Posted on 02/05/2015 7:38:13 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
GOP presidential hopefuls are cozying up to anti-immigrant extremists and right-wing billionaires.
When I was growing up, my older Mexican-American relatives had an expression: “Tell me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are.”
It was my family’s way of making me careful about choosing my friends.
Even then, I could see they were right. The smart kids mostly hung out with other smart kids. The athletes stuck with other athletes. The troublemakers befriended other troublemakers.
That saying comes to mind when I think about the Iowa Freedom Summit, a big gathering in Des Moines that basically launched the 2016 Republican primary. Many potential GOP presidential candidates journeyed to the Hawkeye State to give speeches and shake hands.
What could be wrong with that?
For starters? The man behind it: Rep. Steve King. He’s one of the nation’s most divisive immigration hardliners. It was a mistake for so many potential GOP candidates to associate with him.
King made headlines last January, when President Barack Obama delivered his latest State of the Union address. In a tweet about the speech, King called a young undocumented woman who was brought to this country as a child “a deportable.”
Ana Zamora, the college student he insulted, had benefited from Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. Zamora was also one of First Lady Michelle Obama’s guests.
Thanks to DACA, the government can’t deport Zamora. But King’s slur highlighted his longstanding hostility toward immigrants.
In 2013, for example, he explained his opposition to the DREAM Act — a bill that would have given certain young undocumented immigrants the right to live and work without fear of deportation — by likening them to drug smugglers.
“For every one who’s a valedictorian,” King told the conservative news site Newsmax, “there’s another 100 out there that weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.”
He’s also compared undocumented immigrants to dogs.
Despite King’s bile, plenty of potential GOP candidates took part in his summit. Chris Christie, Rick Perry, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, Ted Cruz, and Ben Carson all showed up.
That they would associate with a lawmaker who makes such offensive remarks raises legitimate questions about their judgment and whether they’re presidential material.
By largely letting hardliners like King dictate its immigration policy, the GOP alienates Latino voters. It makes the Republican Party long on ugly rhetoric and short on real solutions.
King has become so toxic that some Iowans are now lamenting his prominence in the GOP.
They’re worried that King could diminish Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses if he continues to be such a die-hard opponent of immigration reform, as Matt Hildreth warned in a recent Des Moines Register op-ed.
Most Americans support reform. In fact, a 2013 poll showed that most voters in King’s own district favor it, including a pathway to citizenship for undocumented people like Zamora.
To be fair, not every potential GOP presidential candidate attended the Iowa Freedom Summit. Marco Rubio and Rand Paul passed.
But hold your applause.
They missed King’s event because they were in California meeting in private with the billionaire Koch brothers — who just announced that their network of donors plans to spend a record $889 million on the 2016 election cycle. That staggering amount more than doubles what the Republican National Committee spent in 2012.
Ted Cruz actually made it to both the Iowa Freedom Summit and the Koch brothers’ event.
So there you have it. The next crop of Republican presidential hopefuls is either allied with anti-immigration extremists or at the beck and call of the richest 0.1 percent of Americans.
Or in Cruz’s case, both.
With friends like Steve King and the Koch brothers, Republicans need no help proving that they’re anti-immigrant, elitist and out of sync with American values.
******
Raul A. Reyes is an attorney and columnist based in New York City. Distributed via OtherWords.org.
Sr. Reyes must be an interesting attorney.
Laws clearly mean nothing to him.
Funny how La Razists like to call illegal aliens “immigrants”. And they think America natives owe them anything they want.
This Raul A. Reyes must be auditioning to be Jeb Bush’s speechwriter.
Only amigos.
A LAWYER judges others by who they hang out with? Please tell me you’re defense attourney. That would make this so much more funny.
Of course, if you’re judging a group composed mostly of black or brown skin, a gross generalization is called “racism”.
But we’ll overlook that.
So Mr Reyes, what do you think of a President who hangs out with known Muslim Extremists and terrorist sympathizers? Wouldn’t that indicate that they’re all of the same stripe too? Or is this standard only used with people with whom you disagree?
What do you think of a Presidential front runner who’s husband is chummy with pedophiles? Should we judge them as individuals? Or are they all disgusting?
Got to love the irony of a lawyer sitting here telling me that the law, the regulation of the law and the enforcement of the law don’t matter.
What on Earth do we need you for in that case?
Lay down with dogs, get up with fleas. (or measles)
Illegal Alines and their enablers suck.
Whats strange about that statement is that the Koch bros $$$$ are for amnesty, ignored by author.
Koch Sponsors Pro-Amnesty BuzzFeed Event - Breitbart May 10, 2013
He can’t figure out the difference between illegal immigrants who are not welcome here and legal immigrants who have been invited and are accepted here.
He’s a liar. So it stands to reason he hangs out with liars. No doubt he’s a demonrat.
I left my comment on the linked Site.
Waiting for the blowback.
Maybe I need a new hobby. LOL
I made some friends in so. CA and I learned from them what the author is called: a ‘pinche cabron’.
This la Rasa lawyer thinks Steve King is “divisive” because he thinks the federal government should enforce federal law?
That’s loco even for an open borders nut.
At least Jeb’s not pandering to us, he’s an out and proud RINO!
Why don’t they just come out and say we aborted our civilization and must get these new workers in to save our socialist security system that is soon to bankrupt?
It seems obvious.
Naturally. The left-wing stereotype of the eeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil American conservative is a dumb, filthy-rich, WASP southern male, who loves corporations, loves war, loves oil, loves Jesus, loves Ayn Rand, hates science, hates gays, hates women, hates all minorities, hates poor people, hates sick people, hates the elderly, etc., etc.
They'll use whatever talking points they can to depict any influential or unapologetic conservative in that light, even if they have to come up with two contradictory images to portray him or her that way.
For example, Rick Santorum was so incredibly eeeeeeeevil that if he was elected President, he'd both "turn America into a theocracy ruled by the Pope" AND "start a war with Iran". How exactly he'd do that when the Catholic Church and the Pope were vehemently AGAINST "starting wars" in the middle east was unknown, but he'd somehow find a way. Those Repuglicans, they're sneaky.
I don’t see where this author mentions Jeb. May mean that he likes Jeb.
” Whats strange about that statement is that the Koch bros $$$$ are for amnesty, ignored by author.
Koch Sponsors Pro-Amnesty BuzzFeed Event - Breitbart May 10, 2013 “
The Koch brothers together are worth 84 billion, so it is imperative that they keep workers wages low. One of them just paid 56 million for a Park Avenue penthouse, because the 40 million dollar one was “too small”.
I posted this reply in the wrong thread. ;d
Meant to put it in “JEB BUSH: WE MUST ‘DRAMATICALLY EXPAND’ IMMIGRANTS COMING TO WORK”
HAHA, I have done that once or twice.
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