Posted on 11/27/2014 9:47:07 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Michele Bachmann is one of those Republican extremists who will keep Hispanics voting in the Democratic column for a long time.
The Minnesota Republican said President Barack Obama’s executive order on immigration will “flood” the country with “millions of unskilled” foreigners “who can’t speak English” but will become “illiterate” voters.
Bachmann’s response was not unusual. The once and future presidential hopeful, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), said the president’s policy would take jobs away from good American workers and give them to illegal aliens.
These over-the-top Republican responses — and talk of impeachment, censure and lawsuits targeting Obama — can only help Democrats by telling the fastest growing segment of the population “we don’t want you here.”
Most Jewish voters support comprehensive immigration reform, including a path to citizenship. Many organizations lauded the president’s action, including the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the National Jewish Democratic Council, the National Council of Jewish Women and the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly.
Not surprisingly, the reflexively anti-Obama Republican Jewish Coalition said the president “exceeded his legitimate authority” and “sets a belligerent tone” for the next two years.
There is a fundamental difference between the two parties’ approaches to immigration reform: The president and most Democrats see it as a question of keeping together families who’ve been here at least five years. To Republicans, it is primarily a security issue of rounding up the “illegals” and sending them back while more heavily fortifying the borders to make sure they and others can’t return.
Little wonder a survey by Latino Decisions shows 89 percent support for the president’s policy among Latino registered voters, including 76 percent of registered Republicans.
But this debate is about more than border security and family cohesion. It is part of the larger campaign for 2016 and beyond.
Will the obstructionism of the Republicans cost them the Hispanic vote for years to come? Will the Democrats standing up for these minorities lose votes from the white males?
Having control of both chambers of Congress, Republicans want to be able to go to voters in two years and tell them, “We can govern, and the other guys are failures, so give us the presidency, too.”
The Democrats want to tell voters, “Those guys are obstructionists and incapable of governing.”
With that mindset, don’t expect to see much cooperation — just more gridlock, bickering and accusations.
Bachmann is retiring at the end of this term but is hinting that she may make another run for the GOP presidential nomination. Immigration is sure to be a hot topic in 2016; in fact that’s part of what the dust-up over the president’s action is all about as potential GOP contenders appeal to the party’s right wing, the traditional early strategy in the Republican nomination race.
Three presidential wannabes in the Senate and outspoken critics of the president’s actions are Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul. Cruz and Rubio are sons of Cuban immigrants.
Rubio was one of the authors of the Senate bill, but once it started getting flak from the tea partiers he did a 180. Cruz wants to punish the president by refusing to vote on any of his nominees. And Paul, reaching for the title of “Most Hyperbolic,” likened Obama’s move to FDR’s executive order authorizing the Japanese-American internment camps.
Journalist Chris Nelson wrote in his Washington newsletter that “Obama forcing the move now would put every Republican presidential candidate in the horrible position of having to denounce his action, and stick to that line, to have any chance of winning GOP primaries and thus the nomination.”
Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) and others are talking impeachment; Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Iowa) wants Congress to “censure” the president. Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks wants him arrested for breaking a federal law he can’t cite; the Kansas attorney general and Arizona’s notorious Sheriff Joe Arpaio are preparing to file suit. Some Republicans are threatening to shut down the government until he meets their demands.
It is not as though the Republicans haven’t had a year and a half to come up with a comprehensive reform bill or give the House a chance to vote on the bipartisan Senate bill. They’re too deeply divided to come up with a bill that Democrats could support, and the chances that will change when they control both chambers appear remote.
Cruz, Bachmann and others are deliberately misrepresenting what the president did. There’s no amnesty, no path to citizenship in his executive order, and it does not grant citizenship or voting rights to anyone.
Cruz wrongly called the 2014 election a “referendum on amnesty,” which he misrepresented as opening a path to citizenship. “Exit poll data show exactly the opposite,” reported FactCheck.org. In fact, voters said, by a 51-39 margin, “those living in the U.S. illegally but working should be offered legal status.”
Republicans may be counting on under-voting by Hispanics, as happened in this month’s election, but that was attributed to disappointment in Washington’s inaction on immigration. Since then the president’s executive order has been enthusiastically received, as the Latino Decisions poll showed, and the uniform condemnation of Obama’s action by Republicans is expected to boost turnout in 2016, to the benefit of Democrats.
********
Douglas M. Bloomfield is the president of Bloomfield Associates Inc., a Washington, D.C., lobbying and consulting firm. He spent nine years as the legislative director and chief lobbyist for AIPAC–American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Or so they hope.
Most Hispanic immigrants don’t want the illegals rewarded either.
Just like the shut down hurt the GOP during the last election.
yeah, sure, the Jewish community in San Fag Sicsco understands the nation.....
Wasn’t the government shutdown going to give the House back to the Democrats because no one would ever vote Republican again? I’m not concerned.
