Posted on 01/04/2016 2:19:43 PM PST by conservativejoy
Trump: Let's face it, Ted Cruz is copying me on building a border wall in order to step up his "weak" immigration game.
Skip to 4:55 of the clip below for the key bit from yesterday's "Face the Nation" interview. Pop quiz: Who said the following, and when did he say it - and to whom?
We have a crisis on illegal immigration. Neither party is serious about stopping it. I strongly oppose illegal immigration. I categorically oppose amnesty. I support legal immigrants who come here supporting the American Dream.
I come from the perspective of someone who spent much of my adult life in law enforcement. In a post-9/11 world, it is absolutely unacceptable that we don't know who comes over our borders. We need to do everything humanly possible to secure the borders. Electronic surveillance, a wall, helicopters and, most importantly, boots on the ground. If elected, the first thing I will do is triple the U.S. Border Patrol.
That's Senate candidate Ted Cruz, speaking to Dustin Siggins in May 2012 in an interview for .. HotAir.com. Three years before the GOP presidential primary got going, he was calling for a border wall in the border state of Texas. And not just parts of Texas, either. As Cruz made clear in a Senate primary debate that year, he wanted the entire Texas border walled off - even if it meant invoking one of Trump's favorite federal powers, eminent domain, to do it.
Cruz also distinguished himself from Dewhurst with his full-throated support for a border wall estimated by the Department of Homeland Security to cost $7.3 billion, or $6.5 million per mile.
Cruz defended the border wall proposal even if it meant expropriating private property - a position that the debate's moderators, WFAA reporter Brad Watson and Gromer Jeffers of the Dallas Morning News, said contrasted with Cruz's message of fiscal conservatism.
"One of the specific powers and responsibilities of the federal government is to secure the borders," Cruz said. "Property can be taken with due process of law and just compensation."
That was July 2012. One of the evergreen questions with Trump is whether he's merely misinformed or whether he knows the truth and is twisting it to suit his own ends. Which do you suppose it is for the "Cruz wouldn't have supported a border wall without me going first" claim? How about the additional claim he makes that immigration wouldn't have come up in the primaries if not for Trump forcing the issue? You think Ted Cruz, running to Marco Rubio's and Jeb Bush's right, would have given them a pass on their past support for amnesty, do you?
As always with Trump, there's a kernel of truth beneath the lies and blather. There's no denying, I think, that Cruz has been pushed further right than he would have gone if Trump had passed on the race. The most glaring example is his position on legal immigration. Until recently, Cruz always hedged his condemnations of amnesty with professions that there was no greater champion of legal immigration than him. In the immigration plan he released in November, though, he reserved the right as president to limit legal immigration depending upon the state of unemployment in the United States. That was his counter, I think, to Trump's mass deportation plan: If Cruz couldn't go along with "deport 'em all" sentiment for fear of how it might hurt him in the general election, he'd at least throw border hawks a bone by sounding a bit more like Jeff Sessions. His recent categorical refusal to legalize illegals as president was also driven mainly by fear of Trump, I suspect. Granted, it was Rubio who drew that out of him by publicizing his 2013 amendment to the Gang of Eight bill that proposed more work permits for illegals, but Cruz probably could have stood firm on that position if Trump wasn't in the race. He wouldn't have needed to move further right in a one-on-one battle with Rubio; even if you take a dim view of Cruz's amendment, his immigration credentials are still unquestionably better than Rubio's. With Trump running to Cruz's right, however, the calculus changes. If Cruz were to signal support for legalization in any way, Trump would destroy him over it and that would ruin Cruz’s long romance with Trump's voters. Result: Cruz now vows he'll oppose legalization "today, tomorrow, forever." It's not the border wall that left Cruz exposed on immigration, it was everything else.
