VDARE.com’s Allan Wall sums up the reprehensible spectacle of the GOP presidential candidates appearing on the “Spanish-language network Univision.”
Wall lauds Tom Tancredo for being the only one to have refused to partake in the Hispanic, special interests circus. How right he is. And how un-presidential the seven dwarfs looked, baffled faces strained in an effort to comprehend the language:
[OPEN QUOTES]
“The fact that only Tancredo understood that pandering was a bad idea tells us more about the state of the GOP than it does about Tom Tancredo. As he explained the day before the forum:
‘It is the law that to become a naturalized citizen of this country you must have knowledge and understanding of English, including a basic ability to read, write, and speak the language. So what may I ask are our presidential candidates doing participating in a Spanish speaking debate? Bilingualism is a great asset for any individual, but it has perilous consequences for a nation. As such, a Spanish debate has no place in a presidential campaign.’ [Tancredo: GOP Candidates ‘Pandering’ At Spanish-Language Debate The Denver Channel.Com Dec. 8th, 2007]
The questions were loaded, of course. The first was about ‘declining support among Hispanics for Republicans.’
Mike Huckabee blamed Republicans for not pandering enough:
‘If the Republicans only got 30 percent of the vote, somehow we didn’t do a very good job of communicating that that’s what we would provide in terms of opportunity and fairness.’
McCain blamed ‘the rhetoric that many Hispanics hear about illegal immigration’ which ‘makes some of them believe that we are not in favor nor seek the support of the Hispanic citizens in this country.’
Candidates were also asked if they were ‘taking a risk’ by appearing at the forum. That’s funny, it took more guts for Tancredo to stay away from the event than for them to attend it.
Mitt Romney called for pandering: ‘Republicans are going to come and speak to Hispanic Americans in the language they understand best, so we can get their votes and they can understand that we are the party of strength and the party of freedom.’
Rudy Giuliani said that ‘Hispanic Americans are Americans, just as much as all other Americans. They have the same values, the same interests.’
(Well, if that’s true, why pander to them? Why have a special forum for them, translated into a foreign language?)
Then Huckabee got going again, and said that if he had refused to appear on stage ‘It would insult every voter in the country.’
Huh?
The Huckster even thanked his hosts for allowing him to grovel: ‘And I want to say thanks for letting us have this audience on Univision.’
On the question of Official English, McCain said he wanted English used by all Americans.
(So why was he at this Spanish language forum then?)
Ron Paul said all federal business should be in English, but made a weird pop psychology diagnosis: ‘I sometimes think that those who attack bilingualism sometimes are jealous, and we feel inferior, because we’re not capable.’
(Why did he say that?)
The GOP candidates were asked what should be done with the illegal aliens in the country.
Giuliani said we should first get control of the border, then get a tamper-proof ID for the illegals who are in the country (amnesty, in other words). The only people Giuliani would kick out would be the people who don’t show up to claim their amnesty!
Huckabee too, though he denied it, seems to support a form of amnesty as long as the illegals go home first. And he wants a guest worker program which is fast and easy to get into. The former Arkansas governor drew applause when he trotted out a totally irrelevant credit card analogy:
‘If you can get an American Express card in two weeks, it shouldn’t take seven years to get a work permit to come to this country in order to work on a farm. So if our government is incapable of making that process in that length of time, then we should do it in a way to outsource it.’
‘Outsource it’? To whom? To the government of Mexico—for whom Huckabee arranged the installation of a Mexican consulate in Little Rock?
Then Huckabee lapsed into a ‘compassion’ riff inevitably leading to Big Government solutions:
‘When people come to this country, they shouldn’t fear. They shouldn’t live in hiding. They ought to have their heads up, because the one thing about being an American is, we believe every person ought to have his or her head up and proud, and nobody should have to be in hiding because they’re illegal when our government ought to make it so that people can reasonably come here in a legal fashion.’
Increasingly, this guy reminds me of George W. Bush back in 2000.
Which is not good.
Why not just legalize the illegal aliens, Thompson and Romney were asked and both pointed out that it was unfair to immigrants who had gone through the legal process. Duncan Hunter correctly stated that an amnesty would encourage more illegal immigration. McCain tried to cover all the bases, talking about border security, Hispanic anchor baby soldiers in Iraq, and love and compassion. Mitt Romney’s hiring of a company that used illegal workers was brought up, and the former Massachusetts governor used it to call for an employment verification system.
Anchor babies were brought up. Thompson was asked the loaded question: “Do these children have the right not to be separated from their parents?”
