Washington – Immigration has supplanted Iraq as the leading issue on television and radio talk shows, complicating the prospects of a Senate bill that President Bush desperately wants passed.
Conservative talk radio’s impact on the immigration debate reached new heights last week, with one host effectively writing an amendment for when the Senate returns to the imperiled bill this week.
National talk-show hosts have spent months denouncing the bill as providing “amnesty” for illegal immigrants. Some top Republicans who support the legislation have defied the broadcast pundits.
Others GOP lawmakers have tried to placate them, to the point of accepting their ideas for amendments.
Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., the key conservative negotiator behind the bill, told reporters Friday that California-based radio host Hugh Hewitt “had several ideas” that “we are trying to include” in amendments to be offered.
Other Bush allies have tried more confrontational approaches, sometimes with bruising results.
Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., told reporters last week: “Talk radio is running America. We have to deal with that problem.” Some hosts, he added, do not know what is in the lengthy bill.
The comments incensed conservative talk-show hosts who generally supported Lott over the years.
Lott is “upset that the American people got right into the middle of the conversation over the problem with illegal aliens and it didn’t turn out all that well for the pro-amnesty forces,” Atlanta-based talk- show host Neal Boortz wrote on his website.
“If Trent Lott and his other buddies up on the Hill aren’t listening to ‘talk,’ then what are they listening to? The answer is either their wallet or their legacy,” he wrote.
Radio host Rush Limbaugh asked his audience, “What are we going to do about Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott?”
Lott’s treatment contrasted sharply with that given to Kyl. In a column posted on his website, Hewitt called Kyl “perhaps the single most effective and principled conservative in the United States Senate.”
The immigration bill would tighten borders and workplace enforcement, create a guest- worker program and provide ways to legal status for many of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S.
The legislation faces showdown votes this week that all sides agree will be close.
If the measure fails, talk radio and TV – where CNN’s Lou Dobbs has been especially critical – will deserve substantial credit, academics and politicians say.
“Talk radio and talk TV are most effective when there’s an immediate action pending,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the University of Pennsylvania, an authority on media and politics. “It’s a classic instance of mobilization with all the pieces in place, and it’s sure to have an effect.”
Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., a leading opponent of the bill, said in an interview that “talk radio has had a significant impact on this issue.” A frequent guest of Dobbs, Hewitt and other conservative hosts discussing immigration, Sessions said, “I think people have learned more from talk radio than from reading the newspapers.”
As for Lott, Sessions said: “I can’t imagine what Trent was thinking. Maybe his mouth was moving and his brain was in neutral.”
