NEW HAMPSHIRE — Covering the primary up here in this subzero
battleground state, I’ve done a fair number of radio interviews.
Callers ask if the primary race is really as absurd as it looks on
television. I relay funny stories from the campaign trail, and we
all have a good laugh at the expense of the Dems.
That was the routine until late last week, anyway, when
lighthearted ribbing of liberals gave way to white-hot anger at
President Bush, after his recent push for de facto “not an
amnesty” amnesty for illegal immigrants. I took dozens of calls and
was overwhelmed by the enormity and ferocity of the response.
The question was no longer “Is Clark the anti-Dean?” but, “Will
a Buchanan come forward to challenge Bush?” “Betrayal” was an
oft-used term. At a weekend college politics conference,
forlorn-looking young Republicans with “Bush-Cheney” buttons on
asked me who else was on the Republican ballot?
ENTER BLAKE
ASHBY, 39, a Missouri entrepreneur and, frankly, the least odd
of the nine no-name Republican candidates challenging Bush here in
New Hampshire. In the mid-'90s Ashby co-founded an independent
communications business in the basement of a laundromat and
eventually sold it to a competitor. Today he remains self-employed,
helping his clients get businesses off the ground — when he isn’t
running for president, that is.
Ashby is articulate and has been on the ground working hard
since November. He is also a former Bush supporter, dismayed at the
president’s abandonment of the traditional “prudence and caution”
of the Republican Party in everything from economics to foreign
policy to immigration.
“For every Democrat and swing vote Bush has bought with our tax
dollars, he deserves to lose a Republican vote,” Ashby says. “I
think the president is a good human being. He seems like a very
warm and caring person. But he has put politics over principle one
too many times.”
Ashby’s take on the immigration debacle is that we should not be
surprised. After all, he said, this is just another payoff that
began with “No Child Left Behind” and continued through the farm
subsidies bill, protectionist tariffs, campaign finance reform, and
the prescription drug bill.
“When is this man going to stop?” Ashby asks, exasperated, at
one point during a recent interview. “I thought I was voting for
Eisenhower and I got Lyndon Johnson.” Ashby jokes a moment later:
“Of course, Johnson isn’t nearly liberal enough for today’s
Democrats.”
Ashby speculates that Bush’s proposed immigration reforms have a
good chance of being killed by a Republican Congress — that Bush
has burned up too much of his political capital to pass another
liberal program. But that it was proposed in the first place is
held up as another example of unprincipled leadership.
“I’m all for immigration, and I’m all for the free market and
global trade,” Ashby says. “But most Americans agree we must
protect our borders. Just because we haven’t done a perfect job of
patrolling those borders doesn’t mean we should just stop trying to
do it. We shouldn’t surrender on an issue of such national and
economic security.”
THE UPSTART CANDIDATE and businessman is also skeptical about just
how much this plan will help illegal immigrants. “Once we grant
legal status to these people, companies won’t hire them anymore,”
he says. “They’ll hire the next batch of illegals. These companies
have already proven that they are willing to go outside the law, if
it means they can pay lower wages and deny their workers basic
rights. Why should we expect them to clean up their act now?”
And what of legal immigrants who have come through arduous legal
channels? he asks. “Do we tell them ‘Hey, you should have just paid
someone $1,000 to sneak you over the border’?”
The efforts of the president to make Democrats’ issues his own
has prevented any real conservative reform from taking place, Ashby
says. “The sad truth is if we had a Democratic president we
wouldn’t have a prescription drug bill, we wouldn’t be talking
about amnesty. At every turn, the president has strong-armed his
party into abandoning their principles.”
His campaign is going better than expected, he says, “with the
caveat that I don’t have a chance.” Ashby didn’t have a game plan
going in, he just “got so damn mad” that he decided to spend some
of his small fortune to make a statement: “Fiscal conservatives
have been taken for granted by this president, and I wanted to make
sure there was a way to protest that.”
The businessman may not be creating the kind of perfect storm
that blew 37 percent of the vote Pat Buchanan’s way in 1992 against
George the First, but there is a growing buzz around his candidacy.
This state is not always kind to George W. Bush — just four years
ago, John McCain drubbed him by 18 points. Ashby certainly will not
give the president that kind of run for his money, but with two
weeks to go and a growing chorus of discontent, he may yet register
a protest vote louder than any of us suspect.
