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Latino head of RNC resigns (Sen. Mel Martinez, frustration over anti-illegal immigration stance)
LA Times ^ | 10/20/07 | Peter Wallsten

Posted on 10/20/2007 6:39:22 PM PDT by NormsRevenge

WASHINGTON -- The Republican Party's highest-ranking Latino official abruptly resigned Friday, marking the latest casualty in the GOP's bitter internal fight over immigration and dealing another setback to President Bush's years-long effort to court Latino voters.

The announcement by Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida that he was quitting as general chairman of the Republican National Committee came after he had expressed frustration over the tenor of the immigration debate within his party. ...

"Mel Martinez was a symbol of the party's outreach to Latinos, and that seems to be disappearing," said Lionel Sosa, a longtime Republican strategist and advisor to GOP presidents since Ronald Reagan. ...

The White House had engineered the ascent of the Cuban-born Martinez over the objections of many conservatives as part of an effort to repair the GOP's image among Latinos. That image suffered when Republican congressional leaders and conservative activists stymied administration-backed measures that would have created a path to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants.

Some GOP strategists say the party's poor performance among Latino voters in 2006 helped ensure Democratic victories across the country. Now, some worry that Martinez's early exit from the RNC foreshadows more trouble in 2008.

Robert de Posada, president of the Republican-leaning Latino Coalition, said Martinez's departure is especially disheartening because it follows the resignation of another high-profile Latino in the GOP: former U.S. Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales.

"The message that it sends is Latinos are not welcome," De Posada said. "The radical conservative base has a temporary victory right now."

The RNC will be run by Mike Duncan, who shared the title of chairman and was responsible for the party's day-to-day operations.

--snip--

Bush issued a brief statement saying that Martinez "represented the best of the Republican Party and its core values."

(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Extended News; Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: aliens; amnesty; deathofthegop; illegalaliens; immigrantlist; laraza; latino; melmartinez; mikeduncan; resignation; resigns; rnc; saynotornc
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To: fieldmarshaldj
“This isn’t the 19th century anymore.”

The U.S. Constitution, American boarders & Sovereignty are not a fad and have no expiration date.

181 posted on 10/21/2007 6:56:10 PM PDT by Rottweilerson (If you want a friend...Feed any animal.)
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To: nicmarlo

This is ooga-booga stuff. You want to play make believe and think we can go back to ludicrous isolationism of the pre-WW2 vintage, I got a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn.


182 posted on 10/21/2007 6:59:15 PM PDT by fieldmarshaldj (~~~Jihad Fever -- Catch It !~~~ (Backup tag: "Live Fred or Die"))
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To: fieldmarshaldj

You’ve already sold out America.

You ain’t got no bridges any longer.

You’re burning them.


183 posted on 10/21/2007 7:00:11 PM PDT by nicmarlo
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To: Rottweilerson
"The U.S. Constitution, American boarders & Sovereignty are not a fad and have no expiration date."

Nor should it, but that's not the issue here. It's too bad isolationism isn't a fad. The very worst kind of political naivete.

184 posted on 10/21/2007 7:01:47 PM PDT by fieldmarshaldj (~~~Jihad Fever -- Catch It !~~~ (Backup tag: "Live Fred or Die"))
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To: azhenfud
Well said, azhenfud.
The Bush brothers sure let us down with Mel.
185 posted on 10/21/2007 7:02:17 PM PDT by stainlessbanner
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To: nicmarlo

You got a screw loose or something, pal ? WTF are you going on about ? Find the nearest closet and go listen to some Ron Paul and go to your happy place. Let the grown ups deal with foreign policy.


186 posted on 10/21/2007 7:03:15 PM PDT by fieldmarshaldj (~~~Jihad Fever -- Catch It !~~~ (Backup tag: "Live Fred or Die"))
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To: BillyBoy

McCollum had the experience and I think the name recognition to win. Mel ran an nasty campaign IIRC.


187 posted on 10/21/2007 7:04:17 PM PDT by stainlessbanner
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To: fieldmarshaldj

If you think you’re a grown up “in charge”, think again, buddy.

With “grown ups” like you in charge, we’ll be steam-rolled by the Chinese and the illegals in their broken down trucks rolling over our borders in no time.

You must have friends in the corporate world...because all that NAFTA and the NAU is doing is creating profits for the elitists as the middle class is burdened, by taxes, crime, and and the costs for their “wonderful globalist world.”


188 posted on 10/21/2007 7:09:23 PM PDT by nicmarlo
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To: nicmarlo

If you think I’m a friend or fan of illegals, you got another thing coming. Those folks have already invaded my neighborhood and have turned it into a slum. And I and my family are audiologically raped each and every day. I want them gone yesterday. But I think you guys equate active engagement with the rest of the world with open borders. There is a gigantic difference. I’m a “globalist” in that I believe in nation building elsewhere so that these ILLEGALS won’t flood across our borders when these f*ckwits in DC won’t enforce the damn laws !


