"Viciousness and prejudice"
Compared to today's GOP, George W. Bush is a flaming liberal
"Viciousness and prejudice"
Dick Polman, Inquirer National Political Columnist
Democrats, road-testing their midterm election message, have been warning lately that the Republicans want to bring back the policies of George W. Bush. But that claim is not accurate, given the fact that the current Republican crowd apparently views George W. Bush as a flaming liberal who was soft on immigration.
In all his years as president, and to his credit, Bush never trashed the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which since 1868 has declared that all babies born on U.S. soil are automatically citizens. He never proposed that the birthright citizenship language be ripped out. He never smeared immigrant women as opportunists who simply wanted to "drop a baby" in America for the supposedly sole purpose of creating an American citizen. He never sought to indulge the denizens of nutcase nation by whipping up fears about so-called hordes of "anchor babies."
On the contrary, Bush accepted the birthright language as a settled American tradition; indeed, the amendment itself stands as a singular achievement of the early Republican party, and the current GOP still lists it, on its website, as a major party "accomplishment." Bush's aim was not to disenfranchise babies. Rather, his broad aim was to welcome immigrants to the fold; as he remarked in a January '04 speech, "every generation of immigrants has reaffirmed our ability to assimilate newcomers, which is one of the defining strengths of America."
Unfortunately, one of our defining flaws - now on display, courtesy of the post-Bush GOP - is that we sometimes demonize immigrants. It's tempting to dismiss the current hysteria as merely the latest manifestation of the August syndrome, by which we seem to get progressively stupider with each blast of humidity. (This month, it's "anchor babies." Last August, it was "Nazi" health reform.) But the truth is, the right-wing impulse to tamper with the Constitution and remove the birthright language has been marinating for a long time. It once was the province of the party fringe. Now it has migrated to the party mainstream.
Prominent GOP figures in the Senate and House want to hold hearings on the issue, with the goal of essentially trashing the GOP's own historic accomplishment. John Boehner said this weekend, "I think it's worth considering." Former immigration reform champion John McCain, selling his soul yet again as his Arizona GOP primary draws near, says he's fine with hearings. And his faithful sidekick, Lindsey Graham, has renounced his own reformist track record with this gem: "People come here to have babies. They come here to drop a child. It's called 'drop and leave.'"
Graham's demagoguery is so extreme that even the prominent anti-immigrant activist Mark Kirkorian can't stomach it. As Kirkorian told a conservative website the other day, "there's no evidence suggesting that this 'drop and leave' stuff is true...it's just an assertion, at this point. My own sense is that most illegal alien women who have kids here didn't come for that purpose; they came for jobs or to join relatives...There are no doubt some people who dash across the border illegally to have kids, but they just don't amount to a large share of the problem. Nor does the problem of 'birth tourism' warrant a change in the Constitution."
That last remark is crucial. Republicans have always insisted that they are "strict constructionists" who respect the literal language in America's guiding document - yet now they are agitating to remove the literal language that states unequivocally: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."
Republicans also claim to respect judicial precedent - yet now they are dismissing the thrust of two Supreme Court decisions that basically underpin the 14th Amendment birthright provision. In 1898, the high court ruled that Wong Kim Ark, born on U.S. soil, was automatically a citizen - even though his Chinese parents were not citizens and even though the parents had in fact returned to live in China. The court traced the birthright principle back to English common law, and stated in a footnote that children born here are citizens even if the parents' entry was "unlawful."
And nearly a century later, in a 1982 immigration case, the high court majority crafted a broad endorsement of the amendment as written. The court ruled that "the 14th Amendment extends to everyone, citizen or stranger," even if "a person's initial entry into a state, or into the United States, was unlawful."