And amnesty ensures democrat rule for generations and most likely would transform America into a third-world country (Obama’s ultimate goal).
Amnesty pimps be damned!!
So by insisting on following the Rule of Law vs. ignoring selected portions for purely political reasons . ..
One is an “extremist”
Gottitt
WTH!
The article and author do nothing to disprove the claims of unskilled workers and illiterate voters. Nice job of deflection, but still dishonest. What is important to the author and to the democrat party is that these new voters come from countries where there is either no Constitution or there is no knowledge of and appreciation for a Constitution. This is the nature of their voting illiteracy, which the democrat party will exploit with gifts and trinkets, but with little human regard.
Israel can loan us Eichmann's glass box for the trial.
The House came up with several bills that Reid refused to let go to the Senate floor for a vote.
Nope. The onus is on the liberal amnesty types.
The House did their job. It's not up to them to create a bill that the Dems like.
/johnny
That must be why Obola waited until *after* an election in which the Rats knew they’d be completely skunked.They knew that amnesty was wildly popular with the American people so the best strategy was to hold it in reserve.
There was one glaring, remarkable omission in his address that demonstrated more than anything else Obama’s duplicity and deception. Obama never mentioned that the government would be issuing work permits to the estimated five million lawbreakers enabling them to compete for jobs legally with American workers. Moreover, this action undermines his “prosecutorial discretion” defense because he is imbuing the lawbreakers with affirmative new rights, i.e., the ability to work here in contravention of existing laws that prohibit illegal aliens from working or employers from hiring them. This new legal status comes with tangible new benefits for those who broke our laws, including access to Social Security and Medicare.
Obama tried to minimize the impact of his lawlessness on Americans by stating, “I know that some worry immigration will change the very fabric of who we are, or take our jobs, or stick it to middle-class families at a time when they already feel like they've gotten the raw end of the deal for over a decade. I hear these concerns. But that's not what these steps would do.” In fact, this is exactly what legalization of five million lawbreakers and a virtual suspension of the enforcement of our immigration laws in the interior of our country will do.
This affects not only the five million lawbreakers who will be legalized, but also, the 7 million or more others who are here illegally. And make no mistake about it; millions more will try to come here to take advantage of this amnesty regardless of what parameters are set on eligibility. The “undocumented” have always found a way to get the documents they need to circumvent our laws.
The infusion of five million more legal foreign workers into the workforce at a time when the labor participation rate in the US is at the lowest point since 1977 makes no sense at all. Moreover, those receiving the amnesty are overwhelmingly unskilled and uneducated, .e.g., 51% of the illegal aliens who are heads of household lack even a high school diploma. Do we really need millions more high school dropouts who will receive more in benefits than they contribute in taxes. Our SS system has been in the red since 2010. Adding more low income people to the system will hasten its bankruptcy along with Medicare.
The Reps should make the Dems own amnesty and the impact it will have on American workers and our social welfare system.
Gorsh, another if you don’t vote like a demonrat other demonrats won’t vote for you barficle. I get the feeling that these clowns don’t have the best interests of Conservative or America in mind.
“There is a fundamental difference between the two parties’ approaches to immigration reform: The president and most Democrats see it as a question of keeping together families who’ve been here at least five years. To Republicans, it is primarily a security issue of rounding up the “illegals” and sending them back while more heavily fortifying the borders to make sure they and others can’t return.”
Horsecrap. To Republicans it is a matter of crapping all over the law in so many ways and the precedent that sets for raging lawlessness on the part of the government. And it’s an illustration of outrage over a Machiavellian Democrat strategy of displacing their Black base to permanent underclass status because the Dems know they cannot offend their Black base below 80% Dem vote no matter what they do.
Never mind the introduction of previously unknown diseases which have already killed about a dozen children and paralyzed perhaps 100 more; the day a few unscreened ISIS guys spray a shopping center with AK-47s Mumbai-style, this argument will turn itself inside out with stunning rapidity. It’s gotta be great to think that “security concerns” over unchecked immigration are so easily dismissed.
This entire “administration” has been a series of Reischstag Fires.
Am I the only guy who believes this current turmoil has been orchestrated to serve as YET ANOTHER diversion to the DOZENS of ongoing Obama scandals, the recent immigration mess and the building crisis in the Middle East. Obama is well on the way to marginalizing the white population here with millions of new minority citizens who will soon become the new majority (and predominately welfare “beneficiaries” and DEMOCRAT VOTERS).
Jefferson – and other founders – greatly feared what that would do to America!
Estimate is that the “benefits” Obama will provide for them will cost YOU and your fellow tax slaves over 2 BILLION bucks per year. Better plan to file and pay early!
(Isn’t it time for the FAIRTAX??)
“Whom God would destroy, He first makes mad!”
I don't want them here - not this way.
I got as far as the word “extremists” in the first sentence of this left-wing screed, and stopped reading right then and there.
If the legal immigrants wanted to live in a third world country they wouldn’t have came here in the first place.
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