GOP Embraces Tea Party Stance on Immigration

Hispanic haters Reps. King and Bachmann

The angry, know nothing whites of the Tea Party - most of whom also self identify as Christofascists - see anyone who is not white, non-heterosexual, and non Christian as a threat to their white/Christian privilege and simply put, do not want them in America.   Sadly, the Republican Party is increasingly embracing this racism and bigotry as a matter of GOP policy.  As noted before, I have to wonder how soon it will be before KKK robes are handed out at the outset of every county and city committee meeting.  A piece in the New York Times looks at this disturbing shift in GOP immigration policy.  Here are highlights:

As senior members of the Judiciary Committee looked on, the opponents — Representatives Raúl R. Labrador of Idaho, Louie Gohmert of Texas, Steve King of Iowa and Mo Brooks of Alabama — reshaped two bills to address the rush of unaccompanied children trying to enter the country illegally. Representative Michele Bachmann, Republican of Minnesota, was there, too, and she and Mr. King later took to Twitter to post photos of themselves approving the final language.

For the Obama administration, which is considering carrying out broad immigration policy changes by executive decree, the end of the legislative session was potent evidence that Congress could not be a partner on the pressing, delicate policy decisions to come. A legislative year in which Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio set out to publicly marginalize the more vocal right-wing members of his conference ended with them emboldened, and with new leaders ready to bring the right back into the fold.

Mrs. Bachmann said. “We were able to achieve unity across the conference in what is likely to be the most consequential issue of this time: immigration.”   For party elders pressing for conciliation to attract Hispanic and immigrant votes, that unity has different meaning.

“When you put Raúl Labrador, Steve King and Michele Bachmann together writing an immigration bill, there’s damage done, no question,” said Carlos Gutierrez, a commerce secretary under President George W. Bush who led the failed war room in 2007 trying to get a comprehensive overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws passed.

[W]ith just hours remaining in the summer legislative session, the rebels stormed back — and on the issue where Republican elders believe they have wrought the most political damage.  That has given the Obama administration new ammunition as it presses toward executive actions that Republicans say would precipitate a constitutional crisis and amount to abuse of presidential power. It also points to a new reality for Republican leaders . . 

Mr. Gutierrez said, political damage was done. Complexities of immigration law that slip by most of the American news media remain front and center on Spanish television, where news figures such as Jorge Ramos advocate immigration overhaul positions, he said. And little-known lawmakers like Mr. King and Mr. Brooks are not so obscure among Latinos.

Just days after helping write the House’s only immigration policy bill of the year, Mr. Brooks made waves again when he spoke of a “war on whites that’s being launched by the Democratic Party” to the conservative radio show host Laura Ingraham. Mr. King was caught on tape grabbing the arm of a young immigrant who grew up in Arizona and was granted legal status by the president’s order. “You’re very good at English, you know what I’m saying?”

Mr. Gutierrez said: “We have destroyed tens of thousands of young lives, people who don’t speak Spanish, who have lived their whole lives here, who want to be productive members of society, and now Steve King is rewriting DACA? I just think that is a real shame.”

“Before now, our leadership was looking at what can pass in the Senate,” Mr. Labrador said. “That’s not my concern. I want the most conservative piece of legislation that can pass the House.”