For years, Republican candidates have been assured by their political consultants that amnesty is a runaway hit with the public. Then they always come in for a zinger of a surprise when the American people are finally able to express themselves on the subject. (Sometimes it seems as if political consultants are in the game only to make money.)
Washington has tried to sneak through three amnesties in the last decade–in 2006, 2007 and 2013. Each time, amnesty had the full support of the media, the White House, leaders of both political parties, big campaign donors and lobbyists.
And every time, as soon as the public got wind of what was happening, the politicians scattered like roaches and the loudest amnesty proponent in the room would suddenly be demanding “border security first!”
Couldn’t Republicans spare themselves the embarrassment of having to say they “learned their lesson” by learning the same lesson of the last 17 guys to push amnesty?
The McCain-Kennedy amnesty passed the Senate in 2006, instantly inspiring an outpouring of voter anger so virulent that it shut down the congressional switchboards. Despite enormous opposition from voters, lame-duck President Bush cockily told reporters, “I’ll see you at the bill signing”–the first step to ushering in a Democratic Congress in the upcoming midterm elections.
By contrast, House Minority Leader John Boehner told a group of Republicans that he had “promised the president today that I wouldn’t say anything bad about this piece of s— bill.”
Weeks later, the chief sponsor of the POS bill, Sen. John McCain, voted for a fence with no hint of amnesty.
A year later, when he was running for president, immigration was the issue dominating the primaries. McCain told voters, “My friends, I learned a lesson.” What he had allegedly learned was: “We must secure the border first. We need to do these other things, but the American people want something done about the border.”
McCain even cut macho campaign commercials of him walking by the southern border, saying, “Build the dang fence!”
Too little, too late. McCain lost the dang election.
Bush’s loss was equally monumental: He lost Congress by pushing amnesty.
Contrary to liberals’ claim that they had finally won the hearts and minds of the people in opposing the Iraq War, leading to the Democrats’ 2006 sweep of Congress, a Washington Post/ABC News poll taken about a month into Bush’s incessant yammering about amnesty showed that more Americans approved of Bush’s handling of the Iraq War than approved of his handling of immigration.
In nearly every poll on Bush’s handling of immigration that year, about 60 percent of the public disapproved and only 25 percent approved.
After Bush’s party was wiped out in the midterm elections, the Democratic- controlled Congress seemed certain to pass amnesty. Bush still wanted it. So did the Democrats. So did the media. So did the donors.
But there was one teensy problem: The public still hated the idea.
You know how people always say “you can’t beat something with nothing.” When it comes to amnesty, “nothing” outpolls “something” every time.
In early June of 2007, a Rasmussen poll found that support for “no bill” beat support for the Senate immigration bill by 5-to-3. By the end of the week, “no bill” was winning 2-to-1, with 53 percent against amnesty and only 26 percent for it.
Public opposition was so vociferous, the Senate didn’t even vote on the 2007 amnesty.
Then, a few years later, erstwhile tea party darling Sen. Marco Rubio burst on the scene deciding he was going to be the one to enact amnesty! Teaming up with everybody’s favorite senator, Chuck Schumer, Rubio spent a full year zealously pushing amnesty, which entailed his telling huge, whopping lies about it.
He blanketed the airwaves, convinced Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin to support the bill, toured all the Sunday morning talk shows. It worked! The Senate passed Rubio’s amnesty bill. It was Rubio’s only accomplishment in Washington.
But then, unfortunately for him, the public found out about it and, once again, an amnesty bill died. (When will these so-called “voters” stop with their infernal meddling?)
The next thing we knew, Rubio was swearing to attendees at the March 2014 Conservative Political Action Conference that what “I’ve learned is you can’t even have a conversation” about “immigration reform” until “future illegal immigration will be controlled,” calling it “the single biggest lesson of the last two years.”
A few months later, he told The Wall Street Journal that he wouldn’t vote for his own bill if it came up again.
