Jun 13 2007
The Only Path Forward For The GOP
I am spending the day as a proud father watching his son graduate from college, so if your posts get caught in the spam filters that is why they are stuck. The oldest daughter graduated from college a few weeks back. If I don’t respond to comments, that is why. So while I am gone I have the solution to the GOP’s divide.
I posted something similar over at Wizbang on a DJ Drummond post asking how can we, the right, move forward again. I thought I would post a version of it here too. The problem we have is one group in the conservative coalition is blocking the desires of another group of the coalition – one headed by Bush and with membership that is from the full spectrum of the GOP base. The anti-amnesty crowd have been trying everything they can to dump those portions of the bill which deal with the illegal aliens who have been here a long time. And in doing so they have questioned the motives and characters of those on the pro-bill side of the debate. For this to end the opposition must end.
There must be common cause and common ground to repair the rift. No bridge no repair. You don’t have to support all aspects of compromise bill to support those portions you believe will do the most good. But you do need to accept elements and ideas and proposals from others in order to govern. No bill will address every possible issue or problem. It fills some holes, leaves others for another time. It will have good elements and not so good elements. All bills are this way. Time to face the facts and either repair the rift or cement it into place.
The anti-amnesty crowd need to come back into the coalition and realize they must respect the wishes and goals of the broader GOP and conservative community. They must or it dies. Focus on those pieces you believe in and put your energies into making them the best you can.
You don’t have to support the hole bill. You don’t have to like the bill’s popular provisions for the existing illegal aliens. But to undermine your allies and attack them is wrong. Oppose, do not fight to the death in a scortched earth campaign. Lose some, win some. Don’t torpedo everything. The GOP is going to be scarred for a long time if this impasse is not fixed, and soon. The bill supporters have not tried to take out any elements that they may not necessarily support or find to be workable solutions. They agreed to create common ground. That is all they can do. It is now time for the opposition to realize they have gone beyond any benefits to party and country and they must mend the rift.
There is no alternative. If the GOP is to rise again it will because diverse groups can come together and trust each other in common cause. It is a reasonable path out. Support your favorite element, tolerate those from others in the coalition. Or kiss the whole thing good-bye.
Addendum: It should be noted successful parties come together on hard issues. Parties that fail are the ones who cannot muster a consensus. Rule of life.
It seems as though the conservative commentators (NRO, LGF, Malkin etc) who are whipping their readers into a frenzy have decided that a conservative governing majority is bad for business.
Congrats to your son and daughter AJ! You must have been an excellent dad. At least we can agree on that. College graduation is always one of the most important days in a persons life. The parents are usually much more aware of that than the graduate.
If a “conservative” government wants to give the country away, they can do it without me. What’s so wonderful about “conservatives” screwing up the country, rather than the lefties? No difference. I certainly won’t vote for anyone —anyone— who supports this amnesty.
AJ
Congrats to the grads and now all everyone has to do is pay down all those durn loans to get through the duration.
At least they are timing their graduations in a strong job market to make it easier to get a foot in the door.
As far as the bill goes there are outstanding issues that need to be corrected and hopefully the worst will be.
However care must be taken and if there are still deal killers at the end, then they should be adjudged as that.
I do not support the do something , even if it’s wrong approach.
If you legitimize them, you can’t unring the bell.
I followed down a link off a Malkin HotAir story about how a thread about Fred Thompson was attracting comments that ran counter the the original posters intent.
In that thread there was a commentor who addressed the even bigger issue than just the bill in front of Congress.
Afte 8 years of president Bush, I would not vote for Fred Thompson, or any Republican, to save my life.
However, my political disposition is no excuse to sit by while this article attacks his comments.
I say this as a Democrat, as an opponent of strict immigration policies, and as a Mexican-American dual citizen who lived in Mexico a quarter of his life:
He Is Absolutely Right.
Mexico indeed has a policy of exporting and exploiting its citizens, and treating them as both an economic and a political commodity, whilst benefitting economically from it, and tightening its own borders.
They export their citizens to avoid feeding them, avoid hiring them, and to keep the flow of US-earned dollars coming into Mexico as a sort of artificial welfare for the country.
Immigration is, for Mexican politicians, what the “Global War on Terror” is for Republicans: an issue of convenience, and an opportunity to blame someone else for their own problems, their own crimes, and their own mistakes.
Both sides of the American immigration debate are distorted, exaggerated, and wrong: the xenophobes who think illegals are taking over, and the racists who think that no white man would do an immigrant’s job. Both arguments are products of simple-monded intellectual charlatanry.
Fact: there is a labor shortage and immigrants are necessary for the economy. Fact: even if domestic labor doesn’t meet the demand, we are still screwing over many poor, white Americans who would gladly pick strawberries, clean toilets, cut grass, and mop floors, if it paid them minimum wage.
