Repulsive Republican ‘Panderfest’

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.