“Addicted Republicans Wage War On Latino Voters”: The GOP Is Rolling The Dice While Standing On Quicksand
It’s an addiction. Republicans really can’t help themselves — when they see an opportunity to irritate the Latino electorate, they go for it with gusto.
Republicans have transformed the humanitarian crisis of children at our southern border into an “invasion” that must be repelled with soldiers.
This is war!
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), speaking on Glenn Beck’s program, said “We are under invasion, and this president will not protect our country, and he will not step in and enforce the law as it is.”
Of course, it’s President Obama’s fault. Because anything that goes wrong in this world is either Obama’s overreaching or disengagement. There is no issue to which the Republicans will not attach one of these labels — a cognitive dissonance that seeks to depict Obama simultaneously as a power-mad dictator and, in Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) unfortunate depiction, a president who sleeps through crisis.
Playing on this meme, Michael Reagan, son of the president that signed the amnesty bill in 1986, wrote recently: “Emperor Obama is the culprit in chief.”
Yet the law is being enforced. According to the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, passed unanimously by both houses of Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush, these kids have a right to due process. They cannot simply be shoved into a bus and dropped like cargo in Mexico. Or sent first class on a plane, as Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn (R) suggested as a bizarre solution.
Republicans’ aggressive response against these kids is baffling as both a matter of policy and politics. The border kids crisis is not about immigration. The flows of unaccompanied minors over the last few months (estimates put the number of kids at over 57,000) has many causes: brutal violence, chaos, mortal fear and hope.
The violence and related mayhem in Central America has reached a critical juncture. The toxic cocktail of narco-mafias, violent gangs, acute poverty and corrupt governments has created dangerous instability and the subsequent need to flee from a life-threatening situation.
Ironically, much of this instability can be directly traced to America’s multi-decade, failed and wildly expensive “War on Drugs” that has made these countries transit points for America’s illegal drug imports.
The narco-mafias are multi-billion dollar “enterprises” with the economic capacity to cripple governments, field heavily armed guerrilla armies and an addiction to violence that terrorizes a vulnerable population that has been largely abandoned to fend for itself by the weak governments in the region.
Politically, the GOP is like a man standing on quicksand. After killing immigration reform in Boehner’s House of Representatives, voting to deport the Dreamers and urging the faster deportation of the border kids, the party’s chances of attracting a sizable percentage of Latino voters needed to win national elections recedes with every acrid declaration by Republican politicos seeking to court the far-right midterm election voters they need to win the Senate in November.
The GOP is rolling the dice with its future by seeking the older white vote while simultaneously repelling large swaths of the electorate – women, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, gay people, young people, Latinos, etc. — with its antediluvian policies.
While some analysts on the right have concluded that this is the optimum approach to win the midterm election — an assumption predicated on the expectation of low turnout of those same constituents that have largely voted for Democrats in past elections — that’s an awfully big bet when the very future of the GOP is at stake.
What happens if the unthinkable becomes reality? What’s the future of the GOP if come November 2014 furious Latinos turn out at the same rate as they did in the 2012 election? Or women outraged by the Supreme Court’s decision that a corporation’s newly “discovered” religious rights trump a woman’s right to control her own health?
Yes, the projecting of voter turnout is based on past voter participation. But as Mitt Romney’s failed campaign for president in 2012 showed, predictions of turnout can be wrong — very wrong.
In particular, Republicans underestimate the blowback from Latinos. This year in the California congressional primaries, I endorsed a moderate Republican, part of the reform wing of the party. The reaction from the audience of my radio program, and especially through social media, was swift and brutal. Hundreds of Latino voters told me I was crazy – and that they would never vote for Republicans after they killed immigration reform in the House.
As Gov. Rick Perry (R-Texas) and other big name Republicans continue to call for a military response to this crisis by deploying the National Guard, the image of a GOP actively vilifying children and comparing them to foreign invaders is bound to further crystalize Latino anger and voting patterns.
Whatever else, should the National Guard be deployed because of these GOP demands, the effect on public opinion could further sink the Republican Party.
