Thread: Libidiot psychobabble: Racist, Distorted and Effective

Libidiot psychobabble:
Racist, Distorted and Effective

Posted on Nov 1, 2007
By Marie Cocco

WASHINGTON—A contemporary Willie Horton has turned up in the Democratic presidential campaign, and so far he is winning. No such person sat in the Drexel University auditorium during the Democrats’ debate on Tuesday night. But the candidates, especially the unprepared front-runner, Hillary Clinton, should long ago have recognized that Republicans and a shrill conservative chorus intend to make Hispanic illegal immigrants the Willie Hortons of 2008.

Horton, an African-American, was the poster child of the 1988 presidential campaign. He was a convicted murderer given a weekend furlough from prison during the administration of Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, the Democratic nominee. Horton did not return, and 10 months later he raped a Maryland woman and brutally assaulted her fiance. Republican mastermind Lee Atwater, political godfather of today’s Karl Rove, used Horton to play on the fear and racial animosity that so often are great motivators of the American electorate.

The Horton ad campaign conducted on behalf of George H.W. Bush’s candidacy was decried as racist and distorted. But it worked. And it became emblematic of how to run a devastatingly effective negative campaign.

The current Republican war on illegal immigrants could be as potent a wedge issue as race and crime were in the 1980s. It exploits peoples’ fear that invading waves of Hispanics—you never hear anyone talk about building a fence along the Canadian border, or rounding up Eastern Europeans who’ve slipped in—are overrunning neighborhoods and schools, robbing legitimate workers of jobs and somehow diminishing the American dream.

It is not only that Clinton was caught flatfooted and evasive during the debate when she was asked if she supported New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s plan to grant driver’s licenses to the undocumented. It’s that other candidates are buying into the dangerous premise that they, too, must talk tough on immigrants. Chris Dodd piously announced that obtaining a driver’s license is a “privilege,â€

Marie Cocco is loco.

Naaaah . . . she's not loco she just hasn't been out from under her rock for a very long time. The reasoning she spouts for accepting this invasion as a done deal has already been shot down. Sombody forgot to tell her when she woke up from her dirt nap.

But there is a larger lesson for Democrats. They must turn the conservatives’ pounding of immigrants back upon them, because it is a rant and a political tactic—not a policy. No Democrat, running for any office, should fail to demand answers to some basic questions:

What, exactly, would conservatives do with the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants who are now here? Would they round them up and deport them all? Who would execute the raids? What would this mass deportation cost? One think tank estimate, based on deporting 10 million, puts the price as high as $230 billion. How would this expense be met? Does the candidate favor a special, anti-immigrant tax to be paid by law-abiding Americans? (Now that would prompt some intriguing responses.)

Apparently, she hasn't been reading anyone's columns except hers and those on the pro side of this invasion, otherwise she would know that ICE has already started deporting the most violent of them, the rest are fleeing of their own volition once they hear OUR CURRENT LAWS ARE BEING ENFORCED. No need to spend money unnecessarily.

And what of the estimated 3.1 million children of illegal immigrants who have been born in the United States? They are American citizens, entitled to every protection enjoyed by those whose hot rhetoric so excites the airwaves. The options are for these children to leave and live in a country that is not theirs, or break up families so children may remain here. So much for the family values of the family values crowd.

Just as their parents came here after being born in Mexico and other South American cesspools they will figure out how things work. After all their parents are criminal minded so they'll do just great in the 3rd world. As for them being citizens simply because they were born in the US not so, your interpretation of the 14th amendment is very construed and flat out wrong. Oh and speaking of the family values crowd, you need to talk to your constituent illegal population its their fault that they entered America illegally and gave birth to children for the sole purpose of receiving everything that they legally are NOT entitled to while daring us to kick them out.

Great points and great analysis, WhatMattersMost!