Immigration Policy on CSPAN
I can't believe I just watched over an hour of CSPAN without a break. Normally when I try to tune in, they just have a bunch of ugly people sitting around to elevator music and not saying anything. But this time, it was pretty interesting. Steve King (R, Iowa) was making an anti-immigration case and speaking out AGAINST the White House's amnesty proposal. Since I haven't made up my mind yet how I feel about these immigration issues, I was able to listen to most of the argument without my usual liberal dismissiveness, that conservatives are so stupid that we should just shove them into the backwoods and ignore everything they have to say.
Also, it's always interesting to see dissent among the Republicans, whose great strength is their unity.
I used to have a liberal friend from California who went to college in Texas. He once told me that there are two kinds of Republicans: those who are Republican because they're from Texas (and other equivalents), and those who have real opinions on the issues. My friend said that the latter group was surprisingly intelligent, whose whys and wherefores made a lot of sense in a certain evil way (but logical nevertheless). However, these Republicans often sounded like dumbasses too because they would never say what they mean, but instead throw out a lot of high-flying rhetoric. Like, instead of saying, "We need to take out Saddam Hussein because it's important to our world domination and control of oil resources," they would say, "Freedom...democracy...war on terror...God bless America" - leaving the more perceptive ones to wonder how Bin Laden suddenly transmogrified into Hussein. And then of course, we'd resolve that confusion by concluding that the president is a redneck dumbass, without considering that he was only TALKING out of his dumb ass. (Oh and ps, Bush is anything but a real redneck. Rednecks don't come from Conneticut royalty and graduate from Yale.)
Listening to the Iowa rep's anti-immigration speech reminded me of my chubby friend's old take on Republicans. I could tell that beneath a lot of the nonsense, the rep was addressing a very real problem, and I even found myself agreeing with some of his points. I too don't like the idea of taking in all the poorest of the poor of Central America and making them our problem. I think the rep's numbers were exaggerated ("it's like moving the Rio Grande to the Panama Canal, without annexing the natural resources") and I'm not sure the strain on our welfare system wouldn't be balanced out by what some of the other immigrants pay in taxes - but my goodness we have our own poor populations to deal with...including yours truly! I think it's silly to say that immigrants are taking way jobs that would normally go to Americans, but there is something to be said about how it's hard for small businesses to keep up with their competitors when they try to hire their workers lawfully (legal residents, minimum wage, benefits, etc).
Plus, there's what I see as the real issue behind all this: the cultural transformation of the American landscape. What people are really afraid of, but what they can't come out and say, is that this country will soon have a Latino majority. I don't think this means that the Latinos are going to turn around and start oppressing white people the way white people historically have oppressed everyone else; but some change is inevitable, and change is always scary. The idea of the LA protesters waving the Mexican flag over the American flag (upside down, according to Rep. King) was a little bothersome even to me. I like to party on Cinco de Mayo like the rest of them, and I too have certain dual allegiances to my mother land, but I still want the people who vote in this country to think that America is the bomb, second to none.
Then Rep. King started busting out a drawing of a wall he wants to build from San Diego to Brownville (?) - 4 feet deep and 12 feet tall with barbed wire on top; and like the Berlin Wall (!!!), 95% effective - and I realized he was crazy, so I clicked over to a Charmed re-run.
Also, it's always interesting to see dissent among the Republicans, whose great strength is their unity.
I used to have a liberal friend from California who went to college in Texas. He once told me that there are two kinds of Republicans: those who are Republican because they're from Texas (and other equivalents), and those who have real opinions on the issues. My friend said that the latter group was surprisingly intelligent, whose whys and wherefores made a lot of sense in a certain evil way (but logical nevertheless). However, these Republicans often sounded like dumbasses too because they would never say what they mean, but instead throw out a lot of high-flying rhetoric. Like, instead of saying, "We need to take out Saddam Hussein because it's important to our world domination and control of oil resources," they would say, "Freedom...democracy...war on terror...God bless America" - leaving the more perceptive ones to wonder how Bin Laden suddenly transmogrified into Hussein. And then of course, we'd resolve that confusion by concluding that the president is a redneck dumbass, without considering that he was only TALKING out of his dumb ass. (Oh and ps, Bush is anything but a real redneck. Rednecks don't come from Conneticut royalty and graduate from Yale.)
