Free Republic

The president has once again (but even more obviously than usual) made clear his unapologetic bigotry, nativism and racism. Are GOP leaders, donors and voters still fine with re-nominating Donald Trump for president? Do they really believe the Republican Party can do no better? 10:41 AM · Jul 14, 2019 ·

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Sunday assailed a group of Democratic congresswomen of color as foreign-born troublemakers who should go back to the “broken and crime infested places from which they came,” ignoring the fact that the women are American citizens and all but one was born in the U.S. Trump’s tweets prompted a wave of searing condemnation from Democrats, who set aside their rifts to speak as one in calling Trump’s remarks racist and breathtakingly divisive. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the president wants to “make America white again.” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, jousting for...

Nativism is not an American value, Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson declared Thursday, delivering a pointed rebuke to Donald Trump without mentioning his name while calling on an end to immigration quotas symptomatic of a broken system. “The overwhelming cause of illegal immigration and visa overstays is the fact that our legal immigration process simply doesn’t work, and that we impose absurd caps on various work visas,” Johnson said in a statement on Thursday with his remarks to the annual National Association of Latino Elected Officials conference in Washington. “Let the market, not bureaucrats and special interests, determine how many...

In the past, Joe Scarborough hasn't exactly hidden his disdain for Marco Rubio, saying he reminds him of an eager student government candidate and questioning his integrity. But things have now escalated to open warfare between the two. Scarborough, responding to an ad in which Rubio speaks of feeling "out of place in our own country," tweeted an attack accusing Rubio of playing a "crass, offensive, nativist" [read xenophobic/borderline racist] card. Rubio has fired back, putting out a fundraising message in which he slams Scarborough as an "elitist." View the video here.

Senator Ted Cruz’s presidential run is premised on the idea that, by speaking to the “values” of evangelical voters, he can mobilize them in numbers not seen in a very long time. “Imagine instead millions of people of faith all across America coming out to the polls and voting our values,” Cruz said yesterday, adding that these voters had been “staying home.” Cruz’s decision to announce his run at Liberty University is itself a sign that he hopes to assume the mantle of leading evangelical champion. And as Jon Ward puts it, Cruz’s announcement was “an attempt to lay down...

Here’s a question for the proud Americans demanding that the unaccompanied foreign children showing up at our borders be deported: Suppose that one of these “illegal” minors was your neighbor, living with his aunt and uncle, going to school during the day, kicking ball with friends in the evening, trying hard to put the traumatic journey from his native, violence-ridden country to America behind him. Would you, with a clear conscience, pick up the phone and turn him in? If the answer is “no,” then it is time for you to throw out your “Return to Sender” signs. Why? Because...

A “rational” immigration policy will likely become law in the United States, but only after “some time,” former President George W. Bush said in a question-and-answer session aired Sunday night. Evoking the “America first” policies that predated World War II, Bush said he fears that isolationism, nativism, and protectionism are creeping back into American life. “I’m a little concerned that we may be going through the same period,” Bush said at a Southern Methodist University forum recorded January 24.

On reading George Bush’s discourse to the New York Economic Club last week, Cicero’s insight came to mind: “To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.” With Iraq entering its sixth year, the dollar sinking to peso levels, the economy careening into recession, and 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens roosting here, Bush alerted us to what really worries him: “I’m troubled by isolationism and protectionism … (and) another ‘ism,’ and that’s nativism. And that’s what happened throughout our history. And probably the most grim reminder of what can happen to...

Democrat Bill Foster won the Illinois House seat occupied for more than two decades by former Republican Speaker Dennis Hastert, who retired before the end of his term. The result shows that Democrats not only have political enthusiasm on their side but that Illinois Senator Barack Obama, who endorsed Mr. Foster, is a campaign asset down ballot, at least in his home state. ...To his credit, Mr. Oberweis did talk about lower taxes, smaller government and other Republican themes. But as in his past campaigns, the issue he hit hardest was illegal immigration. One of his infamous Senate ads featured...

It's long been my belief that the GOP hole card in 2008 is going to be a rancid furriner-bashing anti-illegal-immigrant smear campaign. Make no mistake, whatever lipstick they put on this pig, the bottom line is the same old know-nothing nativism that has been a minor American stain since the Protestants began to get worried about the Irish Catholic surge in the 1840s (among some of our earliest settlers, the only acceptable immigrants were slaves). I tend to be an extremist on this issue. I am wildly in favor of immigration, legal and illegal. I realize that national security--i.e. terrorism--requires...

American politics is usually a zero-sum game: When one side gains, the other loses. An exception is the current battle to overhaul immigration laws. The bipartisan effort is led by the unlikely duo of President George W. Bush and Senator Edward Kennedy. The fate of the legislation, which would grant a pathway for citizenship to 12 million illegal aliens and toughen enforcement of the borders, will be decided by the U.S. Senate this week. If it passes, there is plenty of credit to share; if it fails both Bush and the Republicans and the Democratic-controlled Congress will be big losers....

