In this week's New Yorker Ryan Lizza writes about the emerging issue in the Republican race - illegal immigration. His theme? The way the major candidates, John McCain excepted, are talking tough.
Will it work? Politically, I mean.
Lizza gives us the view of Democrat Simon Rosenberg:
The Bush strategy—enlightened on race, smart on immigration, developed in Texas and Florida with Jeb Bush—has been replaced by the Tancredo-Romney strategy, which is demonizing and scapegoating immigrants, and that is a catastrophic event for the Republican Party.
And that of Tom Tancredo himself:
If you think for a moment that Romney, Giuliani, and Thompson haven’t polled the heck out of this thing, you’re wrong. They have. And they are there now because the polls tell them this is where they should be.
So who is right?
Perhaps the British experience can shed some light on this question.
Let's start with some history.
In the two decades before the 1997 General Election (the one that saw Tony Blair sweep into 10 Downing Street) immigration was not a big political issue.
Michael Howard, the Conservative Home Secretary, sought to persuade the party (of which I was a senior official at the time) to campaign on the rising number of immigrants (both legal and illegal) in 97. Party leader John Major vetoed his attempts, not wishing to alienate immigrant communities.
Between 1997 and 2001, new Tory leader William Hague began to realise that there was a great deal of anger about illegal immigration. Pretty cautiously (I was his speechwriter) he began to make public pronouncements on the topic. But even the smallest, most careful, comments were hugely controversial. The print media was reasonably supportive. The broadcast media gave the impression that Hague was a racist.
Although illegal immigration was not a great part of Hague's losing campaign in 2001, it was written up as one of the reasons for his defeat.
But this did not stop Michael Howard. When he finally became Conservative leader himself he returned to the topic. Again he did not make immigration central to the campaign, but in 2005 the media talked about his stance almost every day. De facto it was one of the main themes of his losing campaign.
New leader David Cameron got the message. He rarely talks about the question. He does argue for a limit on immigration and a firm stance on illegals but he is beyond careful about campaigning on it.
So that's the history. But now I have to introduce you to a mystery.
It's pretty clear that being tough on immigration hasn't worked for the Tories, but it's not at all clear why.
Polling, particularly qualitative polling, suggests that people are very angry about migrants and want a much tougher stance. This comes out of research really strongly.
So if that's what people want, why don't they vote for it? Here are my conclusions.
First is the class structure of attitudes to immigration. Migrants compete for work with unskilled labourers, live in poorer communities and send their children to inner city schools. Middle class people's experience is of cheap labour. This shapes reactions.
So the Tories were winning approval for their position on immigration either from older or more nationalistic people who already voted Conservative but now did so with a thicker pen. Or from poor voters who supported Labour and weren't going to back the Tories in any case.
The aspiring, floating middle was not interested.
Second is that to say they weren't interested is to understate the case. The floating voters found anger on immigration offputting. In fact even those who liked the policy were worried about the anger. Even they wanted an optimistic, upbeat party who would govern modern Britain as it is rather than as they want it to be.
There was also a problem with seeming to be obsessed by foreigners. This made the party seem unfit to govern.
Third, distrust of politicians made voters think that even those who promise to act on immigration, won't. So a pledge to do something will not be believed by those who approve of it.
Britain is not the US.
On the one hand in the US an anti-illegals stance is made harder by the sheer scale of the migrant community. The votes of migrants themselves are a bigger factor in the US than in the UK.
Then again, in the US it is possible to reach voters directly with paid television. This makes wedge issue campaigning easier than in the UK. Here the relatively liberal broadcast media filters the message.
Nevertheless the similarities are strong enough, I think, that the experience of British Tories helps explain why Rosenberg is nearer the truth than Tancredo.
The issue is immensely tempting. I can see that. But will it work politically? I doubt it.