Listening to the Iowa rep's anti-immigration speech reminded me of my chubby friend's old take on Republicans. I could tell that beneath a lot of the nonsense, the rep was addressing a very real problem, and I even found myself agreeing with some of his points. I too don't like the idea of taking in all the poorest of the poor of Central America and making them our problem. I think the rep's numbers were exaggerated ("it's like moving the Rio Grande to the Panama Canal, without annexing the natural resources") and I'm not sure the strain on our welfare system wouldn't be balanced out by what some of the other immigrants pay in taxes - but my goodness we have our own poor populations to deal with...including yours truly! I think it's silly to say that immigrants are taking way jobs that would normally go to Americans, but there is something to be said about how it's hard for small businesses to keep up with their competitors when they try to hire their workers lawfully (legal residents, minimum wage, benefits, etc).
Plus, there's what I see as the real issue behind all this: the cultural transformation of the American landscape. What people are really afraid of, but what they can't come out and say, is that this country will soon have a Latino majority. I don't think this means that the Latinos are going to turn around and start oppressing white people the way white people historically have oppressed everyone else; but some change is inevitable, and change is always scary. The idea of the LA protesters waving the Mexican flag over the American flag (upside down, according to Rep. King) was a little bothersome even to me. I like to party on Cinco de Mayo like the rest of them, and I too have certain dual allegiances to my mother land, but I still want the people who vote in this country to think that America is the bomb, second to none.
Then Rep. King started busting out a drawing of a wall he wants to build from San Diego to Brownville (?) - 4 feet deep and 12 feet tall with barbed wire on top; and like the Berlin Wall (!!!), 95% effective - and I realized he was crazy, so I clicked over to a Charmed re-run.
posted by Rex at 4:09 PM
5 Comments:
I generally agree. Glad to see you've caught the C-SPAN bug as well! In the DC-metro area, we get not only C-SPAN, but C-SPAN 2, C-SPAN 3, and C-SPAN radio!
I'd like the offer a third, somewhat small category of Republicans: those that represent the dying moderate wing of their party, who would long ago have become Democrats if it weren't for the shame associated with being a turncoat. Examples include Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, congressman Christopher Shays of Pennsylvania, and Supreme Court Justices John Paul Stevens and David Souter.
Actually, in Chafee's case, if he wins his reelection bid, and the Senate Democrats either gain the majority or come out with a 50-50 tie, he could very well switch sides. But it's actually slightly more complicated than that, since Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent and self-proclaimed socialist, will most likely win the open Senate seat in Vermont. So with one independent in the chamber, you can't have a straight 50-50 split. And yet: he caucauses with the Democrats, so 50-50 might automatically be considered Democratic majority... not really sure on that one.
Okay, enough Beltway talk for now...
Correction: Christopher Shays is from Connecticut.
Dammit, I keep getting this wrong. That was me, self-correcting. Just so you know. ;-)
Sorry, one last point: I have to confess that I'm somewhat shocked and even a little horrified to find that I don't think Bush sounds all that off-his-rocker on this one. Like Rex, I have mixed feelings about this issue, but one thing that's interesting and odd is that Bush is considerably more moderate and, yes, compassionate on this issue than a lot of his fellow Republicans. I can't quite wrap my mind around this; maybe there's a catch. I mean, he has made a concerted effort to court Hispanics, but you really never can tell what his motives are. Maybe, just maybe, he's really just a moderate on this issue after all, for reasons of principle. Anyway, if he ends up vetoing a bill because it doesn't have a guest worker provision, then you'll see some real fireworks.
Bush has to carefully tread between two groups on this issue. On one hand we have the knuckle-draggers in the extreme right who want to use Middle America's fear of brown people to scare people into voting for wingnuts this fall. On the other hand we have big business types who recognize that rounding up everyone with a mustache would be Really Bad for the economy and thus their bottom lines. So, Bush is hunting around for a way to keep both the xenophobia and the profits rolling.
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