Posted on 07/08/2006 4:37:07 PM PDT by garbageseeker
LOS ANGELES - Former President Bill Clinton praised President Bush on Saturday for supporting reforms that would allow millions of illegal immigrants to seek citizenship but said the debate in Congress is being fomented by Republicans who want to divide America.
"I'm proud of him for doing it and I thanked him for doing it," he said of Bush during a "Cafe con Clinton" breakfast speech to the annual conference of the National Council of La Raza, the nation's largest Hispanic civil rights advocacy group.
Clinton said Bush's roots in Texas — which has one of the nation's largest Hispanic populations — have helped him view immigrants as people rather than statistics.
"It's hard to demonize people if you know them," he said.
But Clinton also argued that the nation's government is controlled by Republican ideological hard-liners who want to use immigration to divide Americans and distract them from issues such as the war in Iraq and the health care crisis.
Instead of equal opportunity, they support a "financial elite" because they favor "concentrated wealth and power," Clinton said.
"They believe in a government that is secret, unaccountable and that maximizes its own power," he said. "They really believe the world works better if they run it and we keep our mouths shut."
Clinton supported an immigration reform measure passed by the Senate that would provide a way for many of the estimated 12 million foreigners living in the country illegally to become citizens. A House-approved bill would make illegal immigrants felons and build 700 miles of border walls. House and Senate negotiators so far have not been able to work out a compromise.
Bush has said he wants to enforce the borders so fewer people sneak across but also provide a way for those already in the United States to become legal. He has praised Hispanic immigrants as hardworking and family oriented. Clinton used similar language in his own speech.
The message played well with La Raza, which opposes the House bill and whose current president, Janet Murguia, was an assistant in the Clinton White House.
Before Clinton's speech, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa noted a string of rallies over the immigration issue, including one in March that sent 500,000 people into the streets of Los Angeles and garnered international attention.
"You literally reshaped the political landscape of our nation ... we can still see a movement blooming before our very eyes," he said.
Both Democrats and Republicans have been looking for ways to court Hispanics, whose fast-growing population gives them the potential to become an enormous voting force. Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, was scheduled to address the convention on Tuesday
Bump
Absolutely. The Dems deserve annihilation.
Odds are, if they employ this strategy, they'd be sitting prettier than ever.
That depends on their agenda at the time. If they're positioned on the center, they're toast. Conservatives would leave in droves. The farther to the right they are, the more would stay.
And if they don't [end up in a better position], who gives a Rat's ass -- the country will be better for it.
I think the GOP gives a rats ass, in a big way. I wonder how much of the GOP's goals have to do with their concern for the good of the country, and how much has to do with political advantage. This is exactly why they keep propping up the Dems. They refuse to take an agressive strategy.
Anyway, thanks for taking the time to read my weird little theory. :)
Oh, but they do have an aggressive strategy -- to get 50.005% of the electoral votes every four years. Period.
They have a very aggressive strategy toward conservatives:
I'm so sick of it. The more conservatives come to the realization that they're being played and manipulated for the good of the GOP leadership, the better off America will be.
We desperately need another event like the 94 election- one that lasts. Seems the GOP has protected the Senate against real conservatism more than anything else. (McCollum, Toomey, now they're kicking Harris aside). 6 year terms and fewer elections makes it easier to manage than a House protection strategy I guess- but they're determined to keep the Senate from going to the right.
Its' frustrating to know that they could destroy the Dems once and for all as an influential force, but the life support machine continues....
Gaaah. Where's the barf alert?
Karl Rove is speaking to these a$$holes too.
What ever happened to the review that Congress was going to do of CFIUS... Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States... the one that rubber-stamped the DPW deal?
I think that's why Ashcroft "resigned."
They just need to coalesce around other conservatives and not let RiNO's run the state committees. That's where conservatives lose it. They won in 1964 and 1980 because they got the state delegations in hand to nominate convention delegates who'd support Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan.
The problem is, the RiNO's turn around and, just like 1964 and 1980, either sit on their hands or threaten to sit on their hands, in order to extract concessions and wring patronage jobs from the conservatives. George Bush got James Baker the job of White House chief of staff at the 1980 GOP Convention as part of the price of unity -- and then Baker used that position to freeze out Reaganauts from decisionmaking. The only Reaganaut he didn't "handle" -- because he couldn't -- was Ronald Wilson Reagan. But Baker probably got on Ronnie's last nerve, trying to "option-C" him to death, paint him into a corner on every issue and try to get him to do what Vice President Bush and the Yacht Club Wing wanted.
