Is Paul Ryan Joining Marco Rubio In Committing Amnesty Political Suicide?
By CHQ Staff | 7/18/13
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We are still astonished and disappointed in how Florida Senator Marco Rubio squandered his conservative and Tea Party movement base by becoming the face of S. 744 – the Senate’s “Gang of Eight” amnesty for illegal aliens legislation.
Any “comprehensive” immigration bill, like S. 744 that gets the enthusiastic support of partisan Democrats, like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, New York Senator Charles Schumer, Illinois Senator Richard Durbin and President Barack Obama is almost by definition bad for Republicans and contrary to conservative principles.
Otherwise it wouldn’t be supported by Obama, Reid, Schumer, Durbin and the like – for evidence of the truth of that analysis witness the common sense amendments sponsored by Senators Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Jeff Sessions that were shot down in the Democratic controlled Senate because they took a principled conservative approach to solving our nation’s illegal immigration problem.
Now it looks like another promising Republican, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, is about to follow Rubio down the plank and over the side into the shark-infested waters of granting amnesty to illegal immigrants.
Ryan, who has many fine personal qualities and conservative instincts, should be smarter than to get sucked-into supporting anything remotely resembling the corrupt pork and special interest favor bloated Senate bill.
The conservative-leaning voters who opposed S. 744 are not “anti-immigrant” and are prepared to have an honest and forthright conversation about how to secure our borders, deal humanely with the millions of illegal aliens already in the country and ensure that the flow of illegal immigrants is stopped once and for all.
What they are not prepared to do is dole out millions of dollars in slush funds to radical Hispanic political organizations like La Raza, grant vast new powers to the federal executive branch, insulate it from Congressional direction and oversight, bring millions of new clients for the welfare state from illegal and ineligible for benefits status to legal and eligible for benefits status and grant blanket amnesty to illegal immigrants who are in jail – and that’s just the beginning of conservatives’ factual analysis of why S. 744 is contrary to conservative principles, bad for Republicans and bad for our country in general.
We think Pat Buchanan made a great point when he wrote in a recent column, “For a generation, when forced to choose between Middle America and corporate America, on NAFTA, most-favored nation for China, and free trade, the GOP establishment opted to go with the Fortune 500. In the GOP the corporate conservative rides up front; the social, cultural and patriotic conservatives in the back of the bus…”
Unfortunately, along with Paul Ryan’s fine personal qualities comes a penchant for granting the kind of deference to the interests of the establishment Republican Party’s corporate paymasters that Pat Buchanan decried.
The shills for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the cheap labor opportunists and the inside-the-Beltway party hacks of the “buy the Hispanic vote” wing of the Republican Party did their best to neutralize and discredit the outraged conservative base during the Senate’s hurried deliberations on S. 744.
Yet, as far as we can tell, despite the millions spent to sell it, no one out in real “outside-the-Beltway America” was convinced that S. 744 – with its corruption, pork and special interest favors – is a good bill.
But it certainly destroyed trust in Marco Rubio and eliminated him as a conservative leader – witness his plummet in the presidential straw polls from number one or two to not even in the top ten in our own CHQ poll and down at number five in an important Iowa poll.
Conservatives, like Senators Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Jeff Sessions had the right ideas on how to deal with our illegal immigration problem. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte and Committee members Steve King, Louie Gohmert and Lamar Smith have been on the right track in opposing anything remotely resembling S. 744.
We welcome Paul Ryan to the debate on how best to apply conservative principles to immigration reform – something that eluded Senator Rubio.
However, if Paul Ryan wants to avoid Marco Rubio’s fate he must begin by publicly and forcefully rejecting the corruption, pork and special interest favors of Rubio's Gang of Eight bill..
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