and those who did not do well ask, “What’s right with it?”
Neither are wrong.
But politics, while being about the future, is first and foremost about math.
Who brings more votes wins.
<end scene>
See you at 3? Here are some On Hold Videos.
U2 Pride – Live Version – “for the Reverend Martin Luther King – SING!”
When Will Smith was singing happier tunes (and one of my faves). Do you see the open hand?
And the cover of Hey Jude by Wilson Pickett and Duane Allman that launched(?) Southern Rock
Damn that woman could sing.