James Baker dominated the "Group of Five" that set President Reagan's agenda: the five were Baker, his servant Richard Darman, OMB Director David Stockman (who came from the Congressional wing of the party, having been a congressional staffer), Reaganaut Ed Meese, and one other man whom I can't remember. With his two votes, Baker dominated the group, and therefore President Reagan's agenda -- which made Vice-President Bush one of the most powerful men in Washington, simply by virtue of the fact that his old Yale roommate and constant servant James Baker set the President's agenda.
In case you ever wondered who it was, besides Senator Bob Dole, who kept busying themselves all over Washington with watering down Reaganism, all through the Reagan Administration, and showing the real Reaganauts the door.
Tells us something about Karl Rove, then, doesn't it?
DPW? You mean the port-management deal? I wasn't as bothered about that as some people, personally. Most of the personnel were British nationals, and there was no plan to change them out for a crowd of, say, Palestinians and Algerians from unvetted backgrounds.
Okay, you were talking about the Chinese company getting "inside help" from the administration. I saw a parallel with the CFIUS expedited "review" of DPW.
Thanks for the info. I knew that Bush senior was behind it, but I never knew the actual mechanisms that he used to accomplish it.
I guess the overall point remains- the more impotent the Dems become, the more conservatives won't need the Yacht Club wing. The RINOs know this, so they're desperately keeping the Dems propped up. If things continue to go badly for the Dems they way they are now, it will eventually become unmanageable for the RINOs.
I don't think it's that difficult to see that Arnold's in the same boat as President Bush if some would sit and think about it for a few minutes instead of jumping off the deep end and immediately join the Bush bashing and Arnold bashing choirs. Both have tremendously difficult jobs trying to clean up the mess left by both of their predecessors while at the same time trying to put the country/state back on the right road and all with no support or help from their party members. Reading some of the impatient posts here on FR apparently some DO think Rome was built in a day.
Swell.
I think you're probably right.
With guys like Roy Underhill, Alben Karpis, John Dillinger, and Pretty Boy Floyd on ice lo, these many years, the FBI's job has changed to being largely about white-collar crime, the kind committed with pens and faxes.
If Yacht Club politics is going to hold an umbrella over a lot of these guys just because they're businessmen practicing tax evasion and human trafficking in order to keep their costs down, then an honest prosecutor isn't going to stick around, is he? Which says something about the relative honesty of guys like Ashcroft and Lloyd Bentsen, who left their administrations, and the guys and girls like Bob Rubin and Janet Reno and Jamie Gorelick and our new AG, who stuck around and did the politics.
Meanwhile, going back to how conservatives fare under Yacht Club tuition, the local 'Rats down in Florida are going nuts trying to put Rush Limbaugh in prison, and has anyone noticed any moves by Jeb Bush yet, to kick their asses for stalking the man like that?
Roger that.
And no, looks like Rushie's on his own as is Katherine Harris.
Carrying water apparently doesn't earn points. One little misstep and you have served your usefulness.
Rush, of course, finally entered the immigration debate --- on the right side. What was Harris's sin?
Oh, but you are so dismally correct. And to catch the mental attitude, I would introduce, gingerly, that great remark in days gone by of Rose Kennedy's, that she directed to one of Jack's Brahmin classmates one day when she was giving the young men a lift in the family car:
"When are you people going to accept us Irish?"
Correct answer: Never.
And I bet the Kennedys, for all their wealth and power, still don't cut it with the Lodges and Cabots. There's more to be said about the Kennedys, of course, but I was making a point about Beacon Hill snobs, to whom everyone else is just The Help.
Even given all the sniping you like about Kennedy raffishness and rum-running (and -swilling), the Beacon Hill snobs won't look any better when you start turning over rocks and looking at how they made their Old Money.
Capitalism would be a great theory -- if anyone ever really practiced it. The ethical free-market capitalism championed by Ayn Rand and the economic and ordoliberals has never really existed, because like boys who want to get girls pregnant, the getting is always the thing. And if that means profiteering off the cacique system of forced labor in Latin America like W. R. Grace did 140 years ago, or using coolie labor like the Big Four did in the Central Pacific Railroad's glory days (my great-grandfather was one of their employees, a train conductor), or the Walton family making their pile off Chinese wages benchmarked to prison-labor corvees today, business doesn't care about principles (of accounting or whatever) or ethics (just ask any California ratepayer) nearly as much as they do the near return on capital.
Which is why the RNC is purblind to the country's needs for security, when it's all, all about cheap labor, and cheapening American labor, to their business audience.
Rush, of course, finally entered the immigration debate --- on the right side. What was Harris's sin?
I don't know. Maybe, like an old sacrificial anode, she just sorta got used up.
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