The difference is we have a meaningful social security system that allows one to avoid slave labor as a means of subsistance. The Mexican social security system is a sham, and people would rather migrate and shovel manure for 3 dollars a day than watch their children starve to death. Most unemployed Americans are NOT exploiting the system or trying to get a free ride. Most of them would rather work, and would gladly take the illegal’s job if they could compete.
Large corporations hire illegal aliens, and illegally pay them next-to-nothing. Under those conditions, even the relatively small demographic that is the unemployed American labor force, will always be disadvantaged by far more desperate illegals who are willing to be exploited and treated like dogs rather than die in Mexico.
So long as we keep talking about how we have to “crack down” on illegals and arrest starving people for the crime of being hungry, so long as we ignore the more pertinent issue of cracking down on corporations that hire illegals, we are making scape-goats out of victims, and letting the pimps go free.
So long as the Mexican government does everything in its power to maintain and promote a society of uneducated workers, so long as ultra-corrupt officials keep ransacking the Mexican treasuring and stealing tax-payer money, forcing Mexico to remain a third-world country despite having a first-world GDP ranking, so long as Mexico continues to demand everything from the US in terms of immigration policy without offering anything in return, and uses the issue as the basis of virrulent antiamerican propaganda, instilling hate and anti-yankee bigotry/paranoia in Mexican citizens, so long as they keep growing fatter off of their countrymen’s blood and off of the American teat, these hypocritical and Machiavellian politicians will never be able to wash their hands clean of their crimes against the Mexican people, especially the Mexican illegals living in the US.
Thank you
Posted by Supersexyspacemonkey on May 8, 2007 at 03:26 PM
There are a couple of editorial notes I could have added to the prior post on specific charges raised, but the general overall concept of the post itself is not a vacant issue.
It is not just about us being a magnet, it is also Mexico not being a response provider of their own prosperity.
Now we sit here and debate how we are going to resolve an issue that should have never been foisted upon us. Yup and point figures at all the various groups who have issues.
A couple of hundred years of history notes our country, but we still have class yard playground bullies.
Revisiting even those simplistic problems each year, to do the same counters are only treating the symptom rather than the base cause.
But don’t expect many to admit it.
I don’t think that anyone is giving the country away. It is this attitude that is creating the problem.
The people have elected certain people to do the people’s business and those people are by and large not Tom Tancredo. That should tell us what the will of the people is, at least right now.
If they wanted people like Malkin running the country, that is who they would be voting for.
In my district a blue dog Democrat won over a hardliner Republican. And this is a conservative district.
People want a solution, they do not expect it to be perfect. But they do not expect to see all progress stymied by an uncompromising minority either. And like it or not Republicans are a minority right now.
Merlin,
I think you do raise a good point. This illegal immigration issue is an issue we should never have had foisted upon us. 90 years of PRI autocracy in Mexico created a basketcase Mexican economy and fifty years of illegal immigration crises in the United States. Oh, and it also left 100 million Mexicans impoverished and desperate, to the point where they would walk fifty miles across the Sonoran desert in order to pick lettuce for three dollars an hour. And on top of that, Mexico is rich in natural resources like oil, but of course the central planners in the PRI decided to nationalize patroleum concerns. Damn socialists.
I think we need a comprehensive plan for immigration, but that’s not why I commented here. I’ll let others make the case for that, and let others criticize those cases. I just wanted to say that, while we have no choice as to whether to deal with this problem or not (whether your solution includes a path to citizenship/amnesty or just border security measures), this is an issue that NEVER should have confronted us. The command economy plutocrats of Mexico’s “revolutionary” government have screwed their own country, and their nearly century-long legacy is threatening to screw ours, as well. This Calderon guy ran as a free market reformer. Just keep your fingers crossed that he is, that he institutes some privatization and deregulation measures, and that NEXT century we don’t have to deal with this same kind of crap.
Merlin,
I think you raise a good point about Mexico. This illegal immigration issue is an issue we should have never had foisted upon us. 90 years of PRI rule left Mexico with a basketcase economy and 100 million people impoverished to the point where they would walk fifty miles across the Sonoran desert in order to pick lettuce for three dollars an hour, and left the US with fifty years of illegal immigration crises. On top of that, oil-rich Mexico, in all of its infinite wisdom, nationalized petroleum concerns and turned a national treasure into a national burden. A perfect example of what socialism gets you.