Thompson could have responded that every day American citizen children are separated from their citizen parents, due to work, business, travel, incarceration and military service abroad. So why do we hear more sob stories about the illegal alien deportees and their children?”
[SNIP]
There’s more from this pukefest, interspersed with Wall’s excellent acerbic commentary. Read it.
Category Archives: Republicans
‘If Not for Huckabee, Carol Sue Would Be Alive Today’
Crime, Criminal Injustice, Elections 2008, IMMIGRATION, Republicans
Brian Ross and Anna Schecter Report:
“A Missouri mother says she will do ‘whatever it takes’ to stop former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee from becoming president, because he freed the man who went on to rape and murder her daughter, Carol Sue Shields (pictured).
‘I can’t imagine anybody wanting somebody like that running the country,’ Lois Davidson of Adrian, Mo., told the Blotter on ABCNews.com.
Wayne Dumond was initially sentenced to life plus 25 years for raping a 17-year-old Arkansas high school cheerleader. In 1999, a parole board voted to free Dumond, after then-Gov. Mike Huckabee announced his desire to see him released.
Do you have a tip for Brian Ross and the Investigative Team?
A former parole board member tells ABC News that Huckabee exerted strong pressure on the board to release Dumond.
During the campaign, Huckabee has insisted he played only a minor role in Dumond’s release and had concerns that Dumond had been wrongly convicted.
Huckabee recently told CNN, ‘None of us could’ve predicted what Dumond could’ve done when he got out.’”
[Snip]
For more on the horrors of Huckabee from the excellent investigator Brian Ross, see: “Despite Victims’ Pleas, Huckabee Pushed Rapist’s Freedom” & “Huckabee Aide: Gov Pushed for Rapist’s Freedom”
Or as I put it, in “Huck’s for Huck; Paul’s For America“:
“Like Michael Dukakis, Huckabee waded into the moral miasma of penal abolition. Dukakis, the Democratic presidential nominee in 1988, fought to secure a prison furlough for convicted murderer Willie Horton. Horton went on to assault a Massachusetts man and rape his fiancée during his recreational weekend off. Wayne Dumond, the recipient of Huckabee’s helping hand, raped and murdered a Missouri woman. When asked about his difficult-to-defend role ‘in an apparently illegal and unrecorded closed-door meeting with the parole board lobbying on behalf of a rapist,’ Huckabee has offered a thesaurus of excuses.”
While you’re at it, read how George Stephanopoulos sweats Huckabee over his immigration inconsistencies. Now that’s a no-nonsense interview.
Update (Dec. 6): Powerful anti-Huck stuff from Joseph Farah:
“[Huckabee] is another one of these so-called ‘compassionate conservatives’ who believes government can be a force for good in the world, not merely a restraint on evil…. If so, he’s not only practicing bad politics – he’s practicing bad theology…
When Jesus tells us to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, He is not suggesting we transfer that personal responsibility to government. He is not suggesting we transfer that responsibility to our neighbors. He is not suggesting, as the old saying goes, we rob Peter to pay Paul…
This is a personal, individual responsibility of the believer. It doesn’t count if you get someone else to do the job for you.”
Updated: The Accursed CNN/YouTube Debates: What to Expect
Elections 2008, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Republicans
You surely recall the kind of questions asked by the liberal media’s brain trust, Anderson Vanderbilt Cooper, during the last Democratic debate. Refresh your memory with “Jackass Cooper & The 1-Trick Donkeys.”
Darling Anderson is an intellectual pigmy. Affirmative appointments—the dumbing down and feminization of the media—has meant that we are not only subjected, day-in-and-day-out, to soft news stories about pets and pestilence (flu, food poisoning, childcare, the nation’s ballooning bigotry and weight); but also that competent, critical, hard-nosed, older reporters (Jack Cafferty, for example) are stashed behind the scenes.
You can detect the difference when one of the androgynous front-people is replaced for a session—things look up somewhat when poor Miles O’Brien, for example, is allowed occasionally into the studio to interview a challenging subject. Suddenly real questions are asked, then, rather than, “How hopeful are you, Mr. ambassador, about the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations?” To be sealed with a, “Thanks for your insights.” I’m sure O’Brien’s a pinko, but he has a brain, unlike girls such as Don Lemon, Cooper, and Kyra Phillips.
In any event, with the YouTube questions for the St. Petersburg, Florida debate to be selected by the CNN “V” Brigade (“V” is not for victory), rest assured that the Republican candidates will be honing their Democratic bona fides. I predict whiny demands such as, “What are you going to do about making taxpayers pay for my health care?” Or, “When will you join Gore in admitting there’s a global-warming crisis?” Economic nonsense about energy independence and renewability will also abound.