One-time GOP star, New Jersey governor Chris Christie, was suckered into supporting the Schumer-Rubio amnesty by a mere 20-minute conversation with Schumer. Not content to support the intensely hated amnesty bill, Christie also signed a bill granting illegal aliens in-state tuition.
But just before announcing his run for the presidency this year, Christie claimed that he, too, had “learned” more about the issue. He now claims he considers a path to citizenship “extreme” and accused Hillary Clinton of “pandering” by supporting a path to citizenship.
I’d say Christie had to eat his own words on immigration, but that would be a cheap shot.
As governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee denounced a bill to require verification of citizenship before registering to vote or applying for public benefits, saying it “inflames those who are racist and bigots.” (Voters LOVE being called bigots!)
He made the weird claim that companies like Toyota or Nestle might refuse to invest in Arkansas if the bill became law, by sending the message that, “If you don’t look like us, talk like us and speak like us, we don’t want you.” It might also send the message that we don’t want foreigners voting in our elections or collecting public services meant for Americans.
But whenever he runs for president, Huckabee becomes a born-again Minuteman! His current presidential website denounces “the Washington establishment” for trying to “reward illegal immigrants with amnesty and citizenship,” adding, “Without a secure border, nothing matters.”
Instead of having to keep apologizing for their positions on immigration, maybe Republicans should stop listening to political consultants who are paid by business lobbyists to dump millions of poverty-stricken, low-wage workers on the country.
Out of nowhere, non-politician Donald Trump has shot to the top of the polls by denouncing America’s widely unpopular immigration policies. All those high-priced campaign consultants are standing around scratching their heads.
Americans can see they’re being forced to subsidize people who are being brought in only to outvote them, provide cheap labor and change our culture. All the donor money in the world isn’t going to help you, Republicans, if the voters hate you.
And every time, as soon as the public got wind of what was happening, the politicians scattered like roaches and the loudest amnesty proponent in the room would suddenly be demanding “border security first!”
They come out in favor of building a half-assed fence which at best turns out to be an easily conquered boondoggle by invading "immigrant strivers." We mysteriously can spend a billion dollars to finance black Africa, but supposedly don't have money enough to build a decent impediment to a massive invasion by aggressive destructive primitives on a mission of reconquista.
These idiots in politics believe that convoluted obstructism, suicidism, and deception is a sign of brilliant rare intellect and refinement. It is an indication depth and of examining beneath the surface of things that indicates membership in an elite class of people. Most of them were educated to believe that, especially in law school.
These idiots in politics believe that convoluted obstructism, suicidism, and deception is a sign of brilliant rare intellect and refinement. It is an indication depth and of examining beneath the surface of things that indicates membership in an elite class of people. Most of them were educated to believe that, especially in law school.
We are far from being idiots, those of us who were educated in those elite law schools, who go into politics.
Nor is there anything suicidal about what our type does.
Let me explain it to you. We get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, and our campaigns are well supported, by businesses who want cheap labor. They pay us well, and we enact laws that favor them. Rich guys pay us with money, position and power. What do poor yappers do? They yap. But yapping won't give us nice lives, houses, etc.
And once we finish politics, the corporations hire us in sinecures, as lobbyists or as executives or consultants. We're not stupid. There's no "vague hoping" for this. It is a well-beaten career path. Serve corporate interests as a Congressman, and be a millionaire well-provided for by corporate interests for the rest of your life. Also, you secure jobs for your wife and children, and a few friends.
We lawyers do very, very well.
What do you yappers have to offer us in turn? Grandiose speeches about your political fantasies? Where's the money, the jobs, the security, the wealth and the good life in listening to you guys? You sound like you came right out of eighth grade civics class, with your fine notions and noble ideas. We do need your votes, but the media have polarized you so that enough will come out for one team or the other to keep us going.
And we focus like a laser beam and DESTROY, with investigations and more brutal means (tax charges, planting child porn, if necessary) anybody who REALLY gets a following going.
