A special double episode in TCOTS’s ongoing series that aims to show why Willard Mitt Romney and Newton Leroy Gingrich must not be allowed to receive the Republican Nomination for President…
-From Katrina Trinko, over at The Corner, we learn:
Mitt Romney has vigorously criticized both Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich for their immigration positions. But it turns out that back in 2006, Romney’s views on immigration tracked closely to Gingrich’s current views, although Romney went a step further by suggesting that some illegal immigrants be able to become citizens….
Please check out the proof for yourself here.
-More on these two on immigration from John Derbyshire commenting on what was said in last week’s GOP Debate [worth quoting in full]:
I’ll also pick nits with the immigration aspects of last night’s debate. It was, as usual, low-grade stuff.
Romney: This is a party that loves legal immigration.
What does that mean? Legal immigration, a.k.a. “immigration,” is a policy area. A party cannot love a policy area. Compare: “This is a party that loves defense.” Okay, but how is our defense policy to be oriented? To what ends? How much shall we spend?
Or: “This is a party that loves agriculture.” Great. Does the candidate favor farm price supports or not? If he favors them, does he favor them at current levels, or higher levels, or lower ones? Targeted at which product areas?
Romney’s answer was fatuous. Perhaps this is a party that loves fatuity.
Gingrich: I don’t see how the party that says it’s the party of the family is going to adopt an immigration policy which destroys families that have been here a quarter century.
Who has proposed any such thing? How does it destroy a family to tell them to go back to their nation of lawful citizenship? Has someone proposed forbidding deportees to take their family members with them? Who? When?
A quarter century ago would be … let’s see … oh yes: 1986. That’s when Congress passed Simpson-Mazzoli, the bill that opened the floodgates to illegal immigration. By granting amnesty to those already here, and making promises about enforcement that the congresscritters had no intention of keeping.
Santorum: We’ll not only have the innovation, which I support, coming from legal immigrants, but we’ll have that money trickle down to blue-collar workers …
See, there are these vibrant, smart, thrusting, innovating immigrants, and there are the dull-witted mass of, you know, Americans (ugh!) who are incapable of anything much but blue-collar drudge work. Gotta get those immigrants in here! Gotta give ‘em green cards!
This nation has three hundred and ten million citizens. In all that number, there isn’t enough talent to keep the economy humming? There aren’t enough innovators to keep us a technology leader? Funny, there used to be.
Here’s a suggestion in re high-skilled immigration: Permit settlement by foreigners qualified in a field when the economy indicates strong unfilled demand for workers in that field. Criteria might be: Five successive years in which median wages in that field rose by at least ten percent each year and college enrollment by citizens looking to enter that field rose by less than ten percent each year. That’s cold, un-romantic economics: but there must be a lot of citizens just as fed up with immigration romanticism as I am.
Romney: Secure our border, protect legal immigration, and return to a system that follows the law.
That was precisely the sales pitch for Simpson-Mazzoli. Fool us once …
I’m proud to say I didn’t support Simpson-Mazzoli: it sounded too oily for me.
-Mark Kirkorian comments on Simpson-Mazzoli and Newt’s proposal to grant an amnesty [there's nothing else to call it] for those illegal aliens who have been here for twenty-five years:
…Did something happen back in 1986 with regard to immigration? Oh, yeah, I remember — Congress passed the one and only amnesty for illegal immigrants, the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), that legalized close to 3 million illegals (there had been about 5 million, so about 2 million remained after the amnesty, because they didn’t meet the law’s requirements). That was supposed to be followed by tough enforcement to prevent future illegal immigration and to throw out the resident illegals who didn’t qualify for the amnesty (or who failed to lie their way to a green card, since a large share of those successfully claiming amnesty, perhaps as many as one-quarter, did so fraudulently — among the liars was Mahmud “The Red” Abouhalima, a leader of the first World Trade Center attack).
So the Gingrich Amnesty would cover illegal immigrants here when Congress passed IRCA. That is to say, it would pick up where the previous amnesty left off, legalizing precisely those people who didn’t qualify for IRCA. This just underlines what a chump you have to be to support any deal offered you by amnesty supporters.
The great philosopher W.C. Fields once said: ‘Never give a sucker an even break or smarten up a chump.’
-Even some of those who like some of Mitt’s positions on the issues are baffled by the following. From Andrew McCarthy:
While Newt’s views on immigration have gotten all of the attention, what stunned me – and not in a good way — was Mitt’s assertion that getting tough with the mullahs means indicting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for violating the Convention Against Genocide. If this absurd proposal had been made by one of the lesser lights, it wouldn’t rate worrying about. But Gov. Romney is generally superb on national security, and even in the same debate he was very strong on the importance of distinguishing how we should treat America’s terror-mongering enemies from how we should treat mere criminals. There’s a very good chance that Mitt will be our nominee, so his provocatively weak suggestion that we indict Ahmadinejad is as troubling as it is baffling….
Willard will, it seems, make a good Commander-In-Wimp. Enough with the Internationalism.
But I suspect and fear that Newt will interpret his comeback incorrectly and see his new front-runner status as proof he can discard all of the lessons-learned from his flame-out earlier this year. This is the moment where it’s going to be hardest for Gingrich to restrain his Newtness. This is the moment where perceived vindication breeds hubris. Already, he’s talking about teaching an online course from the White House, bragging that Obama can use teleprompters in their debates and trying to run as a general election candidate on immigration.
On their own, these are all fine even laudable. But when combined, among some Newt-watchers, they feel like omens that World Historical Newt is returning to the scene. He should fight that temptation and keep his nose to the grindstone.
Beware Nemesis, Newton! You two have met many times before.
I take comfort in knowing that the chances of him becoming hubristic are very, very high. I’m so confident of this that I just sent Nemesis some cab fare.
-Jeff Goldstein is not pleased with either Willard or Newton, and is rightfully po’d at the GOP base:
Gingrich’s intimate knowledge of the Beltway culture, coupled with his smarts, might prove dangerous — particularly insofar as Gingrich seems to believe he knows better than the entirety of the conservative base how best to play the DC game.
– Which of course misses the point the conservative base is sending, namely, that we don’t want to play the game, but rather to scrap it as it now operates and change the rules entirely.
I just don’t know that I can trust Gingrich. And I sure as hell can’t trust Romney.
Yet again, we’re being played: the candidates who appeal to us most are those who have practiced just how to appeal to voters — that is, candidates whose political savvy is the very thing that should cause us to reject them.
We’re squandering our last chance at keeping this country together as founded. And sadly, the vast majority of the GOP’s base either doesn’t see it or is simply in denial.
Damn disheartening it is.
Wake up conservatives: people like Willard and Newton and Cryin’ John and Granny Mitch are liars.
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