Doing Jobs Republicans Won't Do

Robert Stacy McCain previews the central upcoming GOP grassroots battleground:

From the lofty heights of the Beltway power pyramid, politicians are sometimes able to look down and see the urban poor, whom the D.C. government's decades of generous welfare policies magnetically attracted to the capital. But what about the American worker? What about the ordinary Americans who have diplomas, rather than degrees? What about those hard-working people who have jobs, rather than "careers"?

Those people are invisible in Washington, at least so far as the Beltway's Republican elite are concerned. The GOP elite find it more pleasant to listen to the sneering snobs of the Wall Street Journal who - in reaction to a recent roundup of illegals at meatpacking plants - opined that "the nation's illegal immigration problem is ... primarily a labor shortage problem." Wall Street, it seems, is another vantage points from which it is impossible to see the American worker.

President Bush has made a habit of talking about illegal aliens who supposedly do "jobs Americans won't do." But when over a thousand illegals were arrested at Swift Co. plants, a curious thing happened: Americans showed up to apply for the resulting job openings.

There is no "labor shortage problem," and there is no such thing as "jobs Americans won't do," but there are apparently jobs that Republican elites in Washington won't do - such as protecting the nation's borders from millions of illegal invaders.

Stacy McCain has been one of our favorite big media folks since the publication of the outstanding Donkey Cons earlier this year. He has had to curtail blogging but his excellent writing continues apace.