You sure you want to stand by that assertion?
Posted on 04/04/2006 7:42:56 AM PDT by SmithL
Washington -- California history haunts the Republican civil war raging over immigration that is scheduled to come to a head Friday in a Senate vote.
In 1994, California's Republican Gov. Pete Wilson won a tight re-election race by backing a popular anti-illegal-immigrant measure known as Proposition 187, and he lost his party's grasp on the nation's biggest political prize by alienating Hispanic voters.
The alarm now gripping many in the party, not least the White House, is that history could repeat itself in the teetering red states on which GOP victories depend: Florida, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and others with fast-growing Latino populations.
Washington has its own version of Prop. 187, known as the Sensenbrenner bill after its author, House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis. It passed the House in December and would, among other things, make illegal immigrants felons and build a 700-mile fence on the border with Mexico.
This week Senate Republicans -- including at least four potential presidential hopefuls, evenly split on the issue -- may decide whether to allow that measure to represent the party's position on immigration or to embrace a bipartisan Senate bill that takes the opposite approach, offering an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants the chance to obtain permanent U.S. residence and allowing upwards of 400,000 more to do so each year under a guest worker plan.
"This is a defining moment for the Republican Party," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who supports the Senate bill, said over the weekend. "If our answer to the fastest-growing demographic in this country is that 'We want to make felons of your grandparents, and we want to put people in jail who are helping your neighbors and people related to you,' then we're going to suffer mightily."
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
W has never stated that the minutemen are vigilantes anymore than he stated Saddam was responsible for 911.
Produce the quote without all the inference and inuendo.
You cannot.
Bush supports what the minutemen are doing as it is their right to do what they are doing. He has never said he opposes what they are or have been doing. He has stated that what they are doing is a first ammendment issue and they have the right to what they are doing. FACT IS that after 911 he asked for this very thing. Remember?
Remember? Be vigilant.
I laugh at your same paragraph deal. The word minutemen was not in his words used when speaking of the minutemen. Indeed that word was from someone else. As i said before, he ducked the issue when he answered as he did.
One part about minutemen was a question.
His answer was about vigilantes.
He has never said that the minutemen had undertaken any actions he classified as vigilante.
Can you post where he has? Nope.
I am a fool when the words are clear????
Post where W said " the minutemen are vigilantes"!!!
you cannot do so dirtboy OR YOU WOULD.
Instead you post where someone SAID he said that.
Do you not understand the difference?
I posted a quote about Bush calling private border patrol groups to be vigilantes - from Fox News, so it isn't liberal spin.
And someone else posted a transacript from a White House press briefing where McClellan was given the opportunity to clarify Bush's comments and did not do so.
You can engage in Clintonesque attempts to parse away Bush's meaning because the Minutemen where not specifically mentioned, even though they were the group in the news at the time, they were the group Fox was mentioning legal action against in the press conference, and Bush followed up immediately after that comment. If it makes you warm and fuzzy to do such, hey, that's your perogative.
But you don't fool us or many other folks.
The bill that would have made their crime into a felony was scuttled by our wonderful representatives on Capitol Hill.
No you didn't post that dirtboy. You posted where someone said ABOUT his comments that is what he said. When that is not what he said. Indeed it is spin. OR else you would be able to post where he said " the minutemen are vigilantes". He never said such a thing dirtboy.
When he did not say they were vigilantes there is no need to clear anything up. What you claim needs to be cleaned up is spin to start with.
It is you that parse when you attempt to claim that read between the lines interpratation equals what someone actually said. There is a very big difference there and I would hope you could see that.
W was asked if he supported the minutemans actions. He ducked that and answered with what he does not support. Which as he said is vigilante actions. The minutemen have undertaken no such activity and have clear rules about what they are there to do and what they are not there to do.
If w said the minutemen were vigilantes you would not have to reach so far trying to claim he did. Talk about fuzzy...oh yeah you got that down pat.
W;'s position on immigration and mine are far from the same. I am not defending his position held since he became president. I do not see a need to stretch the truth into something it is not. You wanna know why?
Here is why.
Dan Rather:The Documents are fake but the story is true.
See that yet? What you try to do here with a claim that he said something he never said is exactly the same thing and I abhor such lame attempts at dissent....especially when the truth is all you really need to oppose where he has been on immigration as an issue.
Do notice that he is now stating that border enforcment has to come first. I think this is a bit if a swing and he understands that the people will accept nothing less. He may get his guest worker program but the illegal flow has got to come to an end.
