Jul 01 2007
GOP Still Destroying Itself
The Immigration debacle is not over. The purity wars are in full bloom as the Amnesty Hypochondriacs move to make sure they will never come close to seeing real reform. In fact, some fools are calling for Sen Martinez to be defeated or recalled (which will, of course, leave Florida with TWO Democrat Senators).
That last point has the talk of “Recall†in Martinez’s district talking loudly. There is even a website collecting signatures.
The truth is the GOP is damaged goods and many people are walking away. And while some are trying to stay on, they cannot hide their feelings:
But the bill’s demise may have greatly damaged the party’s ability to meet its enduring goal of attracting a large percentage of the growing number of Hispanic voters — thousands of whom are ostensibly in line with the party on a host of other issues, said many Republican lawmakers, consultants and Hispanic voters.
“There may be some short-term gain from this,†said Linda Chavez, who served in the Reagan administration and is now chairwoman of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a conservative public policy group. “But in the long term, it is disastrous for the Republican Party.â€
…
“I think it’s bloody for the Republicans,†said Antonio Gonzalez, president of the William C. Velasquez Institute, a Latino-oriented research and policy organization with offices in San Antonio and Los Angeles. “The Democrats said pro-immigrant stuff, and even if they didn’t support it, it was because they said it wasn’t good enough. The Republicans said anti-immigrant stuff and so now they are going to get killed with this.â€
It is a view that many Republicans share. Mr. McCain, who in May told Republicans that “the Hispanic vote is turning against us in very large numbers,†expressed similar thoughts privately this week, aides said.
In an interview on Friday, Mr. Martinez, who is chairman of the national Republican Party, called the bill’s defeat “a bipartisan failure.†To win favor with Hispanics in the future, “We’ve got our work cut out for us,†he said. “I consider it serious.â€
Abel Maldonado, a prominent Hispanic Republican in the California State Senate, said he felt that both parties were damaged, but that “It hurts the Republican party a little bit more in terms of bringing more minorities into the party.â€
I could go over to rightwing websites and find a host of hate being spewed at Chavez, but what’s the point? The GOP tolerates the haters and relies on them. But what is the point?There will be no new immigration legistlation for years to come, and the GOP will also be in the minority for years to come. So what is someone to do if they want action on this or any other issue? Well, the GOP is not going to be the place to look for years to come – that much is for sure.
Republicans have showed signs of making clear inroads in recent years among Hispanic voters. President Bush took roughly 40 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2004, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California won roughly the same percentage of Hispanic voters in his state in his re-election in 2006 — a strong showing for any Republican candidate here.
But the party saw only about 25 percent of Hispanic voters come its way in the midterm elections last year, an alarming trend for the Republicans looking at 2008. Many Republicans fear that loss of essentially half their market share, though they were not willing to say so on the record.
Say adios to the GOP as a major political voice in 2008. Even in the insiders know the truth they are afraid to say in public. More here.
Terrye
If nothing else, you are consistent.
Every time someone responds to one of your posts it is predictable how you will counter it with mock taking of offense and expressing your new moral outrage of the day.
Then you add in a sweetner with yet another strawman.
Then when someone kills your stawman you wash rinse and repeat.
Recently you proposed that workers were needed to be authorized under a bad piece of legislation to prop up a similarly bad social security system.
You conviently ignored the fact that those worker will only make the social security system worse financially because they will draw more out of it than they will ever put into it.
You claim this all is justified because of a worker shortage. This is countered by the fact that there are a number of people in this country who are citizens who are not counted in the unemployment statistics because they are no longer even trying to get a job because they are being undercut by the illegal workers willing to work for a lower wage.
Also, guess what, if you outlawed abortion (this is just an extreme example) strictly for financial reasons with no moral reasons going into the equation you would have 40 million more workers today than you would have had otherwise.
You continuously say passing a bill was the end all be all.
This is wrong. Those of us here arguing that the bill was faulty gave good reasons why and showed how it had issues that made it unworkable. We were not anti-legislation, we were opposed to bad legislation.
We want a bill that will fix the issues and not do things that will possibly even make the situation worse.
In the end analysis what you propose is that all the Republicans should effectively support legislation that would have to make them behave exactly like good Democrats or they are betraying the Republican party.
look long-term Strata
After a generation of Latino reconquering there will arise a third party with a leader to the right of Buchanan….and Duke!
and he will lead a glorious counter-revolution!
