Thread: (ALIPAC) Frank Keating of banking group urges GOP to support immigration bill

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http://www.alipac.us/content/frank-k...ion-bill-2411/

Keating refresher.
McCain surrogate raises Obama's past drug use


Posted by
CNN Ticker Producer Alexander Mooney, CNN's Tasha Diakides

October 9th, 2008
08:05 PM ET



Keating is a McCain campaign co-chair.


(CNN) - A prominent surrogate for John McCain on Thursday raised Barack Obama's admitted cocaine use as a teenager and said the Illinois senator should speak candidly about it to the American people.

Speaking to Dennis Miller, a comedian and conservative radio talk show host, former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating said Obama should be more forthright about his background and what he called his "very extreme" record.

"He ought to admit, ‘You know, I've got to be honest with you. I was a guy of the street. I was way to the left. I used cocaine. I voted liberally, but I'm back at the center,'" Keating, a co-chair of McCain’s campaign, said Obama should tell voters. "I mean, I understand the big picture of America. But he hasn't done that."
An aide to John McCain said Keating was not directed by the campaign to make the comments.

"We didn’t ask him to do it,” the aide said. “He didn’t clear it with us, but obviously he’s read Senator Obama’s books.”
The Obama campaign has not responded to the comments.

The remarks ring similar to comments made by prominent New Hampshire Democrat Bill Shaheen, a Hillary Clinton supporter, during the primary. Shaheen predicted in December that Obama’s drug past would be a major Republican talking point if her were the Democratic nominee. He later apologized for the comments, but stepped down from his role in the Clinton campaign. Black Entertainment Television founder Bob Johnson, another Hillary Clinton backer, also had to apologize after making overt references to Obama's drug use at campaign rally in South Carolina.

In Obama's 1995 book Dreams of My Father, he writes that he was once headed in the direction of a "junkie" and a "pothead. Referring to his emotional struggles as a young man, Obama writes, "Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack, though."

Obama did speak during his primary campaign about his past experimentation with drugs and alcohol in high school.
"I made some bad decisions that I've actually written about," he told New Hampshire high school students last November. "There were times when I, you know, got into drinking, experimented with drugs. There was a whole stretch of time where I didn't really apply myself a lot."

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com...past-drug-use/

Ah! So John McCain and Frank Keating are in the same camp! That makes sense.

W

Does Frank Keating have any relation to Charles Humphrey Keating, Jr. or Charles Keating of the Keating Five scandals that McCain was involved in?

W

by Matthew Boyle 12 Nov 2013, 2:31 PM PDT
breitbart.com

Former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, a self-described “Reagan Republican” who currently serves as the head of the American Bankers Association, called for open borders immigration policies in America, saying such policies would be “conservative.”

Keating made the call in an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, in which he argued that Ronald Reagan would support open borders too.

“Unfortunately, too many conservatives — though they aspire to walk in Reagan's footsteps — have forgotten that immigration reform is the most Republican of causes,” Keating wrote. “We cannot support open borders for trade but not for people. We cannot support the unfettered exchange of goods and ideas while building razor-wired walls that separate children from their parents. We cannot make America stronger and more prosperous by excluding tomorrow's talent and industry.”

Keating’s op-ed was titled “What would Reagan do?” In it, he notes that he was a senior Reagan administration official when amnesty was last granted under the Reagan administration.

“From my perspective as a Reagan Republican — indeed, as a senior official in the Reagan administration during the last major immigration reform process — I am convinced that we stand on the precipice of opportunity,” Keating wrote. “In numbers that we haven't seen since the early 20th century, immigrants have been coming here to work and to build a better future for their families."

"Just as immigrants helped fuel the engine of America's emerging industrial economy 100 years ago, today they are filling two critical job gaps: high-skilled professions in science, technology and advanced manufacturing, and low-skill service and industrial jobs in fast-growing regions," he said. "We need immigrants of all skill levels to help build the 21st century economy.”

Reagan did grant an amnesty in 1986—that gave citizenship to 3 million illegal immigrants at the time. Reagan later, according to his Attorney General Ed Meese, expressed regret for his decision. Keating conveniently leaves out Reagan’s later regrets from his op-ed.