Ross Perot was in danger of going somewhere. So we made it clear that if he didn't stop and lose, that his betrothed daughter was about to be married to a man who had committed financial crimes. Sure, most people have done something bad on their taxes, and usually that's just fixed with a payment, but tax fraud is a crime, and it is in the discretion of the PROSECUTORS - lawyers like us - as to whether something is a violation fixed by a fine, or a federal crime that deserves jail time. And no, there is no mechanism by which abusive political persecution waged this way can be stopped. Why do you think Presidents grab the IRS files and are close to their IRS commissioners. Only those who pay all of their taxes without deductions are immune to this, and rich people are all tax cheats at some level. Precisely BECAUSE "everybody does it", everybody and anybody who is in a position to be able to influence politics is a tax cheat, and we don't have to audit, we can prosecute and imprison for 15 years and strip assets. It's violent and abusive, and entirely legal. It is prosecutorial discretion.
And if there's no tax dodging? Everybody has a computer, and everybody's computer can be found to have child porn on it.
We are a lot more intelligent and sophisticated than you give us credit for. We lawyers are, in fact, the nobility. You are the peasantry. We try to keep you entertained, but in the end, it's about OUR good lives, OUR wealth and power and comfort, and we have done an exceptional job at securing that for ourselves and our children.
So you think we were educated to believe stupid things in law school. Actually, we were educated to the ways of power, and we know that, by controlling the courts and the investigative arms and police, we can destroy anybody who gets out of line. And we do. Which is why there is not, and never will be, an organized, legal, effective opposition party.
You are, in fact, living in a state with an aristocracy that has rights, powers and privileges you do not have, and cannot get other than by violent revolution. And you're not able to organize yourself for that because we have divided you into feuding camps that hate each other: Catholics and Protestants, whites and blacks, Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives. So we give you bread and circuses, and we rule, and we do very well doing it.
It will not change. The "convulution" of which you speak comes from the fact that we have to do many things that, in fact, impoverish you, weaken you, subordinate you, reduce you. But we have to do it with sufficient finesse that you don't explode. We have to manage you so that you don't wake up fully, and that means we have to stage manage political theater to be an escape valve, to feel meaningful.
But note well, we NEVER back off on anything. And the arrow of time and policy always moves one way: OUR way. This doesn't work well for YOU, but then who are YOU? A peasant. WE live good lives in nice communities. We know that this beggars you. We are not stupid. And as things get more and more desperate, we spend more and more on policing, prisons, surveillance and paramilitary, to kill any sort of organized resistance.
You want an easy solution, but you're so dull you don't even catch on to your political parties and leave them.
And your churches? Well, they COULD have been dangerous, once, but we put the ring in their nose with 401(c)(3) and 501(c)(3) laws that silence them. If they get out of line, we tax them and they cease to exist. So they never get out of line. Know why? Because you may be sincere about your religions, or sincere enough, and you pastors and priests too, but in the end they're just paid employees of a corporation too, the XYZ Church. They have mortgages, bills, aspirations, families, causes too. And if they lose tax exempt status or take a stand against government, well, they'll lose on the gravy train.
But if one of them is REALLY principled and actually stands up...then he is found to have child pornography on his computer, and nobody lets THOSE creeps even speak in public again. After all, doesn't it seem like the ministry ATTRACTS perverts? And how can YOU distinguish between the REAL perverts and the ones who are framed, by us, to silence them? You can't. But you THINK you can. Oh, it's those CATHOLIC PRIESTS who are all molesters. Or those Baptists. Or those wingnuts in the other camp. It's always THEM. Meanwhile, your OWN pastors are clean and shiny...and they never say or do anything that would lose them their tax exempt status. But let one take a real stand on something and start to gain a following. Who could have known he was a child pornographer? Even his wife didn't know. (Even HE didn't know.)
You speak of examining the depth of things, but it is YOU who only see on the surface, because you still believe the fairy tales that you were told in 8th Grade Civics.
The fact is that money talks and bullshit walks. The billionaires have the money, and the politicians and top lawyers work for them. They are VERY INTELLIGENT, and they have much better intelligence - both economic and in terms of assets and resources than you do. They are no phantom menace. They are, in fact, your rulers NOW. And they will remain so.
