Archive for July, 2013

The best GOP political argument for immigration reform that you never hear on conservative talk radio

Tuesday, July 2nd, 2013

Conservative talk radio hosts are sure to mock today’s rally at Colorado Republican Headquarters, by immigrant rights activists, urging GOP Congressmen like Rep. Mike Coffman to support immigration reform, including–and here’s where the hissing from talk-radio land really starts–a path to citizenship.

The depressing part about the frowny faces on talk radio is they don’t see that immigration reform is more likely to help Republicans than Democrats.

Here’s the best conservative political argument for immigration reform that you never hear on talk radio.

The current Republican playbook, of demonizing immigrants or scaring people about border security, with the possible hope of attracting swing voters or mobilizing base voters, isn’t working. (See the last two presidential elections and races large and small across the U.S.)

Already inclined to lean left, Hispanics have responded to GOP hostility by becoming an even more solid Democratic bloc.

This will only get worse if the GOP Congressmen, like Coffman, continue to insult Hispanics by voting not only against immigration reform but for deporting young undocumented immigrants who were raised in America, consider it their home, and were brought to this country through no fault of their own.

Still, the talk-radio yappers fret, offering citizenship to 13 million undocumented immigrants will kill an already dying Republican Party, overwhelming America with new Democratic voters.

Really? It’s unclear how many new immigrants will even become citizens, but, in any case, it will take about 13 years or more! Who knows what America will look like then and the political dynamics that will be in play.

And if they accept immigration reform, and stop painting themselves as anti-Hispanic, Republicans will have a realistic prayer of reaching out to Hispanics and bringing them into the GOP tent.

There’s a chance, as new Hispanic immigrants become more integrated into American life, and more successful, that they’ll like the Republican anti-government talking points more than they do now.

But there’s zero hope of this happening if the Republican brand represents hostility toward Hispanics.

Isn’t this argument at least worth debating on the conservative airwaves?

The current GOP strategy is good if you want to lose elections, and the GOP is doing a great job of it. But if you want to win, it’s not working.

Accepting immigration reform, with a path to citizenship, might stop the GOP bleeding, even just a little bit–and provide hope in the long term, particularly when you compare it to the absence of hope for the GOP in the status quo.

Plus, passing immigration reform is the right thing to do. My interred illegal-immigrant Italian in-laws will tell you that.

 

 

 

 

Loesch’s nightmarish rendition of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech

Monday, July 1st, 2013

UPDATED 7/1 with a response from Dana Loesch via a blog post of hers.

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Syndicated talk-radio host Dana Loesch dropped into Glendale Saturday and surprised me by being even more offensive and nasty than she is usually.

Maybe the mile-high air pushed her further into the deep end? Maybe she saves her worst stuff for in-person delivery? Whatever was going on, as you can see for yourself below, Loesch clearly owes even her own pro-gun crowd, gathered in Glendale to oppose gun safety laws, an apology for her behavior Saturday.

As first reported on the Raw Story:

Loesch: “On my way here this morning flying in from St. Louis, I thought of a civil rights leader,” Loesch said. “He made a very impassioned speech, a historic speech, in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. I too have a dream. I have a dream that one day we as law-abiding, God-fearing, America-loving, Second Amendment-exercising gun owners will be judged on the strength of our character and not the content of our magazines!”

Here’s an exceprt of Loesch’s response to criticism of her speech. Read her entire comments here.

Loesch: Over the weekend at the “Farewell to Arms” event I purposefully quoted and riffed from Martin Luther King Jr.’s historic “I Have A Dream Speech.” The entire point of my doing so was at the end, when I said “And the entire point of this? This historic civil rights leader was disarmed, just as you, Colorado, are being disarmed. The left never tells you that King’s gun permit was rejected.”

Would King have been alive today had he been granted the right by the racist, Democrat south to own a gun? Who knows. But my point stands.

Gun rights are civil rights.

This was bait. And the leftist media, namely Raw Story, took it — but they predictably had to bastardize my speech and omit its entirety so they could play a race card. Why not report how your policies disarmed a civil rights leader?

Radio host should consider real debate before booing Rubio and throwing him out of the Tea Party

Monday, July 1st, 2013

Former state GOP Senate President John Andrews, who’s the lead-organizer of the Western Conservative Summit, said on talk radio last month that Sen. Marco Rubio could be booed if he took the stage during the gathering at Colorado Christian University July 26-28.

KNUS host Matt Dunn doubled down Sunday, telling listeners that Rubio would indeed be booed and should be dumped out of the Tea Party, just like you-know-what into Boston Harbor.

Rubio is done, as far as the Tea Party is concerned, Dunn said on air, due to Rubio’s support of the comprehensive immigration bill passed by the U.S. Senate.

Dunn didn’t talk about booing Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who is now confirmed for the Western Conservative Summit, keynoting the July 27 lunch. Cruz was probably the most outspoken Senate critic of the immigration legislation.

As he argued against the Senate bill recently, Cruz stood by a photo of a graveyard and mourned the lives of undocumented immigrants who died crossing the border. As Greg Sargent reported in the Washington Post:

Cruz: “No one who cares about our humanity would want to maintain a system where the border isn’t secure,” Cruz said, noting that ”vulnerable women and children” are being preyed upon by drug dealers and are being “left to die in the desert.”

All you have to do is look out your car as you drive around Denver to know that we’d be doing a better job caring for humanity with Rubio and company’s legislation, including its pathway to citizenship and border security, than we’d be doing with Cruz’s border-security-only bill, which does nothing for all those hard-working people you see around town.

Yet, Dunn would boo Rubio and throw him out of the Tea Party, without even a real debate on his talk-radio show first? How stupid.