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((Usually when I write of some politician I'm calling him a son of a
bitch or worse. Here is one guy who got put out on his ass who was
doing a good job. We need to support good leaders. Bret.))

Hostettler For The Nation

By W. James Antle III

"Like life itself, politics isn’t always fair. Just ask former Congressman John Hostettler, a six-term Republican from Indiana. On most of the big questions that President Bush got disastrously wrong—the unfunded Medicare prescription drug benefit, the unpopular war in Iraq, and, of particular importance to VDARE.COM readers, the amnesty for illegal immigrants traveling under the name of "comprehensive immigration reform"—Hostettler got it right.

Among prominent Republicans, only Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul were more
independent—and more willing to oppose the Bush administration from
the right.

Yet that didn’t prevent Hostettler from being swept out of office in
the midterm elections’ anti-Bush tide. His House seat was one of the
very first called for the Democrats in 2006, as he took just 39
percent of the vote against a challenger who imitated him on
immigration and wanted it both ways on Iraq.

To add insult to injury, Hostettler’s loss was cited by the Wall
Street Journal as a data point against both immigration
restrictionists (in a gloating editorial) and antiwar conservatives
(by James Taranto). After all, Hostettler stood like a stone wall
against the 2006 amnesty bill from his perch as chairman of the House
Judiciary Committee’s immigration subcommittee. Also, a member of the
House Armed Services Committee, he was one of just six House
Republicans to vote against authorizing the war. Obviously, the
argument went, for Republicans there was no winning alternative to
what Steve Sailer has described as Invade the World/Invite World.

Indeed, that's the line President Bush himself has taken in his
farewell tour, unabashed by presiding over a spectacular decline in
Republican fortunes. In an exit interview with FOX News, alongside
his father, the president boasted that he did not "bail out my
political party" by withdrawing troops "during the darkest days of
Iraq." (It may have been the only bailout he opposed.) Then in his
final press conference, Bush lectured Republicans to be "open minded"—
presumably as in open borders—rather than "anti-immigrant."

Further compounding the injustice is the reception given Hostettler’s
book explaining his war vote, Nothing for the Nation: Who Got What Out
of Iraq. Hostettler was an early skeptic of WMD claims that were
originally accepted even by most mainstream war critics. Despite that
obvious news angle, no major publisher was interested in his book. The
ex-congressman had to release it through his own small publishing
house. (He will probably make more money if you buy the book direct
from its website).

When Nothing For The Nation hasn't been ignored, it has elicited the
usual smears from the usual suspects. Based on the book's treatment of
neoconservatives, Abe Foxman charges the congressman with "outlandish
notions of secret Jewish cabals". [Here We Go Again: Blaming the Jews
for the Iraq War, by Abraham H. Foxman, August 14, 2008] But Hostettler
—an evangelical sympathetic to Christian Zionism and the state of
Israel—makes no such noxious claims. His foreign-policy arguments may
be debatable, but he makes specific criticisms of specific individuals
rather than any ethnic or religious group.

As a leader of the patriotic immigration reform movement, of course,
Hostettler is used to being called names. In the spring and summer of
2006, as the immigration debate raged on Capitol Hill, he was one of
the legislators who argued that House Republicans should defy the
Senate and defy their own president by refusing to bring
"comprehensive" immigration legislation up for a vote.

Then-House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner was
instrumental in keeping the GOP leadership from caving. Tom Tancredo,
then-chairman of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, was the
public face of the anti-amnesty congressmen. But Hostettler, at the
helm of the House’s most important immigration subcommittee, also
played a key role.

Hostettler’s position on Iraq failed to gain much traction among his
fellow Republicans. Seven Republicans in the entire Congress voted
against the war resolution and only about as many oppose the war
today. But on immigration, Hostettler’s side carried the day.
According to the Washington Post, 75 percent of the House Republican
Conference opposed the Senate immigration bill.[Immigration Deal at
Risk as House GOP Looks to Voters, By Jim VandeHei and Zachary A.
Goldfarb, May 28, 2006] That legislation only passed the upper chamber
due to a high number of Democratic votes.

