While notorious Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio entertains the Republican Party convention diehards at a Tampa zoo next week, the real Old West show will have already taken place at the platform committee meetings.
In sheer defiance of the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision against Arizona's controversial SB 1070 immigration law, the Republican Party has adhered to the whims of presidential contender Mitt Romney's extremist immigration adviser Kris Kobach and rammed through a series of Arizona-style immigration planks this week.
Throwing Romney's campaign strategy of capturing 38 percent of the Latino vote to the wind, the Arizonification of the Republican Party's immigration platform appears to be nothing less than a chronicle of an election disaster foretold.
Not that Kobach, the right-wing Kansas secretary of state and architect of SB 1070, seems to care. Kobach attached language that Arizona-style state's rights efforts should be "encouraged, not attacked" into the Party's official policy.
"I think it's an expression of support for Arizona-style laws," Kobach told The Hill on Tuesday. "The platform also encourages states to create laws in this area."
Make that laws in many areas. Arizona Republic columnist E.J. Montini hailed the Republican platform committee's embrace of Arizona's policy to require all employers to verify the legal residency status of their employees as the "Russell Pearce plank," in homage to the disgraced and recalled former state senator.
In addition, oblivious of plunging immigration rates from Mexico, the Republicans jumped on Arizona's wall to nowhere campaign, calling for the completion of the old double-layer boondoggle of the nearly 700-mile U.S.-Mexico border fence.
As the seemingly fumbling Romney campaign knows well, the margin of electoral victory in several swing states, especially in the West, will most likely hinge on one to three percentage points in the very states where Latino voters are projected to increase by 8.7 percent. Even with Obama's lack of immigration reform and record deportation policy, the president leads Romney 63 to 28 in the most recent polls among Latino voters.
"These type of laws inevitably lead to racial profiling and unnecessarily strain relations between police and local Latino communities," James Ferg-Cadima, regional counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, told the Huffington Post, referring to Arizona's immigration laws. As part of the non-partisan coalition of National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, he added: "From our perspective, any of those proposals are non-starters."
United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta referred to the Republican platform as a "war on immigrants."
Perhaps Romney's and the Republican's embrace of "self-deportation" refers, in fact, to the Republican plans for Latino participation in the Grand Old Party of Arizona.
Or, as Russell Pearce told Tea Party activists in Arizona earlier this spring, in his endorsement of Romney: "His immigration policy is identical to mine. Attrition by enforcement."
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1 each & every 79 seconds, 24/7 of the Democrats 43-month control of the White House?
No conservative party is going to appeal to a demographic group where over 50% of the children are born to single mothers, to a demographic group with such a high level of high school drop outs, and to a demographic group where the second and third generation does worse than the first.
What Latinos really have to look forward to is the U.S. becoming a one-party-state like California is today with high unemployment, high taxes, and bad economic conditions.
The appeal to high taxes on whites, ethnic set asides for Hispanics, and open borders for third world immigrants to increase Latino voting power is too hard to resist.
Many are in Texas and have lost revenue or their businesses entirely to illegal aliens who work for less that legal or acceptable prices. Some I know in Louisiana are entirely fed up because many of the businesses have replaced their crews with cheaper foreign labor, making it hard for Americans to get jobs on the low end of the spectrum...and Americans would still LIKE to do those jobs, propaganda aside.
Jobs are the most important thing to the Latino voters, followed closely by the Economy. They are not willing to vote for a president who hurts their interests by allowing foreigners to add unfair competition.
Not all Latinos are in favor of unregulated border crossing or making all illegal aliens legal. It may sound wonderful to people south of the border for a variety of reasons, but it is very bad for the US economy and unemployment rates.
And if we re-elect Obama he might just try to go for it. Who knows what he can get away with using "executive orders"?
Being for the enforcement of law makes you an extremist? Let me guess--being for open borders, anarchy, and corrupt non-enforcement of law is "moderate", right?
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Or, as Russell Pearce told Tea Party activists in Arizona earlier this spring, in his endorsement of Romney: "His immigration policy is identical to mine. Attrition by enforcement."
I.e., less violation of law due to enforcement of law. How outrageous! The alternative is more violation of law due to NON-enforcement of law. The Obama administration is literally telling potential violators of law that they will not be accountable except in certain circumstances--and then we tell them exactly what those are! I think it's obvious which is the reasonable course.
People who assert that reasonable courses are obvious haven't given matters much rigorous thought, so they fall prey to a great many logical fallacies and factual failures, as your post amply demonstrates. Your either/or fallacies and your absolute determination to ignore facts are two cases in point.
Brobdingnag was a similar fantastical place manufactured from logical impossibilities and wild-assed "facts".
Lune
Like what? If you are going to assert that, it helps if you provide specifics.
Why do you (Jeff Biggers), who sounds pretty White to me, have the nerve to dictate what is important to a group of people you don't even belong to ?
The assumptions underlying your questions are logically silly. I could just as well claim that you sound "pretty white to me", so why do you assume that immigration is *not* the most important thing to Latinos? Why do you, sounding so pretty and white, have the nerve to dictate what is *not* important to a group of people you don't even belong to?
It's called *study*, BeasTT. That's how we learn about cultures not our own. In fact, that's how we learn about anything that we don't already know about. I know that Republicans generally place little value on study, but it's quite a fun activity, if you'll give it half a chance.
Lune
As far as studying to learn about people, I would rather interact with them myself to learn. Have fun with those books bro. They have clearly done wonders for you.