Republicans will crash with a harsh reality of their own making: soldiers versus 10-year-olds is a “battle” with the optics of Birmingham, Ala. in 1963.
By: Fernando Espuelas, The Huffington Post Blog, July 20, 2014
“The Sanctimonious Fakers”: Border Crisis Tests Religious Faith — And Some Fail Badly
Flamboyant piety has long been fashionable on the political right, where activists, commentators, and elected officials never hesitate to hector us about their great moral and theological rectitude. Wielding the Scriptures like a weapon, these righteous ’wingers are always eager to condemn the alleged sins of others but reluctant to examine their own. They seem to spend far more time on posturing and preening than spiritual reflection. Rarely does anyone call them out on their failures to fulfill their proclaimed devotion because, in this country, that is considered rude.
But occasionally, something happens that separates the people of faith from the sanctimonious fakers. With thousands of defenseless children now gathered on America’s southern border, seeking asylum from deprivation and deadly violence, something like that is happening right now.
Nobody in the House of Representatives is more vociferous about her reverence for God’s word than Michele Bachmann (R-MN) –the Tea Party queen bee who often has said she believes that America is a “Christian nation.” When Bachmann opened her mouth on television about those hungry and fearful children, she demonized them as “invaders” and incipient criminals who could be expected to rape American women and break American laws.
Then there is Bachmann’s colleague Louie Gohmert (R-TX), whose religious zeal is so overpowering that he cannot restrain himself, even during House proceedings – like that committee hearing last month when he proclaimed his belief that anyone who doesn’t accept Jesus is destined for hell. But when the subject is the innocent kids at the border of his home state, most of whom are girls under 13 years of age, Gohmert speaks of “invasion” and urges the governor of Texas to unilaterally initiate a state of war. Like many of his fellow far-rightists, he stokes rumors that these children are harbingers of disease and gangsterism.
So does Phil Gingrey (R-GA), a medical doctor who went so far as to accuse the young migrants of bringing the Ebola virus – seen only in Africa — with them from Central America. And so does Sandy Rios, the religious-right talk-show host who speaks of the “hope” that the Lord bestowed on her, but warns that we should treat the border children like “lepers.” And so does Ann Coulter, the Church Lady who suspects that all those kids, no matter how small, probably belong to the murderous MS-13 narcotics syndicate.
Now among the theological ideas shared by many of these figures is a fondness for the Old Testament, which they routinely quote to justify cruel strictures against gays, women, and anybody else they wish to suppress. At the moment, however, these Biblical literalists ought to be studying the very plain instruction of Leviticus:
“The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.”
More recently, Pope Francis laid down a clear edict on the border crisis that springs from his own Biblical understanding, urging Americans to “welcome and protect” the children arriving on our border. (He didn’t mention anything about immediate deportations.) The Holy Father expressed deep concern for the “tens of thousands of children who migrate alone, unaccompanied, to escape poverty and violence…in pursuit of a hope that in most cases turns out to be vain”.
“Many people forced to emigrate suffer, and often, die tragically; many of their rights are violated, they are obliged to separate from their families and, unfortunately, continue to be the subject of racist and xenophobic attitudes,” he said. Francis went on to say that only development and security in their own countries would ever stem the flow of migrants heading northward – and that in the meantime, the rest of us should abandon “attitudes of defensiveness and fear, indifference and marginalization.” Attitudes like those displayed by goons waving flags and guns and “Go Home” signs, who don’t care whether these little strangers live or die.
Where are the real Christians? Where are the true people of faith? They may be found in houses of worship near the border and around the country, where people of all political persuasions realize that they are called to feed, clothe, shelter, and heal God’s children, even when they arrive on a bus without papers. If there is a kingdom of heaven, it is these generous souls who will be admitted when they reach its border.
The hypocrites will be sent somewhere else.
By: Joe Conason, The National Memo, July 18, 2014
“Who Are We, Anyway?”: A Moral Issue Of How We Choose To Define Ourselves As A Country
Something extraordinary is happening at our southern border. Thousands of children, most unaccompanied by adult relatives, are crossing from Mexico and immediately turning themselves in to the Border Patrol. They come principally from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.
