The GOP dilemma on immigration (MSM duped by Rand Paul, again)

[ProSense]

The GOP dilemma on immigration

Posted by Greg Sargent

Senator Rand Paul gave a much anticipated speech today on immigration reform that ended up being more revealing about the GOP’s struggles on the issue than you might have expected it to be. There was mass confusion about whether Paul supports a faster path to citizenship — confusion which itself shed light on the difficulties the GOP will face with the right wing if the party embraces something approaching real reform.

Initial reports said Senator Paul would outline in his speech a faster path to citizenship. This led to optimism that real reform is within reach, since it would be meaningful if a conservative like Paul — who’s eying a presidential run in 2016 — joined with Republicans like John McCain, Marco Rubio, and Lindsey Graham, who have embraced a path to citizenship. But then Paul’s advisers quickly clarified that he didn’t support a faster path to citizenship at all — and that his speech didn’t even mention a path to citizenship, instead focusing on legal status. This led to amusing headlines, such as this one on the New York Times homepage: “Paul implies support for citizenship path.”

What’s more, in the speech, Paul said he doesn’t support reform unless it comes with a Congressional vote deeming the border secure before any path to legal status can occur — which puts him to the right of McCain and Rubio.

All of this matters because it tells us how hard it is going to be to get conservatives to embrace anything approaching real reform. We don’t even know what Paul supports on citizenship right now — he appears to be trying to keep it vague. Either Paul supports a path to citizenship that the bipartisan “gang of eight” in the Senate backs — which would result in citizenship in 13 years — but subject to a Congressional vote on border security. Or he supports the framework preferred by GOP Rep. Raul Labrador that would result in legal status but not citizenship for most of the 11 million undocumented immigrants here.

- more -

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/03/19/the-gop-dilemma-on-immigration/

This idiot sure knows how to rope people in and get a lot of good press for basically being a demagogue and hypocrite.

Rand Paul Outlines Budget Plan At CPAC
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022507414

[COLGATE4]

1. Thes assholes are trying to walk

a tightrope in order to appeal to the (few) Repukes who understand that, if they have any chance of surviving as a viable political party they must find a way to appeal to Hispanics and at the same time appear to appease the rapid, froth at the mouth knuckle dragging Tea Party backers. So what they wind up doing is truly worthy of Flip Flop RMoney himself - say one thing, imply another and then deny everything and walk it back as fast as they can when it hits the news. None of this will be worth a tinkers' dam in the final analysis - Hispanics recognize them for the lying, patronizing bastards they really are.

[ProSense]

3. That's exactly

"say one thing, imply another and then deny everything and walk it back as fast as they can when it hits the news."

...what they're doing.

Attacks on Thomas Perez will do wonders for GOP Latino outreach

Posted by Greg Sargent

This morning the Republican National Committee released a report that purports to examine everything that’s wrong with the GOP, one that has a heavy emphasis on repairing relations with Latinos. “By 2050, the Hispanic share of the U.S. population could be as high as 29 percent, up from 17 percent now,” the report laments, adding that unless Republicans “get serious” about tackling their minority outreach problem, “we will lose future elections.”

Only a few hours later, it is now clear that some Republicans will do all they can to block Obama’s first Latino pick for his second-term cabinet — and the right is gearing up for a campaign against him that will make the effort to block Chuck Hagel look like a knitting seminar. Given Thomas Perez’s background as the son of Dominican immigrants, plus his role running the Justice Department’s civil rights division, this isn’t going to make the RNC’s “outreach” to Latinos any easier.

Senator David Vitter announced today that he will put a “hold” on Obama’s nomination of Thomas Perez as labor secretary, partly on the grounds of his work on … the New Black Panther case. Other Republican Senators plan to paint Perez as a “radical legal activist” who has “tried to help illegal immigrants avoid detection,” as the New York Times puts it.

<...>

It’s not hard to see why conservatives hate Perez’s record at the civil rights division. As Adam Serwer recently summarized:

Since Perez took the helm, the division has blocked partisan voting schemes, cracked down on police brutality, protected gay and lesbian students from harassment, sued anti-immigrant Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio for racial profiling, stood up against Islamophobia, and forced the two largest fair-housing settlements in history from banks that discriminated against minority homeowners.

- more -

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/03/18/attacks-on-thomas-perez-will-do-wonders-for-gop-latino-outreach/

[pampango]

2. The tea party howling over his conversion to a path to citizenship must have been loud and effective

Like romney he will spend all of his time between now and 2016 bouncing back and forth between appealing to the base's fury and trying to sound 'reasonable' and 'presidential'.