Mitticisms: "Amnesty"

Watching a Republican debate is like reading an Australian gossip magazine. You get the general sense that the subjects are important, but only from the way the people in the pictures are getting all worked up. It's all-rounders cheating on presenters, and I'm not precisely sure what either of those is.

I'm not saying the Republican candidates aren't sincere. I'm just saying I search my heart and I still don't see how their issues are issues. I want to get mad and shout things at the screen, but I can't even latch on. They might as well be debating last week's Wife Swap.

I don't know anyone who lists these as his top six problems:

Queers
The Caliphate
The Crushing Burden of the Capital Gains Tax
Death of Ronald Reagan
Other People's Weak Families
Mexicans

But, then again, I don't live in New Hampshire.

--

Which brings us to Amnesty. It's a charge almost too volatile to utter. The impression I get from the debates is that just saying the A Word is enough to make Rudy Giuliani's hump explode, Mike Huckabee's stomach staples snap and all of Fred Thompson's blood rush to his face, from wherever it is his people keep it.

Mitt Romney has been dropping the A bomb on John McCain in two campaign ads. One goes:

"On immigration, McCain supported this year's amnesty bill. Higher taxes, amnesty for illegals. That's straight talk for being in Washington too long."

John McCain didn't fight and die in Vietnam to come home and take that. So he struck back during Sunday's debate:

MCCAIN: It's not amnesty. And for you to describe it as you do in the attack ads, my friend, you can spend your whole fortune on these attack ads, but it won't be true.

(UNKNOWN): May I...

ROMNEY: No, no, no, no. I get a chance to respond to this ... I don't describe your plan as amnesty in my ad. I don't call it amnesty. What I say is -- and you just described what most people would say is a form of amnesty.

I think the man the ABC News transcript calls "Unknown" may have been Giuliani. Which might be a sign that skipping Iowa was a mistake. But let's not get sidetracked. McCain accuses Romney of accusing McCain of advocating A-----y, and Mitt indignantly denies it.

And then remembers that it's probably on videotape somewhere. So he clarifies:

I would never stoop to accusing you of doing the horrible things everyone knows you do. I'd just insinuate it.

But it's even more remarkable than that. Mitt Romney has the power to reverse-insinuate. Sometimes when he directly says something, it turns out he's really just hinting.

He can unsay things by saying them. Don't ask me how that's possible. It resists interpretation, like abstract expressionism.

George Stephanopoulos, paid agent of the drive-by media, wasn't content to let the mystery be. He followed up the next day:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Had you not seen your own ad?

ROMNEY: I hadn't seen that one and my staff told me afterwards it does say amnesty and I said well it's not supposed to.

STEPHANOPOULOS: It's two ads both of them saying it.

ROMNEY: Yes there's a man in the street, one that says amnesty, as well and I was simply incorrect. His bill -- he does not technically under the term support amnesty because he says, well, he makes them pay $5,000 and technically that's not amnesty and I guess that's true. You could say to somebody if you pay 5 bucks then it's not amnesty but the reality.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Is it amnesty or not?

ROMNEY: Well, you're going to have to define the word for me. I call it---

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well you're running for president, not me.

ROMNEY: Yeah, ok. When you ask the question, when you ask the question, you want a specific answer based on your definition. My definition is this, that if a -- if illegals are able to all stay in this country and thereby get an enormous advantage over everybody else, that is a form of amnesty.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you do believe his plan is amnesty then?

ROMNEY: Not under a legal definition but under the normal colloquial definition, yes.

We need Mitt Romney is the White House. He's the one candidate who's ready to mislead on Day One.

Imagine if Mitt Romney sold you something -- let's say some land in Glengarry Glen Ross -- and you were trying to get your money back, and he started pulling this crap on you.

So maybe it's good that none of the Republican issues have any real bearing on governing, or any other aspect of life as we live it. Imagine if they were arguing about something important.

WHAT MITT MEANT:

When I didn't say that, I meant every word. And I stand by it, zero percent.