You can say people said that W said the minutemen were vigilantes (which is what your post did) and that is true. You cannot say he actually said it and produce a quote, reason being, that quote doesn't exist.
There is one key difference between the two.
Plenty of people have disputed attempts by the left to say Bush linked 9/11 and Saddam because it clearly was an attempt by the left to warp what Bush had said.
No one that I know of has attempted to claim that, because Bush did not specifically mention the Minutemen in response to the question, that he was not referring to them. It so happens that the Minutemen were in the news big-time when this conference was happening, and the question was directed by a journalist in response to those stories. So rational people clearly belief that Bush was referring to the Minutemen.
In other words, in the context of the news that day about the Minutemen, it was clear who the subject was. And just in case it wasn't what Bush really meant at the time, McClellan was offered the opportunity to clarify at a press conference, as another poster had noted. McClellan declined to do so.
I have not seen ONE ARTICLE claiming that Bush was referring to anyone but the Minutemen - from across the board. You are the only one I have seen that has attempted this approach.
So go ahead and write ever-more detailed posts to try and spin this one to death. Clinton got very detailed parsing "is". That is what happens when someone is trying to spin away the obvious - they defy common sense and the clear perceptions of what everyone else heard.
Tell me why I should care about a president who's wasted every single opportunity that's been presented to him, has squandered his entire second term in office, and has done everything in his capacity to piss away the good will of the people who made him what he is.
"No one that I know of has attempted to claim that, because Bush did not specifically mention the Minutemen in response to the question, that he was not referring to them"
Well you have now.
Think about this for a minute dirtboy OK.
W says what he is thinking. He does not pull punches. He does not beat around the bush. He does not speak between the lines as our former president does. He is straightforward and to the point about what he will do and why.
You are now saying that he is like this in every way on every issue EXCEPT this one time? Cmon now!
Or are you going to claim that he does speak between the lines as Clinton did? Which is it?
The question was about wether he supported the minutemen or not. Right? He answered with what he did not support....which is not what the minutemen are doing.
Again, what you claim needs clarified is a fabrication of inference not a direct quote. If you could produce where W said something other than he did at the time in question I would agree that something may need cleared up.
People say that W called the minutemen vigilantes all the time and when tasked all they can produce is the likes of what you produced. A quote where someone SAYS he said that.
Funny thing how the quote never seems to be produced to back up the claim that he said the minutemen are vigilantes.
If he had said they were vigilantes you would not be working so hard to prove that he did. It would be easy. You could simply post the words he said and the question that was asked instead of what people have said about what he said.
Get back to me when you post a quote where W said "the minutemen are vigilantes" or 'I oppose the minutemen and their project".
I won't be holding my breath. You can produce neither and you know it.
Should it have the word "is" in it so you can parse that too?
Like I said, I haven't seen one article that claims Bush meant otherwise. This isn't about spin - it's about your attempts to pretend that the obvious isn't.
You sure you want to stand by that assertion?
The obvious "is" consists of the fact that you cannot produce a quote to match articles saying that he said sucha thing.
It is you that parses when you make claim to W saying something he did not say. Until you can produce something other than commentary about what he said than admit you cannot produce a quote that bush made.
I'm not voting for a party that panders to illegals. That's the same as the Democrats trying to allow FELONS to vote so they can win some seats. This insults me as a voter.
W supports their right to do what they are doing....but no more than they are doing. This being excercising their right to free speech and their right to protest.
You are not saying that W opposes these things are you?
W would rather them not be there and rather not be dealing with this issue but that is just tough isn't it.
Got a quote where W said the minutemen have or are acting in a vigilante way? No you don't.
It's not a sound strategy. They will vote a third party, splitting the gop vote and dooming the country for a long time. Unifying the party is the way to win. The base is correct on this issue. The polls also show opposition to illegal immigration. Huge numbers. It is folly to pander to a group that is naturally democrat, namely cheaters. Nobody likes a cheater. That is how it should be played politically. Cheaters versus fair play.
California was already socialist by the time Wilson backed 187. They had already voted for Clinton in 1992.
W doesn't have to agree with what the minutemen say anymore than he has to agree with what NOW says. The point I make is that he accepts their right to speak about it and to protest about it. Doing both in a legal way.
Minutemen are doing this in a legal way. W knows this and so do you. Care to post anything that says the minutemen are not doing do legally? Care to post where W has made any attempt to stop them?
If you really believe that W does not believe in free speech and the right to protest then by all means believe that. It's your right. But that honestly makes no sense given his actions throughout his presidency. I suppose he doesn't believe in free speech or protesting for the Iraqi people or the Afghan people either eh? C'mon Now!
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