South Carolina Ping
Add me to the list. / Remove me from the list.
Posted on 11/27/2006 5:55:59 PM PST by NormsRevenge
COLUMBIA, S.C. - Sen. Joe Biden, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's incoming chairman, wants to get tough with Mexico, calling it an "erstwhile democracy" with a "corrupt system" responsible for illegal immigration and drug problems in the U.S.
Biden, D-Del., was in Columbia on Monday in his first postelection trip to this first-in-the-South presidential primary state as he continues to line up support for his presidential bid.
During a question-and-answer session before more than 230 Columbia Rotary Club members, Biden was asked about immigration problems.
Biden, who favors tightening the U.S.-Mexico border with fences, said immigration is driven by money in low-wage Mexico.
"Mexico is a country that is an erstwhile democracy where they have the greatest disparity of wealth," Biden said. "It is one of the wealthiest countries in the hemisphere and because of a corrupt system that exists in Mexico, there is the 1 percent of the population at the top, a very small middle class and the rest is abject poverty."
Unless the political dynamics change in Mexico and U.S. employers who hire illegal immigrants are punished, illegal immigration won't stop. "All the rest is window dressing," he said.
An even bigger problem are illegal drugs "coming up through corrupt Mexico," he said. "People are driving across that border with tons, tons — hear me — tons of everything from byproducts for methamphetamines, to cocaine, to heroine."
Covering a variety of topics, Biden kept most of the crowd in their seats for an hour — twice as long as scheduled.
"I warn all of you, all of you making more than a million bucks — I hope you all are — I'm taking away your tax cut," Biden said. "I'm not joking."
The extra revenue would generate $75 billion a year and pay for a backlog in national security and local law enforcement programs, Biden said.
Biden's appeal for bipartisanship captured Bruce Rippeteau, a former Rotary president who says he's in the Genghis Khan wing of the Republican Party.
He "was saying some important things in a nonpolitical way," Rippeteau said.
"I want to compliment him about what he didn't say," Wilson said. "He never one time mentioned weapons of mass destruction."
Biden will lead the Foreign Relations panel because Republicans around the nation lost seats in the Nov. 7 elections. That tide didn't reach Republican-dominated South Carolina, where the GOP maintained its four U.S. House seats and Democrats kept their two.
Thanks.
Incidentally, there is nothing at all to stop a Republican potential (and viable) presidential candidate from taking the same position, plus being good on taxes.
I wonder why he didn't proclaim that BEFORE the election?
Do you know how hard it is to get any press coverage much less airtime with Obama sucking all the '08 air out of the atmosphere of late?
Say it ain't so, Joe.
If anyone here believes one word that Joe Biden says about anything, shame on us all.
D-Mass., gets advise
posted as found
Honist Injun :-)
"Erstwhile democracy" should say "emerging republic," but I cannot tell whether the journalist or the senator bears culpability for the error. The antics of defeated Presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador notwithstanding, the future prospects and present state of Mexico get better all the time. This assertion does not deny the enormous influence that transnational criminal enterprises, thieves, and rapists enjoy in Mexico. Our lackadaisical attitude toward border security and our ridiculously sluggish and bureaucratically intesive legal immigration process contribute to the power of these terrible gangs.
I'm still chuckling,,
when his brain stent plugs, no telling what's gonna come out of Joe..
I know; I checked the original.
Thanks senator Idiot, but no thanks. The Mexicans wouldn't come if we didn't let, and in fact encourage them.
Holy Toledo. Snowmen are break dancing in Hell.
I aspire to be a caption writer, being a proof reader is too easy.. well, for a few anyway. ;-)
How did he vote on that monstrosity of an immigration bill? He had to have voted for it.
So when Biden implies (or tells you) that you're giving up your money for this specific purpose, he's blowing smoke, IMO.
No surprise to me, the republicans have left their right flank open vis a vis illegal immigration.
Reports that illegal immigration was a loser issue in the recent midterm election were completely bogus and here we have the proof.
A pandering politician? Saying all the right things? I'm shocked, shocked I tell you!
You're spot-on. Absolutely correct.
The open-borders wing of the GOP simply refuses to believe this. But I completely agree with your assessment.
Here's when I knew that the DNC was going to move to the GOP's right on this issue: When Hillary wasn't going to toe the open-borders line back in March. That was the signal for me that some crafty people in back rooms in the DNC saw an opening -- a way of cleaving the GOP's conservative base from the GOP.
The GOP greybeards simply refuse to believe this. Talk to most anyone in the southwest and southern US -- the geographic strongholds of the GOP - and ask what their #1 issue is. It isn't taxes -- the majority of people no longer pay substantial taxes aside from FICA/Mediscare payroll taxes. It isn't foreign policy.
It is immigration. Immigration in all forms is a big, big issue with people, but they're burning under their collars about Bush's refusal to face facts on the border. They're fed up with the number of criminals flooding over the border. They're fed up with hospitals closing because they're being fiscally bled dry by illegals walking into the ER and never paying. On and on and on. The elites in the northeast (and despite his Texas address, Bush is a northeast elite, just like his daddy -- if George W. had gone to A&M instead of Yale, *then* I'd believe he was a Texan) just refuse to believe that a substantial and persistant majority of voters out there are pissed as hell on immigration. They just cannot believe the numbers, so they keep tweeking the polling, trying to get a different result.
And now, we have the GOP greybeards spinning the election results.
For the GOP greybeards, listen up: Joe Biden has very, very few original thoughts in his head. This one is no different. He's been given his marching orders. He's the guy making this statement because he's in a safe seat. This is not a slip of the tongue -- this is seismic policy shift inside the DNC.
Talk to some actual Mexicans and ask them what they think of Mexico's politics.
The Mexican nationals I've talked to are under no illusion that theirs is a democracy. They're also under no illusion that their elections are reliable, either. We anglos might think of Mexico as a nominal democracy, but most all the Mexican nationals I've talked to don't seem to think so.
Again, Senator Biden's choice of words is telling us something here.
If the GOP doesn't wake up here and quick, the DNC is going to really own the immigration/border issue, even if they don't actually *do* something about it.
I think they listened to their own voters.
South Carolina Ping
Add me to the list. / Remove me from the list.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.