HOW TO USE "AMNESTY" AT HOME:

There's no human way to know what it means, so use it for everything. Like "smurf." "Thanks mom, these waffles are amnesty!"

Comments

[Northlite]

You people are sick! Mitt Romney will be our next president because he is the only one with successful business experience, because he is the only candidate committed to expelling illegal immigrants withing 60 days of being elected, because he will restore Christian dignity to the highest office, because he has the intelligence to lock up all the Islamofascists in an expanded Gitmo and question them with every means possible, because he will reduce our taxes, and because he has remained true to his one wife and he has a beautiful family. Personally, I believe that he is also the only candidate who can effectively defend Christmas from the Islamofascists, gays, and secularists who are trying to undermine the heritage of this great Christian Nation!

Jesus is our Savior! Double Gitmo! Defend our Borders! No New Taxes! Go Mitt!!!!!

God Bless America and God Bless Mitt!

Larry Craig, Senator, R-ID

[AMolinaro]

I think we all expect politicians to be full of crap, even more so when they're conservatives. However, Mitt's dissembling and outright lying isn't what should worry people, it's the direct statements he makes. Such as doubling Gitmo, rounding up Hispanic men, women and children, stopping healthcare reform, and his general plan for destroying America.

A better question would be: given what he's directly stated, shouldn't we be terrified at the notion that there are some things he feels the need to hide?

[sarge]

If this were the first Chris Kelly piece I"d ever read, I would have found some of it amusing, and completely not understood much of it.

But now being an experienced Chris Kelly connoisseur (I had to spell check that), I think I understood all of it, even the stuff that was nonsensical, cackling all the way through, even though I"m in a thoroughly shitty mood because of the Seahawks Packers game.

[lillianjane]

Best line: "John McCain didn't fight and die in Vietnam to come home and take that." This was a very funny post about Mitt's dissembling, but the comments seem to be more about the issue of amnesty itself. It annoys me that every discussion of illegal immigration becomes a specious argument about the value of immigrants in America. It would be tough to be sent home after twenty years of squatting, but it would also be tough to wait for twenty years in Europe or Africa or Asia to move to the US legally while so many people are cheating.

[starman1695]

"John McCain didn't fight and die in Vietnam"
I'm sorry to learn that McCain died in Vietnam. But, of course, that begs the question, who is impersonating him in the campaign?

[Sidewhispers]

Where's Mitt's Doublemint Twin? I expect to see the cartoon bluebird of happiness flipping and singing around his perfectly coifed, but empty head any day now.
This guy is so out of touch with the people. His very wealthy family probably shielded him from "horrible people" who have little money, no job security, freeloaders, as he calls those who cannot afford medical insurance. I bet his clean-cut five sons, on their fight-the-war-at-home-so-that-you-don't-have-to-maybe-like-die-in-Iraq campaign, keep well away from dreadful creatures who have the audacity to want some of good decent folks' stuff.

[SouthpawSass]

rofl... Chris, you crack me up.

The way I see it is:

Talk starts with the letter "T".

"MITT" contains two "T's".

Another word for two, is double.

Coincidence? I think not.

[Bongborg]

The reason Republicans debating makes no sense, is they are suffering from cognitive dissonance,and when they open their mouths and try to reason out loud, it spills out all over the floor. When you try to pretend that you are all upset about the illegal immigrants and at the same time, hiring them to work in your yard and clean your pool, and using them as laborers in your business, you begin to sound like a schizophrenic. Also, quite naturally, if those people got amnesty, then they would no longer be willing to work for below minimum wage, which would cut into their profits, which is the completely unacceptable thing. Giuliani's problem with amnesty is slightly different... he thinks only rich white Republican criminals should get amnesty.