Personally, I think a comprehensive immigration approach is correct, but I’ll let others make that case, and let others critique that very same case. That’s not why I’m posting this. No matter what your proposed solution to this issue is, the simple fact is that we NEVER should have had to deal with this half-century flood of illegal immigrants. The PRI is gone, and I hope its gone for good. If there’s one good thing the Vincente Fox did, it was end their century of autocratic rule. This Calderon guy ran as a reformer and a free-market capitalist. We’ll see if he lives up to that title and starts privatizing Mexican state-owned companies and deregulating different industries, which (if other Latin American examples are indicative) will reinvigorate the Mexican economy. Keep your fingers crossed.
I am sorry that this writer of this blog has tunred to the Dark Side on Immigration.
It is not WE, the anti-amnesty crowd, who called people racists, bigots and many other names FROM THE WHITE HOUSE.
I worked on BOTH Bush campaigns and have supported him on 90% of the issues, but he, and you are very wrong on this one.
I live in Northern Virginia and have seen over a ten year span the town of Manassas go from a nice Va Old Towne community to a wheigh station for poor, uneducated and CRIMINAL illegal aliens.
The courthouse is swamped with cases of illegals commiting crimes, illegals who never show up for the court date.
If you talk to Manassas citizens they will tell you it is the DOUBLE STANDARD that angers them. If you or I injured or KILLED someone in a car wreck without insurance a license or registration we would be in jail. Illegals get freed and told to show up in court. then they do it again and again.
Whole areas of Manassas have become bording house areas with 14-20 illegals living in a single family home. They drink at all times of nioght and day, urinate on the front lawns and harrass female children and teens walking by.
There have been 3 prostituion rings broken up in residential areas that cater to illegals.
Property values are dropping in these areas and the city is doing nothing about any of it.
The local Mall has become an illegal alien gang hang -out on weekends and many poeple I talk to will not take their family there unless it is at 11 am on a weekday.
If you think this is all antecdotal, I saw the same thing in the LA neighborhood I lived in the 1980’s. :ast time I was back there the entire street had become a slum catering to illegals.
No one is prosectuing any of this and THAT is why people are so angry. We see illegals getting away with stuff no AMERICAN could.
Enough is enough.
We have to deport ANY illegal when they are arrested for ANYTHING. THAT alone would send many of them home.
You need to get out in the real world and see what this incvasion is doing to the USA…..not what you think in your mind is happening.
I tell you this, if Hillaryis elected president or Edwards or Obama, I will hold Malkin et al responsible. And if you want to see a backlash…just wait and see that one. That crowd will o-v-e-r.
Perhaps “giving the Country away” might not be the most accurate phrase, but I think its sentiment is correct nonetheless.
Terrye, what expression would you use for this situation –
1. people enter your Country illegally
2. they march in our streets waving Mexican flags
3. they “demand” rights which they have no right to
4. they use other people’s SSN
5. their children fly the American flag UPSIDE DOWN and beneath the Mexican flag
And what does our Government do??? It seeks to reward them with a path to citizenship.
What phrase would you prefer people use to describe that situation, Terrye?
Merlin,
I think you raise a good point about Mexico. This illegal immigration issue is an issue we should have never had foisted upon us. 90 years of PRI rule left Mexico with a basketcase economy and 100 million people impoverished to the point where they would walk fifty miles across the Sonoran desert in order to pick lettuce for three dollars an hour, and left the US with fifty years of illegal immigration crises. On top of that, oil-rich Mexico, in all of its infinite wisdom, nationalized petroleum concerns and turned a national treasure into a national burden. A perfect example of what socialism gets you.
Personally, I think a comprehensive immigration approach is correct, but I’ll let others make that case, and let others critique that very same case. That’s not why I’m posting this. No matter what your proposed solution to this issue is, the simple fact is that we NEVER should have had to deal with this half-century flood of illegal immigrants. The PRI is gone, and I hope its gone for good. If there’s one good thing the Vincente Fox did, it was end their century of autocratic rule. This Calderon guy ran as a reformer and a free-market capitalist. We’ll see if he lives up to that title and starts privatizing Mexican state-owned companies and deregulating different industries, which (if other Latin American examples are indicative) will reinvigorate the Mexican economy. Keep your fingers crossed.
After all, if there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that Mexico really hurt us with their statist BS over the past many decades.
I would think that the answers to Apache_IP’s questions would depend on whether you think everyone in group 1 (“people enter your Country illegally) is also in groups 2 through 5, or whether you think maybe only a handful of those 12 million are running around in International A.N.S.W.E.R. rallies waving Mexican flags and making noises about reconquista. I’m guessing it’s the latter, in part because a lot of the things I’ve been reading about the invading criminal army just sounds overblown and distorted — WorldNetDaily with its ILLEGAL ALIEN RAPES PUPPY stories — or somebody yelling about, say, 1200 murderers in L.A. when L.A. had only 500 homicides in the year in question — or somebody else claiming that Texas had 5000 cases of leprosy in the past three years when the truth is that Texas had that many cases in thirty years.
