June 25, 2008

Bush's amnesty point man in House crushed in primary

From Politico:

Republican voters in Utah ousted Rep. Chris Cannon in Tuesday’s GOP primary, expressing their dissatisfaction with the six-term congressman over his left-of-center positions on immigration by nominating a challenger who made crackdowns on illegal immigration a central part of his platform.

Cannon was trounced by Jason Chaffetz, the former chief of staff to Gov. Jon Huntsman (R-Utah.) With 93 percent of precincts reporting, Cannon trails Chaffetz by 20 points – 60 to 40 percent. The AP has called the race for Chaffetz.

With his loss, Cannon becomes the third member of Congress to lose in their own party’s primary. Two members of Congress from Maryland, Democrat Al Wynn and Republican Wayne Gilchrest also were defeated in primaries held in February.

Chaffetz is near-guaranteed to become the next congressman for Utah’s Third District, which is one of the most Republican districts in the country. The seat, based in suburban Salt Lake City and Provo, gave President Bush 77 percent of the vote in 2004.

Immigration was the driving factor behind Cannon’s unpopularity with the district’s Republican base. Despite sporting a near-perfect score from the American Conservative Union, Cannon alienated border security hawks over the past several years with his belief that illegal immigrants should be eligible for certain government benefits.

In 2003, Cannon sponsored a bill that would give children of illegal immigrants in-state college tuition. And he has also supported legislation that would allow illegal immigrants to receive guest worker status.


A friend writes:

A few more notes

1. This is only the second time in 30 years that Utah Republicans have dumped an incumbent.

2. Cannon outspent Chaffetz massively. One source (http://deseretnews.com/article/content/mobile/1,5620,700237801,00.html?printView=true) gave $631,000 to $98,000 as the numbers. Anopther source (http://www.kutv.com/content/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=5fde6f86-b27f-4c58-945d-67c5e61e6dc9) gives $740,000 to $111,000. Yet another source states the numbers at $740,000 to $170,000.

3. Cannon served 6 terms before he was defeated. There were two prior attempts to remove him via the Republican primary. Both were driven by immigration.

4. Chaffetz specifically attacked birthright citizenship.

5. A few quotes from the various articles about Cannon's defeat.

"In 2003, Cannon sponsored a bill that would have allowed states to charge in-state tuition for children of illegal immigrants.

Rather than deporting all illegal immigrants, Cannon has called for a guest-worker program that doesn't punish businesses and allows immigrants to travel freely across the border.

Chaffetz said he wants the U.S. to deport all illegal immigrants and stop granting automatic citizenship to children born here if their parents aren't legal residents. "

"The organization built by Chaffetz and Scott overcame a large gap in campaign cash that grew in the final days before the vote. Cannon's fundraising machine raked in $86,000 in large donations over the last dozen days, according the Federal Elections Commission Web site. Over the same time period, Chaffetz gathered just $6,300."

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good riddance. I had been under the impression that Mormons in general are pro-immigration, but maybe that's incorrect.

Wayne Gilchrest was also pro-amnesty, and he was defeated by Andy Harris, who seems to be a serious immigration patriot: http://andyharris08.org/issues/illegal-immigration.html

I don't know how much of a role immigration played in that primary. I hope that it played a big part, since that would help overturn the post 2006 conventional wisdom that immigrations positions don't swing elections, but a quick google search doesn't show anybody talking about it except for some obscure partisan blogs.

Anonymous said...

One of Chris Cannon's big problems was that he was in a sense, positively Clintonian. By that I mean that while you could never pin a particular scandal on him, he always seemed to have an air of scandal hanging about him. Links to shady characters (David Safavian), shady deals (including Premium Beef of Nebraska and deals with his own lobbyist brother), and bitter court cases sealed away from the "prying eyes" of his constituents. He also had a habit of implying that this term (whichever term "this" was) would be his last (so why bother replacing him?); or that he would only remain in Congress 'so long as his was a rising star' (which, in a Congress where power is mostly determined by seniority, basically meant forever). I wonder - was the GOP's loss of majority status not enough to bring his star down even a little?

Cannon's responses to yesterday's defeat shows another disturbing aspect of his personality. In one case he responded that "being released is not a bad thing at all." In Mormon terminology, getting 'released' is getting let go from a church calling, like being a Sunday School teacher, after you've been doing it for awhile. It's usually a relief. But if this is analogous to church, Cannon wasn't "released" - he was excommunicated.

Then he said that his next major goal was to "go out and make money." Great - another congressman with riches on his mind.

He also implied that he was happy with his service in Congress, indicating a disturbing tone-deafness to his own constituents. He implied that voter reaction yesterday was indicative of "a pox on all your houses" mentality - failing to explain why our other two congressmen did not face primary challengers at all (Rob Bishop is thoroughly anti-amnesty; Jim Matheson pretends to be).