Update: The debate was excellent. Cooper did a 180 degree about-face from the previous YouTube debate he hosted, and I described in “Jackass Cooper & The 1-Trick Donkeys.” Compared to the cretins Cooper picked to pose questions to the Democrats, the questions selected this time were conservative and clever. The demographic was different, sure, but so were Cooper and his cohorts at CNN. Perhaps they got the message that quirky would not cut it. Hey, perhaps he read “Jackass Cooper & The 1-Trick Donkeys
Update # II (Nov. 29): Further impressions about the debates: Dr. Paul, of course, was given the least amount of time. Also, I wish he had remembered to count the IRS among the departments he’d abolish, before the phony saccharine Huckabee muscled in.
Huckabee’s Fair-Tax scheme will not see the demise of the IRS—it may change its name, but not its function. The Fair Tax—a contradiction in terms—will not necessarily see a reduction in taxation. Bruce Bartlett has demolished that myth in “Fair Tax, Flawed Tax.” If anything, and as I wrote in the “Flat Tax Limits State Theft”:
“In a free enterprise system, people do not pay for goods and services in proportion to their income (or else Bill Gates would be paying a million dollars or so for a loaf of bread). Rather, they all pay the same amount. The fairest method of taxation then would be a poll or head tax, where we are all taxed equally. That the poor would not afford much would limit government spending like nothing else.”
Choke those chickens! Huckabee is such a spender; out of one side of his mouth he disavows the national; out of the other, he vows to fund the space program, which can be done best privately.
On a more intuitive level: There were two honest-to-goodness, plainspoken non-politicos on stage last night: Ron Paul and Tom Tancredo. Very shortly after George Bush was elected, I told you he was not a good man. I was vindicated. You can trust me to make sound character judgments. You’re used to the analytical me; today you got gut instinct. (In rational individuals there is no bifurcation.)
Next: Did you notice how sour and superior John McCain behaved? It was as though he came down from the heavens to grace the rest with his presence. Give me a break! It goes without saying that he was one of two pinko candidates who eschewed carrying a gun. The other was gunless, gun regulator, Benito Giuliani. BOOOOO! Mitt Romney supports farm subsidies, which hurt third-world farmers immensely. Doing away with those would be infinitely more productive than sending more money down the African foreign aid rathole.
More Huckabee Hokum
The Daddy Dearest crowd is intent on embracing Mike Huckabee, for no other reason than that they crave “the solace of communitarianism—what one wag called ‘the warm smell of the herd.’” Given this pathetic reality, I am here repeating the preliminary indictment of Huckabee I offered in “Ron Paul’s Electability.” That was before I imagined Huckabee’s minions would dare try to muscle naïve Americans into supporting “George W. Bush’s evil ideological twin.”
Here goes:
“Huckabee … has lent his ministerial blessing to the [illegal alien] benefits bonanza. Like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, the governor has the dubious distinction of deploying the racist epithet to denounce a bill introduced in the Arkansas legislator denying illegal aliens welfare and voting rights.
Huckabee now natters incessantly about recruiting more chicken pluckers and fruit pickers through guest worker programs: ‘We need to create a process to allow people to come here to do the jobs… unfilled by our citizens.’ This is one libel Americans are sick of. Seventy percent of voters nationally, says the CIS, agree that, at the right price, Americans will do menial work. (Huckabee should take time off to watch the Discovery Channel program ‘Dirty Jobs,’ where I’ve yet to encounter a garbage collector, sewer inspector, or tanner who wasn’t an Anglo- or Afro-American.)
Huckabee, apparently, is also unaware of the labyrinth of visa programs on the books already. Besides (and this applies to all the Republican hopefuls), the future leader of a superpower should be emphasizing innovation-oriented, not labor-intense, forms of production. More mechanization and less Mexicanization.
Best of all, Ron Paul will actually have the funds to plug the border, because, unlike Huckabee, he refuses to remain mired in Mesopotamia. All Republicans on the ticket, bar Paul, will be bogged down in Iraq for years-to-come. Having squandered men, matériel, and morale there, they’ll be less able to respond to an attack on the homeland.
The paradox of the peace-loving Paul is this: Given his commitment to national sovereignty—to defending this country, not Israel, Iraq or Afghanistan—Paul will have the will and the wherewithal to smash any enemy entering our orbit.”