What must be going on in those countries that impels their most precious legacy, their children, to make such a journey? What are we, as a nation, going to do about it?
Reports from Central America center on two issues: poverty and gang violence. Poverty in that region is not new, nor has it ever been the stimulus for a mass migration of children. Gang violence has increased, driven in part by the trade in illegal drugs and perhaps by some success in Mexico in confronting drug gangs.
The more important question is what we’re going to do about it? Texas Governor Perry advocates a military response, perhaps by the National Guard. What exactly does he anticipate that the National Guard would do? Are they supposed to shoot at children as they cross a bridge or a river? Doesn’t sound right to me.
The Administration’s response to the problem is financial and legal. Appropriate 3.7 billion dollars to house these children until their cases can be heard by a (hopefully more efficient) adjudication process to determine whether each child is legitimately a refugee. But there aren’t lawyers to represent most of these children, so the legal process is likely to be a farce.
Some in Congress want to change the applicable laws to make it easier to expel these children without a legal process. I suppose such a course might relieve the government of some costs, but does such a policy square with our values?
The arrival of large numbers of children on our doorstep is not a physical menace to us. Nor is it an unsustainable financial burden. It is not a legal or bureaucratic matter either. Instead, it is a moral issue of how we choose to define ourselves as a country.
We need to move these children out of mass holding pens and into homes of people who will care for them and raise them. Then we can let the legal process grind away.
By: Joseph B. Kadane, Leonard J. Savage University Professor of Statistics and Social Sciences, Emeritus, at Carnegie Mellon University; The Huffington Post Blog, July 17, 2014
“The Bigoted Republican Two-Step”: The GOP’s Ridiculous Executive-Authority Hypocrisy
Speaker of the House John Boehner wants to sue President Obama. Former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin wants to impeach President Obama. And Republicans across the board are in a froth over the president’s allegedly aggressive use of executive authority.
And yet, there are some issues that have so discombobulated Republicans that they are turning their lonely eyes to Obama for answers: Namely, the influx of Central American child migrants on America’s southern border. Faced with the unappealing prospect of using their own congressional power of the purse to solve the problem, Republicans are reacquainting themselves with the allure of executive power.
The current border crisis is the result of Obama following a law signed in 2008 by President George W. Bush and designed to save children from human trafficking. The law created different rules for children hailing from nations contiguous to America — Mexico and Canada — and children from elsewhere. For children coming from the two contiguous nations, Border Patrol agents can use their discretion to quickly send them home to their families. But since repatriation is more logistically complicated for children coming from farther away, the law requires the Department of Health and Human Services to provide housing and care as well as the guidance to seek legal counsel, which generally puts them on a path for a formal judicial review.
Speaker Boehner has now proposed changing that law, saying last week, “I think we all agree that the non-contiguous countries, that now we’re required to hold those people, I think clearly, we would probably want the language similar to what we have with Mexico.” But to apply the language we have with Mexico to Central American child migrants, you’d have to empower Obama’s Border Patrol agents — and effectively, Obama — to decide if those children must go back.
While Boehner wants to pass new legislation expanding Obama’s executive power, other Republicans just want Obama to assert his Oval Office authority without action by Congress. On Fox News Sunday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry repeatedly shrugged off the stipulations of the 2008 law and suggested Obama solve the problem on his own by deploying the National Guard to block entry at the border. Fox’s Brit Hume incredulously responded, “Are they really going to be deterred by the presence of troops along the border who won’t shoot them and can’t arrest them?”
House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Rogers said on Meet The Press that Obama “has tools in his toolbox that he can use immediately to stop this,” citing Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s interpretation of the 2008 law which she co-authored. What Rogers chose not to highlight on national television is that Feinstein says Obama has the power to modify how the law is being implemented by directing the Department of Homeland Security to write new regulations — exactly the type of action that has prompted all the Republican talk of lawsuits and impeachment on other issues.
This may seem like your standard-issue Washington hypocrisy: Shake your fist against presidential power when you don’t like what the president is doing, and then pound your fist to demand presidential action to shift focus away from your reluctance to take any responsibility for governing the country.