Yet none of this matters to the post-Bush GOP, which helps explain why the Bush Republicans seem so appalled. Over the weekend, former chief Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson assailed the current Republican leaders for endorsing "viciousness and prejudice on a grand scale." In a blog post, he pointed out that "revoking birthright citizenship would turn hundreds of thousands of infants into 'criminals,'" and he singled out Graham and McCain for their behavior: "Politicians sometimes come (to Washington) to drop their deepest convictions. It's called self-serving cynicism...Their reputations may never fully recover."
Actually, this attack on the birthright citizenship is just tactical rhetoric. To change the constitutional language, the post-Bush GOP would need to sway two-thirds of the Senate and three-fourths of the state legislators. That's not gonna happen, as these Republicans well know. They're focused solely on the prospects for short-term political gain. If they can further stoke the base emotions of their conservative base - which is older and whiter than the general electorate - then the base will be even more enthused about the November midterms.
Machiavelli would surely approve. Yet it speaks volumes about the post-Bush GOP that Karl Rove, subbing yesterday on the air for Rush Limbaugh, said nary a word about the anti-birthright frenzy. A decade ago, while working as Bush's political maestro, Rove dreamed of a permanent Republican majority that would welcome people of color, especially Hispanic immigrants. He knows that the long-term prospects of a pluralistic GOP are nil if the party chooses to dis the Constitution and rant about "anchor babies." Which is why, yesterday, he chose not to feed the frenzy.
So there you have it: Today's GOP is to the right of Karl Rove. Ponder that one.
OK, but while I agree we need to send back everyone who commits crimes in our country, we would be shooting ourselves in the foot -- and betraying our historical heritage -- by clamping down on immigration in general. We are a country of immigrants. It's what has made us strong. Our immigration laws and practices are ridiculous. It shouldn't take 20 years to become a U.S. citizen. Likewise, it's just vindictive to deport a 20-year-old student whose parents brought her to this country when she was 10 (that's a current case in Georgia at the moment). Children have no voice in such a decision. And when they arrive here as young children, they no doubt feel more like an American by the time they're 20 than a native of whatever country they're from. We need to apply reason, common sense and some humanity to the process. There's so much hatred here about Mexicans in particular. It's really sickening. I've honestly never seen people work so hard or be so family-oriented. Seems to me that's who we would WANT to come to our country.— NigeltheMastiff
It's true Nigel. Some of them work so hard in Hammonton they pass out drunk in the fields.- None of the listed 'Pubs (or Mitt Romney or Haley Barbour) gets past Palin if she pulls the trigger.— yobill626
- Ah yes, that wildly popular, household name Mitch Daniels: “Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels Accuses Atheism as Cause of Holocaust and Other Great Crimes Against Humanity” … I hope he is your nominee. Really, I do. He’s certainly got the bona fides for today’s GOP(+ an Enron-like scandal in his closet. See: IPALCO). He’ll do. Or Pawlenty, too. Or Palin. Or Huckabee. Or Santorum. Yep – good crop of pumpkins ya got there. Not a single one (named or otherwise) will cause Obama to lose any Z’s.— LorettaL
- If Hillary some how gets put up for the nom in 2012, Obama just might get a bit scared ...— LorettaL
- Loretta, did you read the interview Daniels gave or just the headline Jonathan Turley used for his blog post about it. Here is what Daniels actually said.."People who reject the idea of a God -who think that we’re just accidental protoplasm- have always been with us. What bothers me is the implications -which not all such folks have thought through- because really, if we are just accidental, if this life is all there is, if there is no eternal standard of right and wrong, then all that matters is power. And atheism leads to brutality. All the horrific crimes of the last century were committed by atheists -Stalin and Hitler and Mao and so forth- because it flows very naturally from an idea that there is no judgment and there is nothing other than the brief time we spend on this Earth." So, is it your contention that Stalin, Hitler and Mao were not atheists, or that they would have been just as murderous if they went to church every Sunday and read the Torah? Besides, he also said in the same interview..."One is [that] although faith is very central to me, I also take very seriously the responsibility to treat my public duties in a way that keeps separate church and state and respects alternative views." I would have thought a lib would respect a conservative republican who separated church and state.— tom - wilmington, de
Comment removed.- This departure from the limited government envisioned by the Founders has encouraged too many Americans to forget their heritage of freedom. When there is a problem, Washington tells us, more government is the solution. "A careful look at some libertarian views, however, could reawaken in us the virtues this nation was founded upon: hard work, individual responsibility, families and neighbors taking care of one another, and honest competition in the marketplace — not phony competition in which politicians deem favored businesses "too big to fail."" Rand Paul- he wrote a very good op ed in the USA Today............................................ http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2010-08-10-column10_ST2_N.htm....................... Careful getting your narratives about people from Keith Olberman
- Raol- you said " It should be note that through out history it has been religion which has been behind the horrific human behavior."............. mmmmmm? How do figure that? WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam were not fought for any religious gain. Please explain???????? And if going the religious route might I remind you that you are not taking your shoes off at the airport because of those" darn judgemental christians."