Yo, AJ!
Center’s been huffing glue and rereading The Turner Diaries again . . .
Ok folks lets to a big what if.
What if this bill had passed.
Well we would have a whole new alphabet soup of z, y, h, l and whatever cards. The big hole is that what was missing was the C card. That being a C card issued to each legal citizen.
Without the C card how do you tell the difference between an Hispanic citizen and an undocumented Hispanic who chose not to or couldn’t qualify for a Z card?
So if the law passed what would happen if because of all the paperwork and fines and fear of the ICE man the illegals just chose in mass to ignore the law.
You know just said “Z cards, we don’t need no stinkin Z cards”.
Then what is your solution when this happens.
Even if they adopt the Z cards , how are you going to find and get rid of all those who didn’t apply because they knew they couldn’t pass the background checks?
So a person has a Z card , which requires them to be employed continuously to maintain their status. Guess what Mr. Bad Big Business will tell the Z card holder, I still will only hire you for 3 bucks an hour but carry you on the books at 7 buck per hour to meet the law requirement and if you don’t go along with it you’re out the door. Opening all sorts of opportunity for even more exploitation of Z card holders than they had before the card came into existence.
Guess what Mr. Bad Big Business will tell the Z card holder, I still will only hire you for 3 bucks an hour but carry you on the books at 7 buck per hour to meet the law requirement and if you don’t go along with it you’re out the door.
Z card holder leaves premises, turns off tape recorder, trots it over to BP/ICE, employer gets new quarters courtesy of the Bureau of Prisons. Life is good. (Well, for me and thee. For the former employer, well, he’s about to learn the song “Prison Bitch.” Too bad, so sad.)
There’s a word for a criminal who plans his crimes on the assumption that his targets are dumber than he is–and that word is “inmate.”
True enough and it is the right solution to that , but guess what the same thing could have been done without the law.
The only danger the illegal had before that was loosing the job and having to find another, but now the NEW LAW requires continuous employment since they are in the system and tracked by the Z card albatross around their neck.
The one’s who would fight city hall like you suggest are small in numbers and it would only have a minor effect. Also if the boss went to jail, who would be paying them tomorrow?
This was a horrible bill as evidenced by the fact of bi-partisan disapproval. The house who has to return to their small communities for votes gets it. Even though we need the good and honest families working here we don’t need to give blanket amnesty to the lawbreakers without so much of a check as I go through to get a handgun. We read the papers and see the names of the stabbings, murders ,beatings and drug dealers that are disproportionately hispanic. My liberals in the workplace that I do battle with daily were against this Kennedy-McCain sham also. That is why it may not hurt the GOP as many on this site complain that it will. We should streamline the immigration process, allow lawful entry and deport those breaking the law while here illegaly. Replaceing the idiotic income tax with a national sales tax to insure even the illegals pay into the system would also be a good start. I am new at this and it ocurred to me my username may be associated with my preference for a certain presidential candidate. My username has nothing to do with the candidate it is a passtime of mine. I love the fact congress can’t get anything done, they can’t screw anything up. Their approval numbers show how we the people feel about the pocket lining panderers.
True enough and it is the right solution to that , but guess what the same thing could have been done without the law.
Sure, at the cost of being deported.
Please try to use more than one neuron at a time.
Note to self:
Look into contributing to groups like the Republican Main Street Project, Republican Leadership Council, and to see what I can scrape together donation-wise for Senator Graham and Congressman Cannon.
Sure, at the cost of being deported.
Please try to use more than one neuron at a time.
Left by Cobalt Shiva on July 2nd, 2007
Duh guess what in BOTH cases they risk the chance of being deported.
If one Z card holder rats the boss out ALL the Z card holders there loose their job and then they are all scrambling to find another job to keep their Z card from being voided.
Which means they have a vested interest in their buds not rating the boss out.
You loose again.
So back to my earlier point of the illegals saying “We don’t need no stiking Z cards”. Well that was supposed to be the source of the 4.4 billion to fund the enforcement measures.
Obviously if no illegal stepped forward for a Z card and paid fines there would be no money to do the rest and you are simply back at square zero with just another useless law.
Duh guess what in BOTH cases they risk the chance of being deported.
There is a risk (and a low one, at that) of deportation for the Z card holder, as opposed to the certainty of deportation for the illegal in such a position.
This is why so many folks who routinely hire illegal aliens went ballistic over this bill–because they knew that they were looking at serious jail time if it passed.
