| Morning Jolt – January 30, 2013 By Jim Geraghty Here's your Wednesday Morning Jolt. Enjoy! Jim Obama Tips His Hand: He Would Rather Have the Immigration Issue to Run on in 2014 Here's the immigration debate in a nutshell: Obama and most of the Democrats want 11 million new Democratic voters, and they want them now. This is why the "non-immigrant visa" and temporary working papers, with a potential path to citizenship that could take 15 years, aren't sufficient for them. The most infuriating bits of Obama's campaign rally to demand the passage of immigration-reform legislation that he hasn't introduced yet: I'm here today because the time has come for common-sense, comprehensive immigration reform. Applause.) The time is now. Now is the time. Now is the time. Now is the time. AUDIENCE: Sí se puede! Sí se puede! THE PRESIDENT: Now is the time. Gee, you think he had a slogan he wanted to make sure got in the coverage? Later: We can't allow immigration reform to get bogged down in an endless debate. We've been debating this a very long time. So it's not as if we don't know technically what needs to get done. Oh, really? Because the whole reason this is controversial is because there is genuine, passionate disagreement about "what needs to get done." And if Congress is unable to move forward in a timely fashion, I will send up a bill based on my proposal and insist that they vote on it right away. Oh, really? And what will that do? Hey, Mr. President, if Congress is unable to move forward in a timely fashion in their own compromise put together by both parties, what are the odds that a GOP House will pass your bill? See, this is the indicator that you don't really want a bill passed; you want the issue to run on in 2014, telling Latino voters about how those mean, nasty Republicans blocked citizenship for cousin Luis. Senator Rubio is underwhelmed: "I am concerned by the president's unwillingness to accept significant enforcement triggers before current undocumented immigrants can apply for a green card. Without such triggers in place, enforcement systems will never be implemented and we will be back in just a few years dealing with millions of new undocumented people in our country. Furthermore, the president ignored the need for a modernized guest worker program that will ensure those who want to immigrate legally to meet our economy's needs can do so in the future. Finally, the President's speech left the impression that he believes reforming immigration quickly is more important than reforming immigration right. A reform of our immigration laws is a consequential undertaking that deserves to be subjected to scrutiny and input from all involved. I was encouraged by the president's explicit statement that people with temporary legal status won't be eligible for Obamacare. If in fact they were, the potential cost of reform would blow open another big, gaping hole in our federal budget and make the bill untenable." Bryan Preston: "Obama is not proposing legislation, but the gruel he is offering is designed to pull the debate to the left and weaken the already weak push for real security on the border. The president is putting his cards on the table to undermine American sovereignty. In due time, he'll pull the rug out from under Sen. Marco Rubio and the Republicans involved in the Gang of Eight, and they can be expected to play the fool." At Reason, Ed Krayewski notices, "While President Obama now assumes the role of advocate for immigration reform, the last time Washington attempted the endeavor, in 2007, then-Senator Barack Obama did his part to ensure its failure, the kind of partisan play Obama now laments in Congress and says he condemns." He's John Kerry, and He's . . . Reporting for Duty! No surprises: "The Senate today confirmed John Kerry to be the next Secretary of State by a vote of 94-3. As expected, the former Senator and Foreign Relations Committee chairman had no trouble sailing through his confirmation process. The only three dissenters were Republicans Jim Inhofe (OK), John Cornyn (TX), and Ted Cruz (TX)." And now, the consequence: "Gov. Deval Patrick is keeping his choice for interim U.S. senator close to the vest. Patrick is promising to announce on Wednesday who he will appoint to fill Sen. John Kerry's seat until a special election is held in Massachusetts on June 25. Kerry was confirmed by the Senate today to be the nation's next secretary of state." And the Democrats are likely to have a primary: Democratic Congressman Stephen Lynch is preparing to make a major announcement. Lynch's campaign would not confirm Tuesday what the Thursday announcement is, but Lynch is widely expected to say he is a candidate for the Senate seat being vacated by John Kerry. Lynch will begin Thursday with stops in Springfield and Worcester with an evening event at Iron Workers Local 7 in South Boston. The Boston Democrat has been privately telling supporters of his plans to run, although he publicly said last week that he had not made a final decision. Fellow Democratic U.S. Rep. Edward Markey has already announced he will seek Kerry's seat. Adding New Cultural Indicators to the Republican Brand Image Since Election Night, the cry on the right has been, "culture, culture, culture." And we're probably going to get a bunch of good ideas and a bunch of bad ideas coming out of this new focus. I've talked in the past about Obama as a ubiquitous pop-cultural phenomenon, and looking back to Obama's rise in 2007-2008, perhaps we ought to look closer at his coverage in the non-political media than in the political media. Because we've had a lot of black politicians before, a lot of liberal politicians before, and a lot of charismatic politicians before, but clearly Obama managed to achieve a level of public adoration (deification?) unique in modern political history.  