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EMIL
FRANZI |
Circular firing squads haunt state GOPSeptember 5, 2007 |
My dear friend and radio
co-host, Tom Danehy, says zealots always form their
firing squads in a circle. That problem seems to haunt
Arizona Republicans.
Save for a diminishing handful of moderate-to-squishy state legislators, mostly housed in Pima County, the Arizona GOP ranges from moderate conservatives like Sen. John McCain, to mainstream conservatives like Sen. Jon Kyl and Congressmen Trent Franks and John Shadegg, to quirky conservatives like the gutsy Congressman Jeff Flake, to more doctrinaire hardcore rightees like Mesa State Rep. Russell Pearce. But that’s not all. Beyond Pearce, who has threatened to run against Flake in the GOP primary for being too soft on illegal immigration, there’s a whole gaggle of further-outs who have plenty of representation on the state committee and often resemble the crowd hoisting torches and headed for the castle in old horror flicks. Forget abortion, taxes, guns and the rest of the platform. The issue that matters above all others is illegal immigration. We have all noted in various letters, columns or radio call-in shows the members of that latter group. Their bellicosity is often exceeded by their near total ignorance. These are the clowns who keep calling for the people to “impeach” Kyl and McCain, totally unaware of the constitutional process for removing a senator. Many seem unable to even spell constitution. During the recent immigration debate, I observed that almost half of those wanting Kyl’s head who wrote to a mainstream conservative blog couldn’t even spell his name. I shudder to think what appears on the REALLY-kook sites. The current GOP divisions — note plural — revolve around House Bill 2779, recently passed and signed by Governor Napolitano, which gets the state into employer sanctions. GOP opposition comes from the party’s Chamber of Commerce wing along with many of the Goldwater Institute’s free-market folks like the late senator’s son, former California Congressman Barry Goldwater Jr. Congressman Flake is the former President of the GWI, indicating there is more diversity on the right than simplistic liberals have noticed. Other opponents like the late senator’s nephew and failed gubernatorial candidate Don Goldwater think that HB 2779 didn’t go far enough. They were working on an initiative that was sidetracked by the passage of HB 2779 with their concurrence, deciding to wait and see if HB 2779 would work. Only Don Goldwater and the others clearly felt too much heat from the torch carriers and reneged on the deal, and the even tougher LAW (Legalize Arizona Workers) initiative is back on. We now have the LAW crowd yelling “RINO” (Republican In Name Only) and “sellout” at guys like Pearce, House Speaker Jim Weiers and GOP State Chair Randy Pullen, who in turn are considered militant hardliners by moderate Republicans and the state’s mostly GOP business community, who are all considered anti-immigrant in some way or other by liberals and open-border advocates. Democrats are smirking, but that may not last. There’s a wealth of survey data indicating that Democratic voters are slightly more hardline on the illegal immigration question than Republicans. Note the Governor’s signature on HB 2779. Ms. Napolitano is a practical woman and reads poll data, too. Whether the LAW initiative will be sufficiently funded to make the ballot is uncertain, but watching its leaders dance around their commitment to HB 2779 brings to mind that sage description of a “reform politician” by Bob Heinlein’s Lazarus Long: “Your utterly sincere and incorruptible reform politician is capable of breaking his word three times before breakfast — not from personal dishonesty as he regrets the necessity and will tell you so — but from unswerving devotion to his ideal. After he gets hardened to this, he’s capable of cheating at solitaire. Fortunately he rarely stays in office long — except during the decay and fall of a culture.” The application of the above obviously extends way beyond the GOP and the immigration issue.
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