That's what Trump should have said here, but maybe he's just warming up. Note what he says at 6:04 about how Rubio and Cruz were both weak on immigration in the past. That's an early hint, I think, that he's prepared to come after Cruz hard on amnesty if Iowa remains close over the last few weeks. If he does, the outcome on caucus night will give us a solid verdict on whether Trumpmania and the primaries writ large are really "about" immigration or whether there's more to the vote this year than that. If Trump wins the state by taking Cruz down over his 2013 amendment, that'll tell us a lot. If he fails, that'll tell us a lot too.
Pat Buchanan. Glad you brought him up. Local and national talk radio and TV all loved to have Pat as a guest and ridicule him for running 5th in a 4 party race for President. Virtually nobody agreed with him or voted for him. Hosts ridiculed him for being the only anti-immigrant conservative and taking the big government side on that issue.
Virtually all conservatives held the capitalist position of let-the-free-market-decide.
Post 2001 people looked for a scapegoat. It wasn’t politically correct to attack Muslims who controlled our oil. So the invasion from the South became the scapegoat.
As far as I’m aware, Cruz never said anything about a wall. He supported an amendment to the Gang of 8 bill that supposedly forced the government to build the fence that was approved in 2006, signed by Bush, and is already law. Now people seem to be trying to credit Cruz with taking the lead on this issue because of his sponsering that amendment. The problem with that argument is threefold.
First, a fence is not a wall. That difference is no small point.
Second, if we’re supposed to credit Cruz as being the leader on the building of a border fence (not a wall), then the question is why not credit George Bush, and the members of congress who already passed the 2006 bill mandating the building of the fence, instead? The border fence is already law and became law before Cruz was ever on the scene. Trying to credit the border fence (not wall) to Cruz is absurd.
Third, the fact that the border fence is already mandated, and has been law for ten years begs the question. Why hasn’t it been built? The short answer is that neither Congress nor President’s Bush or Obama have had the will to see it built, even though the law requires it.
I would argue that Cruz’s amendment, which on the surface might look tough, would have done little to actually force the government to do what it’s already required by law to do - build 700 miles of fence. And it’s very possible that was always the intention (i.e. include an amendment that sounded tough but in reality could easily be ignored and or bypassed). We already have plenty of tough sounding legislation that accomplishes nothing. Often his is by design. Cruz’s amendment would have just added one more example of such a law to the books.
What’s going to get our border secured is the election of an Executive who actually wants it to get done, not the passing of some tough sounding legislation that in reality has no teeth. If you look at the details of Cruz’s amendment, it’s clear that there were plenty of holes in it that would have allowed its professed intent to be bypassed or ignored.
Likely never as long as the other pack of losers are on the stage and vying for their 15 minutes and the mods are hacks.
NAFTA history is an excellent economics lesson.
Reagan initially proposed it as a clean bill, simple capitalism, remove government taxes and regulations.
It never passed under Reagan. Under Bush, NAFTA became a Christmas tree with lobbyists of all stripes inserting more taxes and regulations that previously existed. Environmental regulations, labor regulations, and things totally unrelated to trade.
Clinton inherited the monstrosity. More lobbyists piled on. The string of Democrat Senators from WA, MT, ND, MN put in all kinds of anti-Canada energy and mining features.
When it passed, Free Trade was only in the name and no-where in the actual bill.
The result is that people became confused as to what free-trade really is.
Clinton’s Goldman-Sachs Secretary Rubin made NAFTA a joke. Rubin, with the help of IMF etal,destroyed the Mexican peso. Destruction of the Mexican financial system forced the Maquiladoras to flee Mexico for Asia.
Mexicans previously employed in a booming economy centered around the maquiladoras became unemployed.
Immigration to the US boomed (not due to Amnesty 8 years earlier) but due to jobs in the US and not in Mexico.
Because the Mexican economy collapsed, libertarian leaning Fox of PAN, the Republican party of Mexico won the presidency for the first time since the 1917 revolution. Fox was followed by the social Conservative PAN/Republican president Calderon. So Mexico had 12 years of Republican President. But now it is back to PRI/Chicago Democrat style rule.
How many people with pro and anti positions on all kinds of issues have any idea of the historical reality through which we live?
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