In the end, maybe the institutions that we consider the MSM were less relevant to Obama's rise than the glowing coverage of him in places like Rolling Stone, Us Weekly, Men's Vogue, Fast Company, Men's Health and so on. (We can put Vanity Fair, GQ, Esquire and The New Yorker in the quasi-political magazine category.) Think about Obama's embrace of Jay-Z and Beyoncé. There are a lot of Americans, particularly young Americans, who have no real interest in, say, how federal stimulus money gets spent. But they're sure as heck interested in Jay-Z and Beyoncé. Almost every politician before Obama wouldn't have touched Jay-Z with a ten-foot pole. One look at the lyrics of "Girls, Girls, Girls" (you've been warned, it depicts the rapper assessing and categorizing his harem by ethnic stereotype) and they would run screaming from any stage with Jay-Z. But Obama assessed, correctly, that the "cool" factor of having an association with Jay-Z would overwhelm any complaints about Obama's de facto association with or approval of the seedier side of the life depicted by the hip-hop star. So along comes Obama, and he's worlds apart even from what we had seen nominated by the Democrats in recent cycles like Al Gore and John Kerry. He's black, he's urban, he's young, he's only recently wealthy and tells tales of financial woes as recent as 2000. He can sound like a preacher when he needs to (listening to Jeremiah Wright all those years) but also is the kind of politician your average outspoken atheist could warmly embrace. As a result, you have large swaths of a not-usually-terribly-engaged, not-usually-terribly-interested voting public gravitating to him: African Americans, obviously, but also young voters, urban voters . . . they look at him and see a cultural figure who reflects themselves, not merely a political figure. What cultural markers is the Republican brand associated with? Two things come to mind, the aspects of life that Obama said rural Pennsylvanians cling to, guns and religion. And those are pretty good ones; the country is full of people who take religion seriously and there are a lot of people who enjoy their right to own a firearm, for reasons ranging from hunting to sport shooting to collecting to self-defense. But as we've seen, that's not enough to get a majority of the popular vote or 270 electoral votes, and there are some pretty big swaths of the country -- mostly the West Coast and Northeast -- where those indicators either don't help us or work against us. So, thinking of new cultural traits the GOP could attempt to adopt as some of their trademarks, just off the top of my head . . . Foodies? There are a lot of folks who are passionately interested in food, in a way there just weren't a generation ago. (See Vic Matus's great article from a while back on the rise of celebrity chefs.) Why can't the GOP be the Foodie Party, the one that fights moronic dietary laws like Bloomberg's ban on 20 ounce sodas, California's idiotic foie gras ban, the ludicrous talk of the Food and Drug Administration putting even more stringent regulations on raw-milk cheeses on top of the existing ones. (For Pete's sake, slap a warning label on it letting people know about the risk of raw-milk cheeses.) We ought to be standing up to the Nanny State, and making the case that grown adults who we entrust with a right to vote, a right to own a gun, and a right to speak their minds ought to have the right to eat whatever they want. College-Age Drinkers: Propose lowering the drinking age to 18, on the argument that you'll see less binge drinking on college campuses if 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds can just go into a bar or restaurant and order a beer. If you're really worried about lowering the drinking age across the board, make it legal for those between 18 and 21 to consume alcohol in a licensed establishment, so that a bartender or server could cut them off if there are signs of dangerous intoxication. I guarantee this would make the College Republicans a heck of a lot more popular on campus. Speaking of which . . . Wasteful college spending: Turn the highest-paid university presidents in America into the new villains of our economy, hiking tuition and letting standards slide while they take home ever-bigger paychecks and wildly generous payouts upon retirement. How soft are the Democrats on this issue? They ran the highest-paid university president in America (more than $3 million in a year) for Senate in Nebraska last year. At least the companies run by greedy CEOs are forced to compete in the marketplace; universities can keep going under bad management by sucking up government aid, forced tuition hikes, and alumni donations for a long while. Isn't it time to bring a salary cap to university administrators? To read more, visit www.nationalreview.com Save 75% . . . Subscribe to National Review magazine today and get 75% off the newsstand price. Click here for print-edition information. Click here for digital-edition information. And National Review makes a great gift. Click here to send a full-year gift to NR Digital, and here to send a full-year subscription to the print edition. Conservatives – stay healthy! Get plenty of Vitamin Sea on the next National Review cruise. Visit www.nrcruise.com for complete information about our next trip. National Review, Inc. | 
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