- Nigelthemastiff- you said " We are a country of immigrants. It's what has made us strong. Our immigration laws and practices are ridiculous. It shouldn't take 20 years to become a U.S. citizen. "............ I agree with you here. It is a failure of governenment to make it so difficult to be a US citizen. Anyone who wants to come and is not a criminal should be allowed to come. But government, once again, in their wantance to make things" fair" has messed it all up
- tom, I did read that interview. That's my point. I am not going to vote for Daniels. And neither will the hapless religious-right base that the GOP must inexplicably pander to every 4 years. Daniels wouldn't make it past his first 3 Primary contests, let alone get the nom. But if he does get the nom, all the better for his opponent.— LorettaL
- Ogey... I agree about ground wars... bomb them into the stone age.... Nigel... We're talking about legal immigration. LEGAL. People that sneak into the country and immediately have a child should be deported with the child. Dont think the original law was meant for criminals to abuse.— Phil Checchia
- Another plank in the GOP platform. We know what the GOP is make of, and this latest plank is no surprise, instead of building a platform, the GOP is building a wall, Good!— tiredoftheBS
- I'm an R and I'm sure there are "drop and leaves" going on, but amending the 14th to deal with that is DOA. Boehner and company are wasting time, rhetoric and bandwidth. Plus, I doubt it's an overwhelming problem. I'm not with my party on this one.— pj katauskas
- ***By Bill O'Reilly-A couple days ago, I received my new health care premium. I buy my own insurance, and Oxford Health is charging me $2,100 more than it did last year for the same deal, sending my premium north of $20,000 a year for four people. When I called the company, it pointed to rising medical costs. But upon investigation, that's not what's really going on. Almost every health insurer in America is raising premiums to cover the anticipated costs of Obamacare because the rules have changed. For example, this year health companies will have to cover adult children until age 26. They will have to cover all children regardless of pre-existing conditions, and they can't cancel coverage for any reason other than fraud. So all that cost is being passed to us. It's like a tax. More money out of our wallets for the exact same coverage because government-run health insurance has been passed into law. Are we all understanding this? And there's more. The cost of Obamacare will be borne by the taxpayer as the government gives free health insurance to those who don't have much money. In addition, Obamacare will also cost us more in our insurance premiums, so we get hit two ways. Now some liberal Americans like this. They want the redistribution of income. They want workers and businesses to pay more for health insurance because they know lower income people won't pay more; they will be supplemented by the feds. But income shifting will never be enough.*** Exactly the problem! http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/oreilly/transcript/obamacare-begins-hurt-us-wallet— NEPhilly
Cited by the Columbia Journalism Review as one of the nation's top political reporters, and lauded by the ABC News political website as "one of the finest political journalists of his generation," Dick Polman is a national political columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer. He is on the full-time faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, as "writer in residence." Dick has been a frequent guest on C-Span, MSNBC, CNN, NPR and the BBC. He covered the 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004 presidential campaigns.
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