Monday Political Roundup
No Room for Hispanics in GOP Tent
By Richard Martin, 12-17-07
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As Republican candidates for president compete to sound the toughest on illegal immigration, they are sacrificing an electoral bloc that helped George Bush carry four Western states by narrow margins in 2004: Hispanic voters. A new poll from the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center has found that the big historic gap between support for Democrats and Republicans among Hispanics has once again widened to nearly 34 points.
Driven, most experts believe, by concerns over religious faith and national security, the traditional Democratic strength among voters of Latin American heritage narrowed in the 2000s, helping Bush win in states like Colorado, where 18 percent of the electorate is identified as Hispanic. Now the anti-immigration rhetoric has re-opened up the gap to more than two-to-one, meaning that, whoever the Democratic presidential candidate is in 2008, they’ll likely do well in the Mountain West.
“This U-turn in Hispanic partisan allegiance trends comes at a time when the issue of illegal immigration has become an intense focus of national attention and debate,” the study’s authors write.
Republican attempts to threaten and intimidate voters of Hispanic origin haven’t helped, either.
In other political news:
-- The neighborhood spat that has become known as “the Boulder land grab” remains unresolved, but Westword traces “the Web revolt” that led to public outrage over the situation. To recap: prominent local political couple Richard McLean, an ex-judge and former mayor, and Edie Stevens, an attorney and onetime chair of the Boulder Democratic Party, used an obscure legal doctrine known as “adverse possession” to gain ownership of land owned by their neighbors, Susie and Don Kirlin. “News organizations initially ignored” the October 2007 Boulder District Court ruling that gave McLean and Stevens about a third of the Kirlins’ lot, but thanks to “the convergence of old and new media” the Kirlin v. McLean battle has become a cause celebre.
And in honor of the season, a couple of Christmas items:
-- The three Montrose County sheriff’s deputes who released a man named George Christmas may have thought they were exercising the mercy of the season, but County Judge John Mitchel disagrees, and the three law enforcement officers are now being held in contempt of court. Mitchel had ordered Christmas held on $25,000 bond, but he was released county jail supervisor Lt. Jim Martinez, Deputy Roger Fine and Deputy Darlene Mora on Nov. 15.
-- Not feeling the spirit of the season is former Dacono councilwoman Sandra Tucker, 61, who resigned her post after posting inflammatory comments on a local Web site. Tucker, a councilwoman for the small town in southwestern Weld County, posted a message that said being a Democrat is worse than “being a black disabled one-armed drug addicted Jewish queer” with a “Mexican boyfriend.” After local officials expressed outrage, Tucker stepped down but was unrepentant. “I’m sick and tired of all of this political correctness,” she told The Denver Post. “I’m not going to apologize if you don’t have a sense of humor.” Ho ho ho!
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Comments
WONDER WHAT SANTA WOULD TELL THIS WOMAN, WHO IS SHOWING TRUE COLORS OF WHAT SOME THINK OF OTHER RACES? ?
All joking aside, elected officials like Ms Tucker don't get to their positions by accident and, while the GOP is in the business of trying to hold everyone else accountable for whatever, it needs to start accepting a little accountability of its own and taking some responsibility for both the people who carry its banner and the messes that they have left our country in, at practically every level and on virtually every front.
Make no mistake, the operative word in this whole debate is NOT hispanic as the Dems would like us to believe, it is ILLEGAL!
How many foreign born drug dealers, mules, dope plantation slaves do we really need or should accommodate?
Is the issue that working Americans need to pay more taxes to support more illegals scamming our system? There was a free food deal down the street, and not one Hispanic male was there, but I did not see anyone who was not Hispanic there either. All black haired women with a gaggle of kids lined up for the freebies. It is Christmas, you know. I have to wonder who got charity before Hispanics arrived?
People don't understand that if you do not have a real, identified name with legal papers, you can be anyone. You can be anyone. So you can be on welfare, collecting unemployment from a seasonal job and be working, all at the same time. All you need is three sets of ID. Nobody from government checks, and if you feel someone might, just call the Spanish language line to whatever State agency you need to scam, and you will be told how answer the questions by an Hispanic helper on the other end. It is in goverment's best interest to facilitate the fraud. That is why they do it. How many card carrying, other -than -Democrats work for the government? Their unions send all their money to Democrats. And every State employee has mandatory dues taken from his or her check every month. And if you want, the State will also collect money for any number of NGOs, and we pay the State to do that. And when they bargain for wages, everyone at the table belongs to or pays dues to the unions. No private sector representation on those boards and committees. No diversity of public in those negotiations. So, certainly the State wants to stay away from addressing ILLEGAL aliens. All Democrats, deep down, want nothing changed because they feel that it is in their best interest to have an economic slave class for their minders from the Fortune 500. And, low wages will make their companies competitive in the world market. We have to dumb down, seek the lowest common denominator, in order to make the rich really, really happy. It should not happen without some level of protest. This is mine.
If you have an IRA that invests in mutual funds, you might appreciate American companies and not really be in favor of getting rid of them. Like them or not American enterprise has made this country a land of comparative luxury. Are big companies perfect...no, but they beat living in poverty.
Real Clear Politics had an interesting article suggesting that D's oppose illegal immigration: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/05/democrats_must_buck_the_overcl.html
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For Democrats, fighting illegal immigration would not only be good policy, but would have the welcome effect of being good politics, too. Democrats' major political obstacle is the increasingly intractable opposition of the non-union working and middle class, exactly the groups who most fervently oppose illegal immigration. While the opponents of immigration no doubt include nativists and xenophobes, the vast majority of those who oppose illegal immigration do so on sound public policy grounds. Illegal immigration is seen rightly as a threat to their economic livelihood. So when the Republican Party offers a platform that not only comports with their social and religious beliefs, but also addresses the one economic threat that is open to government solution, is there any wonder that the working and middle classes find solace in the GOP? Democrats should find a way to bust up this alliance between economic populists and social conservatives, and make many current Republican voters choose which of these movements matters most.
By recognizing the harmful effects of illegal immigration on low-skilled citizens and by supporting legislation to prohibit untrammeled immigration, Democrats would boost the economic prospects of their core constituencies while driving a wedge into the Republican base. Democrats could even oppose illegal immigration while welcoming legal immigration, especially of the high-skilled variety. Immigration presents Democrats with an unusual opportunity to shake up the coalitions that have guided the political parties for a generation, while proving to the struggling middle and working classes that the Democratic Party is serious about reclaiming its historic role as their champion. The overclass might frown, but I would bet that millions and millions of American workers would reward the Democratic Party with their electoral gratitude.
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So far all we get is Hillary twisting and turning on drivers licenses for illegals. In the last Iowa debate not one D candidate was asked about the issue.
If the same joke had been told from a die-hard Republican, the interpretation might be very different much in the same way that we interpret the use of the "N-word" differently depending on who uses it and in what sense. It is a shame that people confuse the satire of the joke with Sandra Tucker's personal position, and it is a shame that they pressured her to resign.