But the Republican two-step is about more than hypocrisy. Their sudden renewed attraction to executive power lays bare how empty their excuses are for burying comprehensive immigration reform.
If Republicans really believe Obama is too slippery to trust with any legal directives to “secure the border,” they would be pushing for laws that tie his hands, such as mandatory deportations without judicial review and mandatory increases of National Guard or Border Patrol troops on the border.
They’re not, because deep down Republicans know their talking points about a lawless, trustless president are bunk. And the only thing stopping Republicans from passing comprehensive immigration reform is the fear of losing votes from anti-immigrant bigots. Any other excuse has been rendered inoperative.
By: Bill Scher, The Week, July 16, 2014
“The Right Problem, The Wrong Solution”: GOP Policymakers May Not Have Thought This One Through
Almost immediately after President Obama unveiled his plan to resolve the border crisis, congressional Republicans balked. There were, House Speaker John Boehner complained, no provisions in the plan about sending National Guard troops to the border.
A week later, the president was in Texas, where he met with a variety of state officials, including Gov. Rick Perry (R). The Republican governor emphasized one point above all others: he wants Obama to deploy National Guard troops to the border.
GOP policymakers may not have thought this one through. In fact, Greg Sargent talked to the head of the National Guard under the Bush/Cheney administration, who offered a valuable perspective.
[I]n an interview today, the head of the National Guard under George W. Bush said he had not yet heard a clear rationale for sending in the Guard and suggested it might not be the appropriate response to the problems at the core of the current crisis, though he did say he could envision the Guard playing some sort of part in a broader solution.
“Until mission requirements are clearly defined, it can’t be determined whether this is an appropriate use of the Guard in this particular case,” H. Steven Blum, who was the Chief of the National Guard Bureau from 2003 to 2009 and has been a career military man for decades, told me. “There may be many other organizations that might more appropriately be called upon. If you’re talking about search and rescue, maintaining the rule of law or restoring conditions back to normal after a natural disaster or a catastrophe, the Guard is superbly suited to that. I’m not so sure that what we’re dealing with in scope and causation right now would make it the ideal choice.”
That seems to be an exceedingly polite way of saying, “Republican demands don’t seem to make any sense.”
Some of this seems to be the result of GOP confusion about the nature of the story itself. Many Republicans seem to believe this is a border-security crisis, which the National Guard can help address directly.
But that’s not consistent with the facts on the ground.
In many instances, unaccompanied children are simply turning themselves in once they find border patrol agents. That’s not a border-security crisis; that’s largely the opposite.
Indeed, Fox News’ Brit Hume, hardly a progressive media voice, asked Perry to explain over the weekend what the National Guard would actually do if deployed to the border. The Texas governor struggled to explain his own position, saying only that Guard troops would send a “message that gets sent back very quickly to Central America.”
Hume reminded Perry “[I]f these children who’ve undergone these harrowing journeys, to escape the most desperate conditions in their home countries, have gotten this far, are they really going to be deterred by the presence of troops along the border who won’t shoot them and can’t arrest them?”
At this point, Perry changed the subject.
This is not to just pick on the Texas governor; Republican confusion about the border seems fairly common. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said last week, “Let’s remember, this administration went around for years saying the border has never been more secure than it is now. I think that’s been exposed as a fallacy over the last three weeks.”
But again, this is plainly at odds with reality. It’s not a “fallacy”; the Obama administration really has strengthened border security to new heights in recent years. The humanitarian crisis doesn’t undermine this fact at all. For Rubio to make such a comment suggests he doesn’t fully understand the underlying challenge.
If it seems like policymakers are having a debate in which two sides are talking past each other, it’s because that’s largely what’s happening. The GOP wants Guard troops, but they’re not sure why, and they’re convinced there’s a border-security crisis, which doesn’t really exist.
For his part, Obama has said he’s willing to deploy the National Guard, basically to make Republicans feel better in the short term, if it’s part of a larger response to the crisis. At least for now, GOP leaders have said this isn’t good enough.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, July 16, 2014
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