Opposition wasn’t limited to conservative hardliners. Such liberal
Republicans as Chris Shays of Connecticut and Charlie Bass of New
Hampshire also refused to support the Senate’s approach to immigration
policy. With such a high percentage of the Republican caucus opposed,
the leadership had good reason to remain steadfast—despite pressure
from their president and their Senate colleagues.

In September 2005, President Bush received an early warning sign that
his expansive view of immigration policy wasn’t going to carry the day
among House Republicans. Hostettler, along with past immigration
subcommittee chairman Lamar Smith, sent the president a toughly
worded pro-enforcement letter:

"We write as Members of Congress concerned about immigration. Recently
there has been much discussion of new guestworker or temporary worker
programs. However, we believe that there should be no new guestworker
program or any expansion of the number of lawful residents in our
country until the Executive Branch better enforces current immigration
laws.

“History has shown that enforcement provisions are ignored and
underfunded while guestworker and amnesty provisions are always
implemented.

“The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act contained amnesties for
farm workers and other illegal aliens as well as employer sanctions
and other enforcement provisions. Unfortunately, the amnesties were
carried out and the enforcement was not.

“The 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act
also contained enforcement provisions that were not implemented. For
instance, the bill mandated the implementation of a national exit-
entry tracking system for all aliens. Nine years later the exit-entry
system is still not near completion…

“The American people need to see that the current laws against illegal
immigration are being enforced before any guestworker program can be
considered."

At the time, Hostettler and Smith could find just 17 cosigners for
their letter. But by 2007, when the amnesty juggernaut got rolling
again, there was opposition from across the political spectrum. The
warmed-over Senate immigration bill once again failed, even with
Democrats controlling both houses—and Congress shorn of members like
Hostettler.

Why then did Hostettler and the Republicans lose? The conventional
wisdom says that the anti-amnesty campaign was a political liability,
something that alienated Hispanic voters will motivating no
significant constituency to vote Republican in compensating numbers.

But clearly that’s not the judgment most savvy politicians made. They
voted the amnesty bill down not just in 2006 but also in 2007, despite
Democratic control of Congress.

Red-state Democrats and Republicans running for reelection were among
the most likely to oppose the various iterations of Bush-McCain-
Kennedy. They knew which way the wind was blowing.

Also, hardly anybody outside of safe Democratic districts openly
campaigned in favor of amnesty. While the substance of their positions
varied, most candidates in competitive races used the rhetoric of
border security and immigration enforcement.

Hostettler’s 2006 Democratic challenger, Brad Ellsworth, was a case in
point. He did not campaign against the incumbent’s immigration stance.
In fact, he mirrored it: Ellsworth opposed the 2006 amnesty bill and
called for tighter enforcement. This Ellsworth statement could have
come from Hostettler himself:

"I oppose granting amnesty to people who have broken the law by
entering our country illegally. Instead, we must stop the flow of
illegal immigration, secure our borders, and enforce the laws already
on the books

“A strong immigration policy starts with effective border control, so
the Department of Homeland Security must be given the resources they
need to secure our borders. This isn't just an illegal immigration
problem, it's a homeland security problem. And Congress must address
it."

Unlike many politicians who ran for Congress using such rhetoric in
2006, Ellsworth has actually voted that way since taking office
(though he hasn’t shown the same leadership on the issue as Hostettler—
nor the same interest in more controversial issues like birthright
citizenship or reducing legal immigration). Ellsworth has received an
A-minus rating from Americans for Better Immigration. He has teamed up
with fellow Democrat Heath Shuler on the SAVE Act, which promotes
attrition through enforcement. And he introduced his own e-verify
bill, the Legal Employment Verification Act.

It is therefore clear, despite open-borders propaganda to the
contrary, that the immigration issue did not defeat Hostettler in 2006—
nor did it lead to the Republicans’ loss of Congress. Democrats like
Ellsworth read the politics of immigration, especially as it played in
their own districts, exactly the same way.

It remains to be seen how the Republican Party will deal with
immigration in the Age of Obama. Some Republicans will undoubtedly
argue that the party is better off without principled voices like John
Hostettler.

No Hosttetlers—and nothing for the nation."

http://www.vdare.com/misc/090115_antle.htm