Mitchell Blatt: Interview With Michelle Malkin

Mitchell Blatt interviews Michelle Malkin. An excerpt:

How can conservatives get their message across to the public?

We've e got some big megaphones on our side, too, and obviously conservative talk radio is the biggest. I don’t think there’s a major conservative talk show host who doesn’t have himself or herself or their staff read the blogs. If you listen to Rush on a daily basis, you realize he’s not just picking up on the obvious conservative outlets. … A lot of times, I’ll hear him citing the work of smaller blogs. ...

In the wake of the 2008 campaign, the GOP establishment has gotten their internet operations. … There’s a difference there between the more cool aid drinking GOP blogs and the less partisan blogs that are committed to covering things based on interests and principles. There are some GOP strategists who think the entire right side of the aisle should be focused on raising money for the Party, and I think it’s very healthy that there are a lot of us who do not think like that, who are not beholden to the Party.

What is the future of conservatism?

In many ways David Frum’s thesis is wrong. His last book argued essentially that the Republican Party needed to move to the left and stop talking about these old, tired fiscal matters, that the Reagan nostalgia was not going to work for the Party anymore. And yet what was it that galvanized hundreds of thousands of people to take to the streets on April 15?

His way is to elect more Republicans like Arnold Schwarzenegger who is now in deep doo-doo. I think it’s interesting that these same people will argue that people like me are dividing the Republican Party when it’s things like open borders and amnesty that have really weakened the Republican Party base.

I also think it is a mistake to talk about the future of the Republican Party without acknowledging the radical changes to electoral and demographic landscapes. One of the reasons I’ve emphasized immigration so much, not just because of national security reasons, which I think still have primacy. Secondarily, the effect that demographically this has had on Congressional districts around the country.

I think that by rolling over and capitulating to the open borders lobby, the Republican Party has written itself out of existence, certainly in California. The national security implications and the electoral implications—and of course in California the budgetary implications—this is what happens when you allow open border welfare expansionism to eat up your state.