{"id":7017,"date":"2006-03-31T12:29:04","date_gmt":"2006-03-31T17:29:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7017"},"modified":"2006-03-31T12:29:04","modified_gmt":"2006-03-31T17:29:04","slug":"dobbs-for-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/dobbs-for-president\/","title":{"rendered":"Dobbs for President?"},"content":{"rendered":"

CNN’s [tag]Lou Dobbs[\/tag] has a venue and a growing audience — and he’s not afraid to use it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The nation’s most prominent opponent of current immigration policy began his day yesterday on the “Today” show on NBC, debating a Hispanic defender of illegal immigrants. He moved on to “American Morning” on CNN to denounce a bill passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday as “an amnesty program.”<\/p>\n

By nightfall he was on a plane headed to Mexico, where he intended to assess critically the planned discussions on the issue between President Bush and President Vicente Fox of Mexico.<\/p>\n

This central figure in the increasingly fractious debate over future immigration policy was not a senator or congressman, nor even a lobbyist on either side of the issue. It was instead, a television news anchor, Lou Dobbs of CNN.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Could Dobbs parlay his notoriety on the issue into a credible national campaign? Michael Crowley<\/a> and Marshall Wittmann<\/a> suggest it’s certainly possible. As the Bull Moose put it, the immigration controversy has led to “a combustible political situation that could provide an opening for an outsider. It has the feel of 1992 when old Ross Perot emerged to shake up the Presidential race…. The Perotistas more or less continue to exist as Republican leaning independents. However, this constituency is likely very dissatisfied with the current situation.”<\/p>\n

To be sure, Dobbs hasn’t expressed any real interest in becoming a candidate, but he is nevertheless helping to keep the issue on the front-burner with reports like this one<\/a>, in which he argues that Bush and the GOP are “defying [the] people’s will” by not taking “border security” seriously enough.<\/p>\n

An outsider\/populist using CNN to launch himself into politics? Ross Perot meets Pat Buchanan? Stranger things have happened — but not much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CNN’s [tag]Lou Dobbs[\/tag] has a venue and a growing audience — and he’s not afraid to use it. The nation’s most prominent opponent of current immigration policy began his day yesterday on the “Today” show on NBC, debating a Hispanic defender of illegal immigrants. He moved on to “American Morning” on CNN to denounce a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7017\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}