Meanwhile, others (though perhaps not Cannon) have suggested that yesterday's results were due to low voter turnout. Only 44,000 people voted in the 3rd District primary this year as opposed to 58,000 in 2006 (the rest couldn't afford the gas). But Chaffetz's margin of victory was so big - over 9,000 votes - that, if turnout had been the same as in 2006, 82% of the 14,000 extra voters would've had to go for Cannon for him to win, which seems highly unlikely.

Maybe Cannon was a hard worker. Maybe, besides his whole support for amnesty (for which virtually no one here ever forgave him), he was a good representative. So what message does yesterday's primary send? Many political leaders like to wax eloquently about both our need for compassion as well as our economic need for the work illegal immigrants do. They act as though they alone have given great deliberation to the morality of illegal immigration, while hoi polloi are just groveling down in the dirt throwing temper tantrums. But we, too, have given great thought to the moral, political, and economic issues surrounding immigration. We understand it very well - and we know that it isn't good (especially sine we tend to live near these illegals, while most congressmen are safely ensconced in mor eupscale neighborhoods). Many of us know that illegal and mass immigration was a big part of the reason that the boom times of 2002-2007 did not feel like boom times. These politicians need to understand that they need to stop replacing our morality with their own.

Moreover, yesterday's primary sends the message that when you support amnesty you remain vulnerable for a very long time. It's been years since Cannon really said or did anything controversial about illegal immigration, but his voters didn't forget. They tried to oust him in 2004, and failed; tried to oust him in 2006, and failed; tried to oust him again in 2008 - and won. Those politicians who make a choice to support open borders need to learn that they will forever be looking over their shoulders. All it takes is the right year, the right conditions, and the right opponent.

mnuez said...

Well, this is good news.

Not that any of this really matters very much though. Business interests never lose and they want cheap labor at home and the availability to outsource every conceivable job where a penny can be saved.

And they will not be defeated.

Oh sure, we may be blessed with fewer illegal aliens once we've got a fence but, for the love of sweet Vishnu, we'll be SWIMMING in "guest workers".

Money Always Wins.*

mnuez


(*except in violent revolutions)

Anonymous said...

Great to hear this!

Anonymous said...

This is good news. It is too bad that it comes as the Republicans are going to go down in flames due to the Iraq war and other loony foreign policy decisions, the reason for which we are all aware of here.

Anonymous said...

I've never heard of this scam before, Puerto Ricans are selling their social security cards and other forms of Identification to people who manufacture false papers. This article is from the Wilm (DE) News Journal:

http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080625/NEWS01/806250358/1006/NEWS

Anonymous said...

http://www.opensecrets.org/races/summary.php?id=UT03&cycle=2008

There are the money stats for the race. 87% of Cannon's contributions from PACs, 84% of Chaffetz's contributions were from individuals. Chaffetz raised 80% more from individuals than Cannon (he didn't spend a lot of his money, although these stats are dated June 4). Always nice to see the candidate of the people crush the machine candidate.

Anonymous said...

iSteve is praising someone named 'Chaffetz'? Sure he converted to LDS, but what was he before...(J)

BTW His father was briefly married to Kitty Dukakis (J)

I always thought that Jews were genetically programmed to be in favor of open borders.

Do you think that Kevin McDonald's enemies have bought iSteve just to prove his theories aren't true (to coin a phrase)?

Anonymous said...

Chaffetz: Righteous Jew!

I understand that many patriotic Jews feel bad about some of the grumbling in the comments section -- and worse about the actions of some of their kinsmen.

Thus I propose that we create a Righteous Jew award similar to the informal and formal accolades bestowed on Righteous Gentiles.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shtetl/righteous/

testing99 and chaim, are you ready to step right up and claim your prize? A precondition for the award is an opposition to endless immigration *and* endless war. Though frankly if the price of closing our borders is war with Iran, that might -- *might* -- actually be worth it if I could come home to a country without MS-13 and the Mexican Mafia.

Regarding the Righteous Jew prize,
Francka Coen, Solomon, Rothblum, Levenson, Diveroli and company are unfortunately ineligible...

Anonymous said...

Poster mnuez' claim that "money always wins" is false. There are two key facts that apply here:

1 The current "elect a new people" programs that are in effect in various western nations are unprecedented.

2 Powerful business interests who thrive on cheap labor are not unprecedented, on the contrary, they have always been with us.

Therefore it is logical to conclude that the Big Business wet dream of importing alien laborer populations has been largely thwarted in the western nations over the centuries.

But Big Business is getting its way today because, ironically, the ongoing Marxist revolution strips a nation of its natural identity -- whether that identity is racial, ethnic, linguistic, or religious.

So Big Business is benefiting from -- or at least achieving symbiosis with -- the post-national Marxist left wing agenda of demographic destruction.

Anonymous said...

Cannon and his ilk are the vanguard of the servile state, a synthesis of capitalism and socialism. Mass immigration from the third world into a welfare state can only lead to a class utterly dependent and subservient to the state.

