Sure, it was 1980 and the Republicans are George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, but still, it’s interesting, right?
[HT: Mother Jones]
This article appears in Oct 6-12, 2011.
Let’s Watch Republicans Talk About How Much They Love Immigration
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Golly the problem hasn’t changed since 1980. Just the crazy right wing response of “they’re taking our jobs!” If someone from another country who speaks no english and does 8-12 hours of manual labor a day can take your job……….please get some better skills.
And YET, Republicans have granted AMNESTY much to the disdain of Democrats! Why not a story on how DEMOCRAT presidents hate immigrants, especially illegals and have deported them, imprisoned them ala Roosevelt? How covenient to only place blame, or shame on just one party! You are just another LtLeaning rag that carries Oblahblah’s water! That Kool-Aid is gonna rot your teeth as well as your mind!
Lets not and just come to the realization that this publication is bias, and uses history not to learn from. Instead you search and search until you can find one this that will substanciate your current stroy. Truth be know, we have ignored this issue for years and swept it under the rug. Now it is not only taxing on our Medical Feilds, Law Enforcement and Court Systems, look at the Public Housing System here in Tucson alone. Don’t lie to yourselves, Tucson spends well over $27 Million a year and 50% are to house illegals. It is simple, they have no rights here, if we offend them too bad. The laws are on the books, enforce them! Arrest, Try and Deport.
You never seem to find fault with any Democrat. Oh, yes, forgot, all Democrats are always correct and irreproachable. And I would bet that you consider yourself reasonable and fair-minded.
Matthew: You’ve never actually read anything else I’ve written on here, have you?
Anyhow, my point is that Reagan’s stance here would immediately exclude him from being considered as a serious candidate for the Republican nomination today. Would you argue otherwise?
Mr. Gibson, no I would not argue that Reagan’s stance on immigration is similar to those of the current candidates, but the main point I get is that times have changed since 1980. We could speculate that Roosevelt’s imprisonment of Japanese American citizens would not position him as a mainstream Democratic candidate today, but at the time I don’t remember millions marching in protest although we certainly would see the marchers if it happened today. By the way, have you ever picked on Roosevelt for doing that?
Your premise is false, largely because Barack Obama isn’t perpetually calling back to Roosevelt (by name) as an icon on what it means to be a Democrat, or further, as the essence of presidential leadership. Watch the next debate or a single episode of Hannity on Fox and you’ll hear Reagan’s name mentioned with incredible reverence. They had a debate as his presidential library, for pete’s sake, and the candidates were tripping over each other to set themselves up as his intellectual heir. Feel free to believe that times are different now than 1980, but don’t pretend that the Republican candidates would like everyone to believe that we should go back to that era, while ignoring the actual arguments their ideological idol made.
You didn’t have to go back to the 1980s to find this view from Republcians. This was the exact view of illegal immigrants that George W Bush had. Are liberal brains that shoddy that they can’t remember George W Bush’s presidency? George W Bush tried to grant amnesty to illegals. He said the exact same things about labor that his father said in this speech. George W Bush said the same things that his father and Reagan were saying in this video. You could have linked to a Bush clip from 2006 and shown a Republican saying the exact same things.
This is EXACTLY why Republicans should not grant amensty to illegals for political reasons. Reagan granted amensty to illegals and NO ONE gives credit to the Republicans for it. It’s not like there are Hispanics today who vote Republican because Reagan granted amensty to illegals.
Liberals don’t want to give amensty to illegals either obviously. They had supermajorities in both houses for the first two years of Obama’s presidency. There was literally NOTHING the Republicans could have done to stop liberals from granting amnesty, yet they didn’t do it. Why? Because outside of the issue of illegal immigration, Mexicans lean more towards being Republicans.
Mexicans place great emphasis on the importance of family. Mexicans are overwhelmingly strong Catholics. Mexicans believe homosexuality is wrong. Hispanics have some things in common with democrats, but they have more in common with Republicans. Once illegal immigration is solved, the Democrats know that Hispanics will have no reason to vote democrat. That’s why Obama didn’t do anything on illegal immigration when he had the chance. That’s why he’s dangling carrots in front of Hispanic groups now.
Mr. Gibson, gosh, it feels so good to told in a rather nice way that I am an idiot, so I’m coming back for more. Yes, the Republican candidates seem to perceive that Republicans in general revere Ronald Reagan, and candidates usually try to tell us what we want to hear. Almost all of them are too righteously right for me. I do not revere Reagan; in fact I always thought his persona was phony, but I guess that was just him playing the role of himself. I don’t watch Fox or MSNBC; both wear blinders. And I confess that I only discovered your writing recently because of the link on my Yahoo home page but in what little I have seen my impression is that you pick on Republicans quite often and quite well but seldom if ever say anything mean about Democrats, though arguably many of them are deserving of criticism. I wasn’t intending to become a pen pal so will keep my mouth shut for a while.