Taxes, no; migrants, maybe

SOMETHING curious is happening on the right of American politics: immigration is losing its potency as a driver of voter anger. Just ask Chris McDaniel, a Mississippi Republican who represents the Tea Party’s last, best hope of toppling an establishment grandee in 2014. Mr McDaniel hopes that grassroots Republicans will ditch Senator Thad Cochran, a four-decade Washington veteran, and instead choose him as the party’s Senate candidate for mid-term elections in November.

Fiery conservative groups have spent heavily on pro-McDaniel TV ads. Mr McDaniel, a member of the state legislature, has been endorsed by Sarah Palin, former governor of Alaska, and Glenn Beck, an angry radio host. Such folk loathe Mr Cochran, a low-key Republican senator of the old school, devoted to extracting millions from federal coffers and sending them gift-wrapped to Mississippi. Polls differ on who is ahead: the 76-year-old incumbent or his challenger. The primary on June 3rd is, by common consent, Mr Cochran’s first competitive race since 1984.

Seeking to rally support, Mr McDaniel has signed an anti-immigration pledge, created in April by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). Signers vow to oppose an “amnesty” for migrants in the country without the right papers, defined by FAIR as any plan that would let “illegal aliens” work legally. That is hardline stuff: other immigration hawks are mostly concerned with blocking paths to full citizenship, or ensuring that legalisation goes hand-in-hand with tougher border controls. The FAIR pledge goes much further. It attacks legal migration, on which America was founded. It demands that candidates oppose any increase in residence permits or guest-worker visas—supposedly to protect American jobs.

Mr Cochran is hardly a migrant-hugger: he has opposed every broad immigration reform sent to the Senate in his time. But Mr McDaniel calls him “silent” in the fight against immigration and challenges him to sign the FAIR pledge. McDaniel campaign flyers boast of his record as an immigration foe, co-authoring laws that would have turned traffic cops and other local officials into immigration enforcement agents (some egregious bills were killed by the state’s mighty farm lobbies and business allies).

Yet at a packed McDaniel meeting at a rural diner on May 19th, immigration felt like an afterthought. While the mostly silver-haired crowd munched on fried catfish, the candidate talked of a nation imperilled by government spending. He charged Mr Cochran with failing to fight Barack Obama, “the worst president in this country’s history”. Diners then asked Mr McDaniel about such issues as school prayer (he is pro), spending on the elderly (he sidestepped that one), funds for military veterans (there should be more) and why so few voters know that the United Nations is plotting to control America’s oceans through a treaty on maritime law (Mr Cochran has a bad record on international treaties, the candidate replied carefully).

The primary has seen enough mud fly to dam the Mississippi Delta, and that came up, too. Supporters asked about a lurid Cochran-campaign TV ad that accuses Mr McDaniel of being soft on crystal meth, a nasty narcotic (untrue, said the candidate). Local reporters waited, eager to ask about a scandal involving a McDaniel supporter who sneaked into a nursing home to film Mr Cochran’s ailing wife (the McDaniel camp denies all knowledge).

Only in an eighth round of questions was immigration finally raised. Mr McDaniel declared himself anti-amnesty, and attacked the Chamber of Commerce, a business lobby that has been running pro-Cochran TV ads. The chamber wants more immigrants to drive down wages, he asserted: that is why they are against me. The room applauded but, interviewed later, Mr McDaniel conceded that immigration has fallen down the list of voter concerns. “If you’d asked me back in 2007 or 2008, it would have been one of the biggest issues in the state,” he mused.

Nearly every Republican member of Congress has signed a pledge never to raise income taxes. Few prominent Republicans have signed the FAIR pledge. To cheers from talk-radio, a candidate in Nebraska’s recent Senate primary used the pledge to paint the Republican front-runner as weak on immigration. The front-runner, Ben Sasse, won anyway. Mike Simpson, a Republican congressman in Idaho, won his primary on May 20th despite TV ads calling him pro-amnesty. Nationwide polls find that most voters back giving undocumented residents a pathway to legal status, so long as they pay back-taxes, border controls are tightened and so on. A poll released on May 12th found that three-quarters of Tea-Party supporters could live with some form of legalisation.

Immigrants are stealing our burgers

Back at Mr McDaniel’s catfish fry, views were slightly flintier. The lunch meeting was organised by Jeppie Barbour, a veteran activist whose son Henry and younger brother Haley (a former governor of Mississippi) are pillars of the Republican establishment and Cochran allies. The elder Barbour offered a parable to explain local views about “violators of the border”. Imagine cooking burgers in a backyard when an intruder “crawled under the fence” to eat one, he ventured. “Would you offer him a second one, and later maybe invite him to stay the night? I don’t think so. You’d set the dogs on him, or call the cops.” That said, other issues worry Mississippians more just now, Mr Barbour agreed.

Mississippi is an unusually conservative place. Yet its primary offers broader lessons. Immigration is not at the top of people’s minds: most voters want more and better-paid jobs. Those trying to blame immigration for America’s economic ills, touting pledges to close the borders to legal jobseekers, are not getting very far. And if even Republican primary voters in Mississippi are not spitting with fury about migrants, that suggests that a big, bipartisan immigration reform is actually possible. If Congressional leaders balk again, shame on them.