Gingrich Urges Republicans To Accept ‘Reality’ In Immigration Reform Debate

[DonViejo]

By Igor Volsky on Feb 9, 2013 at 1:55 pm

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) tore into Mitt Romney’s harsh rhetoric about “self-deportation” during the 2012 presidential campaign, calling on Republicans to abandon their extremist rhetoric and unrealistic policy solutions for the nation’s broken immigration system.

In a letter sent to supporters on Friday night, Gingrich criticized Romney for deriding proposals offering legal status to undocumented immigrants as “amnesty.” “It is difficult to understand how someone running for President of the United States, a country with more than 50 million Hispanic citizens, could fail to acknowledge that the American people should not take grandmothers who have been here 25 years, have deep family and community ties — and forcibly expel them,” Gingrich wrote.

He observed that “The 12 million people are here, living and working.” “Many of them are bound together by the web of human relations — family, friends, neighbors — and the American people will not support mass deportation.” “As a party, we simply cannot continue with immigration rhetoric that in 2012 became catastrophic — in large part because it was not grounded in reality.”

Gingrich’s own position on immigration has evolved. In 2007, the former Speaker claimed that American civilization will “decay” unless the government declares English the nation’s official language and later suggested that unauthorized immigrations should go back to their home countries for several years in exchange for a temporary guest-worker visa. Upon announcing his candidacy for the presidency in 2011, Gingrich proposed that local communities establish “citizenship boards” to consider which unauthorized immigrants can remain in the country.

-snip-

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2013/02/09/1566891/gingrich-urges-republicans-to-accept-reality-in-immigration-reform-debate/

[RB TexLa]

1. You don't have to go past this blog to find people who need to accept reality.

[Fumesucker]

5. Indeed, you don't even have to go past this post n/t

[JI7]

2. i'm not sure Gingrich is that popular ever since he came out in support of same sex marriage

[Thinkingabout]

3. The true reality is the hispanic vote went against the GOP plain and simple

The angry old white men does not have enough votes to force any group to continue to bow to Thor wants and wishes. They thought they would rule forever but women, Latinos, oriental and blacks outnumber them, they need to get over themselves. Years of hate has not fixed this problem, hopefully they can re reoriented to treat everyone equally. It has been a world of, ruled by and run by angry white men and they are fighting their last battles.

[JHB]

4. I believe the Conservatively Correct term for 'evolved' is 'flip-flopped'

[bluestate10]

6. Yes. During republican debates, Gingrich was all for deportation. The only person that

stood for a smidgen of decency was Perry on Texas hispanic college student tuition, and he got savaged by Romney with not one other candidate coming to Perry's defense. I am no Perry fan, in fact I despise him, but Gingrich showed his true colors during that debate.

[JHB]

7. Gingrich has been showing his true colors for 30 years

Nothing that comes out of his mouth can be taken at face value (though I'll give the benefit of the doubt to anything liquid or semi-liquid).