189 posted on 10/21/2007 7:15:12 PM PDT by fieldmarshaldj (~~~Jihad Fever -- Catch It !~~~ (Backup tag: "Live Fred or Die"))
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To: fieldmarshaldj
The issue here is (Sen. Mel Martinez, frustration over anti-illegal immigration stance) not isolationism. Unfortunately the two issues are connected by One-Worlders who wish to bypass a sovereign states Law Of the Land.
190 posted on 10/21/2007 7:18:57 PM PDT by Rottweilerson (If you want a friend...Feed any animal.)
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To: fieldmarshaldj

I believe in America and our Constitution, not in corporate greedholders whose only and sole concern is making things cheap and ensuring, as much as possible, it costs them nothing.

Their wishes are antithetical to American values. It’s one thing to make a profit from hard work...that’s the American way. It’s altogether different when, in the process of making a profit, you sell out your country because....it’s expedient to a companies bank account.

NAFTA’s done NOTHING but bring greater decay and violence to Mexico and our border states....exactly the opposite of what the corporate greedholders and the politicians’, whose pockets were lined by the same, claimed. People like me, back in the 1980’s, saw and knew what would happen: more illegals in this country, and worse conditions in Mexico.

What I didn’t anticipate at the time, however, is that it would benefit US companies which had earlier moved its businesses to Mexico, to China. This created even faster declines in Mexico and even more flooding of illegals into the U.S.

Our country is being ruined because of globalism. It’s become a service economy depending on outsiders to sustain it and Americans to purchase now-defective Chinese products.

The manufacturing industry has taken a crap. But this isn’t good enough for the globalists. They are now moving to ship out the longshoremen’s jobs to Mexicans, too. Guess what? Our longshoreman aren’t the only ones who’ll be out of a job....those communities and businesses that depend on longshoreman to spend their monies, locally, won’t have that money to spend any longer. Mom and pop stores will go out of business.

But that’s not all. U.S. taxpayers will be, thanks to the political sell-outs, paying for Mexican infrastructure for the movement of longshoreman jobs in Mexico so that the goods can come from China, into Mexico, and on up into the U.S. You see, it’s “cheaper” that way than having U.S. workers unload ships, and U.S. workers haul by truck.

And....we get to pay, as in tax dollars, for the roads that will connect the ports in Mexico to the Trans-Corridor roads into the U.S. And, to top it off with a cherry, SPANISH companies, after the U.S. taxpayers build the roads, will get to charge, by toll, any citizen who then wants to drive on the roads WE paid for. Spanish companies get to profit off U.S. taxpayer paid for roads....for 99 years.

You globalists can go suck eggs.


191 posted on 10/21/2007 7:28:53 PM PDT by nicmarlo
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To: nicmarlo

What you just posted is very real & is really happening. It was all planned many years in advance in the shadows by globalist elites. And when average hard working everyday people started to speak up, they were brushed off as paranoid nuts. Now it’s really going down & still we are waved away as persona-non-grata.


192 posted on 10/21/2007 7:52:46 PM PDT by Rottweilerson (If you want a friend...Feed any animal.)
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To: Rottweilerson
Now it’s really going down & still we are waved away as persona-non-grata.

Exactly right, Rott. Exactly right. I guess when the steamroller's come mow down the pro-globalists own homes, they'll finally feel and see what all the "noise" has been about for so long.

193 posted on 10/21/2007 8:04:31 PM PDT by nicmarlo
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To: nicmarlo

Saying “I told you so” about this sucks!


194 posted on 10/21/2007 8:16:34 PM PDT by Rottweilerson (If you want a friend...Feed any animal.)
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To: Rottweilerson

Yeah...I’d rather not have to say anything, or at the very least, not have to keep repeating myself for.......20+ years.


195 posted on 10/21/2007 8:22:12 PM PDT by nicmarlo
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To: nicmarlo
“Our country is being ruined because of globalism. It’s become a service economy “

After I read that it reminded me of the talking-point-du jour from Wash. D.C. a while back. When asked about what the middle class should do when cheap unskilled labor was illegally coming in through the back door & high skilled jobs were bailing out through outsourcing & H1B visa’s the front door. The standard answer was “Americans need to shift to the service industry.”.
We are to be servants.

196 posted on 10/21/2007 8:43:25 PM PDT by Rottweilerson (If you want a friend...Feed any animal.)
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To: Rottweilerson; Borax Queen
The standard answer was “Americans need to shift to the service industry.”. We are to be servants.

We are but serfs and peasants in their eyes, to the very people WE elected to SERVE US!

It's truly outrageous!!

197 posted on 10/21/2007 8:49:45 PM PDT by nicmarlo
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To: NormsRevenge

Adios to illegal aliens.


198 posted on 10/21/2007 9:35:31 PM PDT by TigersEye (Intellectuals only exist if you think they do.)
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To: NormsRevenge

Good riddance. Martinez puts his ethnicity and his allegiance to that ethnicity above any allegiance to America.


199 posted on 10/21/2007 10:34:04 PM PDT by ought-six ("Give me liberty, or give me death!")
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To: Joann37

“I think most of us would feel the same whether these invaders were Scandanavian, Canadian, Italian or whatever.”

Yes.


200 posted on 10/21/2007 10:42:44 PM PDT by ought-six ("Give me liberty, or give me death!")
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