If one Z card holder rats the boss out ALL the Z card holders there loose their job and then they are all scrambling to find another job to keep their Z card from being voided.
And in a country with essentially full employment, they’ll find work.
You loose again.
Do you support making English the official language of the United States, as I do?
If so, kindly learn the difference between “loose” and “lose.”
Yup good old Jose is ganna step forward to fund the fence and make things harder on his buds.
Oh and it’s just so he can get the C card (citizen).
Well guess what Jose don’t care for the C card.
Why do you think Jose was here bunking in with all his close buds like 30 rats shoved into 5 feet of sewer pipe and sending 20 to 40 Billion dollars a year home to mama.
You think that he’s gonna grab for the Z card brass ring and then bring mama and the kids (each which requires additional payments) to live in Gringo land?
Yup and then right after that he’s gonna ask Mexico to please send the check for all the money we sent south of the border over say the last 10 or 12 years since we would kinda like to have it to live in the New America.
I mean it’s not like I was really sending all that money home so I could go home and open up a franchise for a Taco Bell or anything.
Ok spelling cop I goofed on that one but AJ has been telling us all along we can’t deport people now without the NEW IMPROVED CLEAN AND FRESH law.
The end point is that before the new law the illegals just give the bad boss the finger and walk on down the road to the next place.
Once they are in the system, not only are they self funding more enforcement, but they are also placing themself at documented risk.
So if anything it makes it EASIER for bad employers to exploit them.
It’s not about how you spell it, it’s about what it means in practice.
Merlin,
I never said we cannot deport ‘anyone’. I said deportation is nearly impossible because of all the loopholes in the laws, loopholes I pointed to in actual cases and loopholes pointed to by the hypochondriacs.
If you are going to speak for me, try and be accurate.
AJ
is telling us we cant deport under the old system but we can under the new and your argument was just exactly the opposite.
Do you notice the slight disconnect here?
Ok AJ
Your reply showed up after my last post as we posted past each other.
I agree fully with the system we have before the new law the deportation system is broken there are too much documented ways to get around the whole system to make it worst than worthless.
And guess what the new law still had to deal with the same broken system of deportation hearings and all the appeal routes that have mucked up the process over all these years. This bill did nothing to alter that.
The deportation court hearing process is a total joke and it doesn’t bring fun fun punch lines to the front.
Right now we have over a half a million people who have been through the mill and judged for deportation that we don’t know how to find. All that time and multiple appeals were just busy work that accomplished nothing.
I am not trying to put words in your mouth AJ, just giving general thoughts of how things went wrong.
But from your own post above you seem to say that “nearly impossible to deport” is somehow miles of difference from “cannot deport”.
Sorry but for me that subtle distinction doesn’t work.
I was pointing out to the poster that what he was saying was 180 out from what you were saying and in a way reinforced by your own reply.
AJ
I thank you for your reply and remind you I respect you and your opinions but still will do my best to fairly debate the points of this issue strictly on it’s merits.
You know that you and I can agree or disagree, but the airing out of the issue within the debate process is better for us all.
What’s truly fascinating is the sheer level of denial exhibited by some of the commenters on this post, in particular, the claim that the GOP lost the 2006 midterms because of its “hardline” stance on illegal aliens. Of course, this conclusion is contradicted by virtually every poll conducted in 2006, almost of which found that the Iraq debacle, high gas prices (a truly idiotic reason to vote Donk), and the perception of corruption killed the Republicans, but that simple message still has yet to sink in with some people. The truth is that almost no one really noticed or cared that illegal immigration was being debated until around two weeks ago, so its silly to pin the blame for several years of horrific GOP losses on the backs of Tancredo, Hunter, Paul, Sessions, DeMint, Vitter and company.
Zarathustra,
Actually, the polls showed a huge drop off in Hispanic support and a lot of immigration hardliners lost seats once thought safe. So, you can pretend these things did not happen – but they happened.
Watch and learn. The war will turn around (that is becoming hard to avoid) and the GOP will not rebound.
Michelle Malikin pointed out a fact that many still wish not to acknowledge.
There are still literally over 10,000 pending cases in the courts today over the 1986 immigration reform bill.
Heck some of the clients in those actions could be on their death beds or already 6 feet under.
And that was a pure amnesty law without all the subtle nuances of this spaghetti western Gordian Knot that even Solomon couldn’t adjudicate.