[Rudym]

Chris Kelly
Quit trying to complicate the amnesty issue. The issue is simple. Amnesty did not work before, what makes anyone think it will work again. All amnesty will do is encourage the next wave of illegal immigrants to magnet to the US. The real issue is not that Americans hate illegals or are not sympathetic to their circumstances, the issue is recognizing that amnesty will perpetuate a continued breakdown in US immigration laws. Amnesty of any kind is really capitulation and surrender to perpetuating disorder in the US labor market, along with disrepect of laws in genteral. Illegal immigrants will not be physically harmed by returning to their homelands and applying for citizenship if that is what they truly want. The main reason for immmigration laws is to perpetuate order in the US. Illegal immigrants are simply line jumpers that have created hostility and disorder in the US.

[KarenZipdrive]

Romney is a greasy cultist who lied to become Governor of Massachusetts and is lying to become president.
I hope he's the GOP nominee. He certainly has the creepiness to win the hearts and minds of those gullible buffoons.

[laserbob]

"I think the man the ABC News transcript calls "Unknown" may have been Giuliani."

(UNKNOWN): May I...9/11..

Later on in the debate...

(UNKNOWN): Er...9/11?!

In summary, gentlemen...

(UNKNOWN): Wait!...9/11?!

Goodnight Mr. Giuliani!!

[HLM]

View From Across The Pond:

Dear America, you're a lovely, lovely country, filled with lovely, generous, friendly people, BUT...

You elected Ronald Reagan TWICE.
You elected Richard Nixon TWICE.
You elected George W. Bush TWICE.

I submit you may have bigger problems than Mitt Romney's patent-leather hair.
(It's spelled Brylcreem, by the way.)

It's clear as day: the good guys may know to govern effectively, in a decent, humane fashion - I believe a Democratic administration would be capable of resolving the illegal alien issue in a decent, humane way - but unfortunately the bad guys know how to win elections, and you (the good guys) don't.

If Senator Obama becomes the Democratic nominee (Karl Rove is salivating at the prospect), it's going to get ugly before it gets really ugly.

I wish you luck - you're going to neeed it.

[NABNYC]

Actually the issue of amnesty is not a joke. Or at least it's not a joke to all the people who have lost their jobs, or seen their wages depressed, because of the flood of millions of illegal immigrants into this country.

The most recent group under threat are the truckers, as Bush tries to pass a new law authorizing truckers from Mexico to come to the U.S., take all the trucking jobs, and throw hundreds of thousands more Americans out of work. And everyone who used to earn $18-$25/hour in the building trades has been replaced by illegal immigrants working at $6/hour. No joke to those people either.

The current law assesses a penalty against anyone who has come here illegally, or overstayed a visa. They are deported and prohibited from trying to return legally for a period of I believe 5 years. What was proposed by McCain and Kennedy would have eliminated that penalty, and allowed everyone who is here illegally to stay. I call that amnesty.

Further, if Congress is authorized and directed only to act in the interests of the people of this country, the citizens, then there is no benefit to us for an amnesty law. To the contrary, all discussion is that this would be good for the businesses who (illegally) hire these people, and it would be good for the people of Mexico. But my Congress is not supposed to be representing the people of Mexico. They are supposed to be representing me. And my neighbors.

I'm not even sure amnesty would be such a big issue if the politicians didn't keep lying about it and saying "It's not really amnesty." Yes, actually, it is. The law requires that these people be deported and prohibited from returning lawfully for some period of time. Congress says forget about it, they can all stay. Amnesty.

[Ouroboros]

Chris, can you PLEASE write for the new Spitting Image show I hear they're doing in England? At least for when they bust on America. I hear those writers aren't striking and it's better over there now anyway.

[starboymikey]

I wound up at a dinner in Southern Cal once, hosted by a family of ultra-conservatives (don't ask how, it just happened).

After listening to about a dozen people yap about how the Mexicans were polluting our entire culture, it was finally time to eat. The menu: enchiladas and tacos, washed down with lots of tequilla.

The conversation was taxing to say the least, but the food was actually very good, and out of some modicum of courtesy to my hosts, I kept my comments on the irony of the menu selection to myself. But I did get to laugh all the way home.