So I’m inclined at this point to take a lot of stories about illegal immigration and its consequences with juuuuuust a teensy grain of salt.
The problem here is that we have people living in different worlds who are seeing things differently because of what aspect of the immigration situation they are exposed to.
While I do believe that the supporters of this bill probably have their hearts in the right place, I question where their heads are. Supporters don’t think the 12-20 million illegals in the country right now are a big problem. As a matter of fact, they see those people as a neccessary benefit. They believe these people are paying their fair share of taxes, working for low wages and not being a drag on the social services of cities and states. Not committing a lot of crime. The don’t see hospitals closing one after another, they don’t see their kids in schools that have become victims of violence in schools that are almost totally populated by illegal immigrant kids. They don’t see a city like LA spending over 4 billion a year of taxpayer dollars on social programs, education, and medical care for illegal aliens. They don’t see their neighbors packing up and leaving the state because they cannot earn enough money to live here anymore after trying to compete with people who are living 20 people to a two bedroom apartment. They do not really believe that there are over 40 million more mexicans who are ready to come here right now and passing this bill would encourge that. And if I lived in a gated community back east somewhere with a very low number of mexican immigrants, I might think the same thing. But even if they do believe that some of those problems exist, they think that this immigration bill would make some progress toward improving that situation if it doesn’t fix it altogether.
Those of us in the southwest who have seen all of these things happen and have seen large areas of where we live virtually turned into mini third world countries and we know that this is a problem of growth. There is not a status quo here, this problem will either grow or it will shrink depending on what we do as a nation. It will not stay the same size. If we do not do something drastic, this cancer is going to get bigger and bigger. We cannot ever get the pro-bill crowd to admit this. I honestly believe that a lot of them know what is happening to the southwest but they really couldn’t give a rat’s ass about it. It isn’t their neighborhood. But like UglyinLA said, by the time their neighborhoods are overrun and descend into a ghetto, it will be too late for ‘Whoops, I was wrong’.
What will actually happen if this bill is passed is that most of the illegals, whoops, there will be no more illegals because everybody will automatically be assumed to be Z-visa eligible, will come in and get an amnesty ‘tamper proof’ id card in some name, fake or real, how would anyone possibly know, they will then put that in their pocket and continue to work under the table in some other name. Some will do things legitamatley, but not a majority by any means. To go legit means they cannot claim married and ten anymore so they don’t get taxes taken out. They will not pay a hugh fine, that only kicks in if they apply for citizenship, and most of them don’t care about that anyway. Anyone who thinks they could squeeze five grand out of an illegal day worker is an absolute idiot. The net result will be to get the law off their back. Then the border will be rushed with people who claim they were here last year and they will do the same thing. The number of people who do apply for Z-visas will absolutely swamp the CIS who has to much work to do now. There will be no background checks because they cannot be accomplished in 24 hrs. It will be total chaos in the immigration system. NONE of the border enforcement parts will materialize, like they haven’t before. And in a very short time, after we look at how we actually have a bigger problem on our hands than we did before, you will here the first calls for a totally open border. When that happens, this country is done. This is exactly what people like George Soros and the Mexican govt want. They want to exploit the riches of the U.S. and bring it down for their own benefit.
People, bringing 40-50 million socialists into our country and giving them everything they want is no way to handle what is now an illegal alien problem. Yes, I know, you’re nanny or gardner is no danger to anyone and I would agree with you on that, but you have to look at the big picture, which none of you amnesty proponents are doing.
I’m guessing it’s the latter, …
No doubt that you are guessing. Not only are you “guessing” you are turning a blind eye to the news broadcasts which showed, in living color, MILLIONS of people marching in the street and waving MEXICAN flags.
And you are turning a blind eye (and a deaf ear) to the millions of them carrying signs (and chanting), “Today we march. Tomorrow we vote.” How’s that work exactly? Are they saying they intend to vote illegally, or (and this is the most likely interpretation) are people who entered (or remained in) our own Country actually demanding the right to vote???? WTF! Can I break into your home and DEMAND a seven course dinner?
And you are turning a blind eye to the fact that MILLIONS of them are using either someone else’s SSN or a fake SSN. As witnessed right out here, 22 miles from house, in the raid carried out in Portland, Oregon. Over 600 employees, and only 50 employees using their own SSN.
And you are turning a blind eye to the photographs of Hispanic children in California raising the flag of Mexico ABOVE the American flag. And is if that alone was not insulting enough, they were flying the American flag upside down.
You may be comfortable turning a blind eye to that. You may be comfortable with the concept of REWARDING those people with a path to citizenship.
But I am not. And I won’t sit silently by while our Government attempts to do that.
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Sorry about that wierd triple posting thing.
close italics, please