Something is happening again that’s happened too many times before. It’s starting to happen to Scott Walker just as it’s happened in the past to Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan and quite a few others. It’s a rift between an erstwhile conservative rising star and the conservative base – and it’s always over the same thing:
Immigration.
And if the base doesn’t stop doing what it’s doing, there aren’t going to be any viable conservative policy leaders left.
Here is the problem: The base demands nothing less than complete and total commitment to the immediate deportation of all 11 million illegal aliens currently living in the United States. Advocate a policy solution that lets even illegal stay, and you’re “pro-amnesty.” And if you’re “pro-amnesty,” then you’re a RINO or a liberal or an establishment squish.
And if you’re that, you’re done.
Why is this a problem? Because what the base wants is impossible. You can advocate it all day long when you’re not in a position of having to make or execute policy, because it’s always easy to stand on principle when all you have to do is talk. Or vote yes or no.
But once you’re in a position of having to govern, you quickly discover that the ideal sought by absolutists is impossible to achieve for a whole host of reasons. There’s not enough money or other resources to prosecute the cases. There’s no way to find them all. You’d separate parents from children in many cases.
So conservative rising stars who actually get elected to public office and find themselves responsible for governing are suddenly in the unenviable position of having to do the best they can in dealing with immigration, and recognizing that whatever that might be, it will not be good enough for the absolutists in the base.
Both Ryan and Rubio, once considered conservative rock stars, now stand condemned by much of the conservative base because they are thought to have sold out to the establishment on immigration.
And as for Scott Walker, who is about as hot as a guy can be right now in the parlance of presidential consideration, there are already conservatives insisting he is really a liberal because – although he declares himself opposed to amnesty – he has not endorsed immediate blanket deportation. Also, in some years back as Milwaukee County Executive, he approved a resolution calling for “comprehensive immigration reform,” which most conservative activists take rightly or wrongly as code for amnesty.
What we end up with as a result of this dynamic is that every conservative who is able to gain governing experience will at some point have to make a policy decision on immigration. That decision will never be what the conservative base wants, because no one who actually has governing responsibility can do what the conservative base wants. So the decision will be made, the base will be incensed, and the only candidates they will end up willing to support are people who rhetorically maintain uncompromising stands but in reality have never developed any track record of governing on this or any other issue.
And the base needs to stop doing this. No one can give them the total purity on immigration that they want. That doesn’t mean you accept the Obama/Reid/Pelosi approach that would open the borders, stop enforcing the law entirely and put then all on a path to becoming Democrat voters.
But elected officials have to be free to work out actionable solutions to problems that exist. Out-of-control immigration is a real problem. Deportation for everyone is impossible. Stop devouring our own every time they try to find a real solution. That’s how you cannibalize good people and end up electing the likes of Barack Obama.
Or worse.