Keating falsely claims that the Senate’s Gang of Eight bill “protects the rule of law by securing the border and ensuring that only law-abiding immigrants receive legal status.” As Breitbart News has reported time and again, the Senate bill does not actually ensure border security or effective interior enforcement measures--it just promises them, like Reagan's amnesty in 1986 did. Border security and interior enforcement never came then either.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Governm...e-conservative

Posted 06:57 PM ET
investors.com

Big business is stepping up its push for immigration reform, with bank lobbyist and former Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating insisting amnesty for illegals is what Ronald Reagan stood for. Don't believe it.

In line with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.us, the president and CEO of the American Bankers Association, as well as ex-governor of Oklahoma, has taken to speaking out about the "urgency" of comprehensive immigration reform, even as the idea is all but dead.

Keating justifies his position by claiming it's what Reagan would have wanted. He bases his argument on the president's sign-off on the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.

"As Ronald Reagan might have put it, it's time to open doors," Keating wrote in a Sunday op-ed in the Los Angeles Times.

We don't think so. For one thing, there is no urgency — a recent Esquire survey found that 54% of Americans oppose a path to U.S. citizenship for lawbreaking illegal immigrants while only 32% support it.

And more to the point, Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act because he strongly believed it was time to gain control of U.S. borders and to enforce legal hiring at workplaces.

The amnesty of 3 million illegal immigrants that came with it was relatively small, and never would have resulted in 11 million new immigrants in the decades that followed had the rest of the law's requirements been fulfilled by Congress. Sadly, they weren't.

Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese reportedly said that amnesty was in fact Reagan's biggest regret, according to an account in the Conservative Heritage Times, because he, like the people who supported him, believed in the rule of law.

But that doesn't stop Keating from setting up strawmen to beat the Republican base into submission and tar its members as bigots if they prefer that immigration reform be taken in steps rather than comprehensively to ensure the problems of the 1986 measure don't recur.

"Immigrants are here to work," Keating writes.

But he misses the reality: Thousands are on food stamps and turn their taxpayer-paid largess into a gravy train of packages to distant homelands such as Jamaica, Guatemala and Mexico.

What's more, "free" social services to illegals — from bilingual schools to health care to food aid to legal aid — abound, making it all the more attractive to emigrate outside the law. A report from Judicial Watch shows that illegals received $29 million in "free " drugs from 2009 to 2011 courtesy of U.S. taxpayers.

Keating throws out one strawman after another, ignoring the fact that 27 years and six other amnesties have passed since 1986 and the borders still haven't been secured. Now Americans are being browbeaten into accepting the Senate Gang of Eight bill, an 800-page "comprehensive" bill so full of ObamaCare-style unintended consequences that one of its sponsors, GOP Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, has disowned it.

Nobody benefits more from illegal immigration and the cheap labor it provides than the business community. While we tend to agree with business on most issues, on this one, its interests are diametrically opposed to the sentiment of individual voters — who pay the tab.

http://news.investors.com/ibd-editor...gan-mantle.htm

Originally Posted by Jean

For one thing, there is no urgency — a recent Esquire survey found that 54% of Americans oppose a path to U.S. citizenship for lawbreaking illegal immigrants while only 32% support it.

And more to the point, Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act because he strongly believed it was time to gain control of U.S. borders and to enforce legal hiring at workplaces.

Yep. Repubs are trying to sell out Americans, because that's what their big donors want. But the recent polls open the door for patriots, who can truthfully say that sellouts could well be defeated by people who will put American interests first. So all that big donor money won't guartantee the sell outs' congressional seats.

IMO we should also use this opportunity to ring the Universal E-Verify bell.
*******************************************
Americans first in this magnificent country

American jobs for American workers

Fair trade, not free trade

Originally Posted by ALIPAC

Does Frank Keating have any relation to Charles Humphrey Keating, Jr. or Charles Keating of the Keating Five scandals that McCain was involved in?

W

Not that I could find. But I think the Keating 5 issue should be discussed every time John McCain opens his mouth.