A clash of faiths in the U.S. Senate last week led to the collapse of the country's first major immigration reform bill in two decades. On one side were the pragmatists, backed by the Bush administration, who say the country needs to accept that its estimated 12 million illegal residents are likely here to stay, and it should offer them a path to citizenship. On the other side were the idealists, who say lawbreakers shouldn't be rewarded, and that doing so would only encourage more illegal immigration. Although Democratic majority leader Harry Reid withdrew the bill, he left open the...

I say the speech marks a low point because the Administration has made a conscious decsion to push full steam ahead on an issue that has the potential to turn the GOP's majority into a minority - fast. Somebody please tell me what we elected a Republican majority for? To pass programs that make a mockery of our laws? To open our country's borders to upwards of 200 million immigrants over the next 20 years...just so we can, (as John McCain suggests), have someone to clear the tables in our restaurants and pick our vegetables. Some day's I think that...

by Mark Finkelstein April 1, 2006 Do you support rigorous measures to strengthen border security and tighten immigration controls? If so, you're probably a 'nativist' - read racist - or a rube, or very possibly both. Don't believe me? Just ask Neal Gabler. Here's what he had to say on this evening's Fox News Watch: "The conservative nativists, and maybe that's a redundancy, thought they had a winner here. What a great issue they have," he said sarcastically. "You can beat up on aliens and get all of those white folks for the 2006 election." Conservative columnist Jim Pinkerton weighed...

DUBAI -- Officials here heard late Thursday that Karl Rove had decided to pull the plug. President Bush's political adviser was said to have conveyed to a top manager of Dubai Ports World in Washington that the White House couldn't hold out any longer against congressional pressure to kill the Arab company's plan to acquire freight terminals at six U.S. ports. The initial response of one Dubai executive was: "Who's Karl Rove?" But in the end, political leaders here recognized that it was time to fold a losing hand. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>break<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< Arab radicals will be gloating, admonishing the UAE leaders, "We...

Fearful Fringe nativism is the essence of surrender By Tony Snow A fair number of analysts have linked the Dubai Ports World controversy with President Bush's approach to border security. The president, they say, can't keep our borders safe, so why should we trust his word when it comes to securing our ports? The question unmasks the questioners. While our borders have become porous, they haven't become highways for terror, at least by the slender evidence available to laymen. Instead, they have become the focal point for fearful imaginings — of Islamofascists secreted in otherwise empty trucks or train...

One of the weirder sideshows to open alongside a main event — the proposed operational transfer of six major American ports to a firm owned by the United Arab Emirates — is the growing chorus of road-company Zolas, "J'accusing" everybody opposed to the sale of "xenophobia," "isolationist mass hysteria," "bigotry," "nativism," "panic," and "prejudice" against innocent Araby. Such accusations are supposed to make you hang your head in shame. They make me shake mine in consternation — wondering how in tarnation a hefty chunk of the American elite has the chutzpah to castigate the American people (64 percent of whom,...

72.2% Georgians believe that the problem of national minorities in Georgia should be settled like this: “to create the conditions to make them return to their historic territories.” The poll was conducted by BCG among 1,000 respondents. Other 18.8% think, in this case conditions should be created “to ‘Georgianize’ national minorities and assimilate them with the Georgian populate of the country.” 18.5% respondents see another way of settling the problem: “creation of conditions to make national minorities preserve their cultural and religious originality and simultaneously study Georgian to become participants of the Georgian state establishment enjoying full rights.” The results...

The anti-Turkish mood is rooted in the EU's broader malaise. People living in economic insecurity are afraid to embrace change. So, is Turkey to start membership talks with the European Union? The reception could hardly be more hostile. As the public sees it, the EU is big enough already. Political leaders from France's Nicolas Sarkozy to Germany's Angela Merkel are opposed. Austria wants to offer a "privileged partnership," not full membership. Thus the chances of Turkey's (let alone Ukraine's or Serbia's) ending up in the Union would seem to be slim. But are they? Now is now, and tomorrow is...

“Cultural diversity” has replaced “cultural exceptionalism” in the French-inspired, Eur- opean rhetoric. But in actuality, the two terms cover the same kind of cultural protectionism. The idea that a culture can preserve its originality by barricading itself against foreign influences is an old illusion that has always produced the opposite of the desired result. Isolation breeds sterility. It is the free circulation of cultural products and talents that allows each society to perpetuate and renew itself. The proof of this goes back to the old comparison between Athens and Sparta. It was Athens, the open city, that was the prolific...