David Michael Green Takes on Ann Coulter and Immigration

[Demeter]

http://www.regressiveantidote.net/Regressive_Watch.html

The right wing blogosphere has been going ballistic in recent weeks about George Bush's immigration reform bill, and have been popping champagne corks all across the land after humbling their own president in his bid to make the proposal law.

Wanna see something that will take your breath away? Check out this extract from that princess of progressivism, Ann Coulter, as she excoriates her former hero:
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President Bush was so buoyed by the warm reception he was given in Albania that he immediately gave all 3 million Albanians American citizenship, provided they learn Spanish. The offer was withdrawn when Bush found out most Albanians haven't broken any U.S. laws.

Bush keeps claiming he's dying to enforce the border, but he just can't do it unless we immediately grant amnesty to 12 million illegal aliens. I wonder if that worked on Laura Bush:

Laura: George, it's time you quit drinking.
George: OK, honey, let's discuss it over cocktails.

How about Bush enforce the border and then we'll discuss his amnesty plan?

He assures us that granting amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants already here won't inspire millions more to run across the border because ... he's going to put infrared lights at the border!

Well, that's a relief. What precisely will infrared lights do again? This is worse than those fake cameras they sell at hardware stores to make it look like you have cameras outside your house. We still need something or someone — say, a wall or a Border Patrol agent — to stop the Mexicans illegally crossing the border as we watch them on the infrared cameras.

Bush won't build a wall and he keeps prosecuting law enforcement officers who stop illegal border crossers. But trust him: He'll get right on that border enforcement business as soon as we grant amnesty to 12 million illegal aliens.
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What's Wrong With This Picture?



Hey! What the hell's going on here? I'm supposed to be ridiculing the idea of trusting George W. Bush and his absurd lies, not Ann Coulter! We lefties are supposed to subtly allude to his alcoholism in our skewerings, not his supporters! Coulter's supposed to be shredding the likes of Cindy Sheehan, not the most conservative president in American history!

What's going on here is that immigration is the mother of all wedge issues in American politics.

What Coulter and her fellow travelers neglect to tell you is that the modern Republican Party works on the basis of Wall Street exploiting Main Street. The GOP leadership is all about the money, but they're clever and subtle enough to get the votes they need by pandering to the disenfranchised and left-behinders in American society. The Party is little more than a vehicle for economic elites to exploit less wealthy Americans, including those who, in the name of Jesus and so on, form the shock troops to effect this agenda.

Usually that means feeding them table scraps on issues like abortion or school prayer. (What the hell do the rich care? They can either bribe a doctor to do an abortion or send Muffy on a little unexpectedly early European vacation.)

Once in a while, though, it gets problematic. That occurs when the elite want legislation to further enrich their already overflowing pockets, but for the hoi polloi the issue is non-negotiable. Hence this wedge issue of all time, driving itself smack through the middle of the GOP's conservative coalition.

Nativist (if not racist) social conservatives are finally now just coming around to learning the lesson that has been obvious to us more thoughtful critters for quite some time now: It's all about the money, Jack!

And guess which side George W. Bush, our American Mugabe, is on?

But there is one upside to all this. Pretty soon we lefty bloggers will have lots more time to smoke dope and have sex and criticize America – all those things the right accuses us of loving to do – because people like Ann Coulter and Pat Buchanan and Lou Dobbs and the rest will be doing our jobs for us, pointing out the lies, contempt and depredations of the current administration and the (former?) drunk at its helm!

[fasttense]

1. It was bound to happen eventually.

The repuke base was eventually going to catch on that the only people making money in the bush economy are the people born to wealth. The rest of us have to go to work and compete against slave labor, prison labor, child labor and illegal immigrant labor. Let's hear it for those "free traders".