Little capitalist piglets like Cannon don't realize that it is a Devil's bargain they are making with socialism.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...

Poster mnuez' claim that "money always wins" is false. There are two key facts that apply here:

1 The current "elect a new people" programs that are in effect in various western nations are unprecedented.

2 Powerful business interests who thrive on cheap labor are not unprecedented, on the contrary, they have always been with us.

Therefore it is logical to conclude that the Big Business wet dream of importing alien laborer populations has been largely thwarted in the western nations over the centuries.

No, Big Business has imported mass amounts of alien labor in the past to suppress wages, the Irish and Italians are a perfect example.

Anonymous said...

People outside of Utah - or uninformed people inside of it (and there are lots of those) - just really can't comprehend how bad Cannon is/was. Deceptive, disturbed, deceitful, profane, mean spirited, tyrranical: he had it all. And it all came out after his defeat Tuesday:

DENIAL: "I'm actually pretty happy about last night's results. I think I'll be able to do many of the things I would ordinarily do in Congress on the outside without having to suffer the sort of difficulties that come with that job." - to the AP (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080626/ap_on_el_ho/cannon_defeated)

DENIAL/DECEIT: He said that while he's glad he won't serve a seventh term, he had felt he owed it to his constituents to run for re-election this year. - ibid.

SORELOSERISM: "I guess I need to get to know Chaffetz a little bit. I don't know enough about him to make a commitment" - ibid.

DENIAL/GREED: "There is a base vote that is opposed to me. But being released is not all a bad thing. I have lots of options and alternatives. If I don't win I'll do exactly the same thing I did before and essentially what I'm doing now. I'll go out and make money, which I can't really do now, and continue to develop tools to help Republicans go out and win." - to the Deseret News (http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,700237809,00.html)

MEANSPIRITEDNESS/DENIAL: "This is a revolution. A revolution by the people sitting at home" and not voting. "A revolution by those who did vote," said Cannon, who added he was caught up in a nationwide feeling of anger and disgruntlement — anger that helped sweep him from office. "It was a 'pox on all your houses' attitude out there" among voters. - to the Deseret News (http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,700237801,00.html)

MEANSPIRITEDNESS/DENIAL/PASSING THE BUCK: "The extremists who don't want to win elections have taken over the party," he said, referring to Republicans in other parts of the country. "We don't want that to happen in Utah. Politics is way too important to leave to the boors." - Cannon to the Daily Herald (http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/271099/17)

Cannon's seat was handed to him on a silver platter by Bill Clinton, who as a campaign gimmick turned a fair chunk of southern Utah (1.9 million acres) into the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, putting billions of dollars of the world's cleanest-burning coal off limits to miners and paying off favors to his Indonesian buddy Moctar Riady, who had control of the world's only other known low sulfur coal deposits.

Anonymous said...

ronduck:

The Irish and Italian immigrants to America were never considered aliens in an anti-western, anti-Christian sense.

And the Irish and Italians were allowed in limited numbers and were not allowed to overwhelm the natives as is happening today.

And, yes, the plans of the corrupt business elite of the American South were thwarted and the African cheap labor supply was cut off.

Anonymous said...

Probably no article highlights the arrogance, hypocrisy, and tone-deafness of Chris Cannon, the Utah media, and the Republican leadership in general than this so-called "analysis" of Tuesday's primary. It has to be read to be believed.

Anonymous said...

ronduck: "No, Big Business has imported mass amounts of alien labor in the past to suppress wages, the Irish and Italians are a perfect example."

Which pissed people off, leading to immigration restriction. Importation of non-European cheap labor led to outright Exclusion Acts. Businesses have always pulled up as much cheap Mexican labor as they were allowed to get away with, but prior to the last few decades, the gluttons were unapologetically denied the all-you-can-eat buffet.

Anonymous said...

Righteous Jew!

testing99 and chaim, are you ready to step right up and claim your prize? A precondition for the award is an opposition to endless immigration *and* endless war.


Then EvilNeocon, I mean testing99, has no chance. He's levelheaded on most cultural and evol-con issues, but is utterly delusional on anything involving bombing/invading Israel's enemies.

Tom Merle said...

What's all this drivel about Big Business supporting illegal immigration. We have met the enemy and he is us. We are quick to oppose it politically, emotionally, philosophically, but we readily support it with our pocket books, both indirectly and directly.

Like rational economic beings everywhere, we are always seeking deals--just like Big Business--which means the goods and services we are buying are produced more and more by Hispanics.

For example, virtually the entire cooking staff of every "Italian" restaurant, or any restaurant for that matter, is composed of South Americans.

And then when we procure people to assist us with some task, such a gardening, whom do we hire?

Sounds like Big Business just became Everyman's Business... Or put another way, aren't we all "Johns" to one degree or another....?

jbday said...

c23,

The CW about the Gilchrest/Harris primary was that Harris's victory was more about abortion and Iraq than immigration. I doubt there's any scientific polling on the matter though.