Thread: Lindsay Graham’s Impressive Bilingualism

Lindsay Graham’s Impressive Bilingualism

Here’s a nice catch from Dara Lind about Senator Lindsay Graham offering different messages on immigration reform to the English and Spanish press. In English, Graham is threatening to blow up any hope of an immigration deal over the health care bill. In Spanish, not so much:

That’s been his line to the English-language press through this week. In his own statements, he’s been walking a fine line between threatening to walk away himself and making vague pronouncements about the lack of political will generally — presumably among other Republicans. (The notion that Senate Republicans were somehow willing to cooperate before reconciliation is, of course, so laughable that it points out how disingenuous the whole thing is. One also wonders what the heck Graham thought was going to happen with reconciliation on Thursday, when theoretically he could have yanked the WaPo op-ed.) The media has been eliding this carefully crafted distinction. It’s always sad when the press fails to capture the subtlety of weaselly doubletalk.

Even sadder is when they don’t notice just how weaselly it is because they’re watching the wrong Sunday morning talk shows. Because two days after Graham debuted his Cassandra mask for the English-language press, he went on Al Punto, Univision’s Sunday politics show, to express his support for reform. He didn’t ignore the reconciliation point — he mentioned that it would make things “difficultâ€

The reason he and other politicians do this is because they really believe all spanish-speaking want amnesty for illegal aliens. Nothing could be further from the truth.