Category Archives: Republicans/Neo-Cons

Ingraham blasted her disenchantment with Rubio on her show last week, when she said Republicans had “put all our hopes in a person, instead of in principles,” when they trusted Rubio to negotiate on their behalf for immigration reform.

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., with other senators in the gang of eight.

Conservative radio talk show hosts have signed a letter opposing the sweeping immigration reform bill in the Senate, bucking tea party favorite Sen. Marco Rubio’s attempts to win their support for the bill, which would combine enhanced border security with a legalization program for the nation’s unauthorized immigrants. Rubio, a member of the “gang of eight” senators who drafted the bill, has become the most prominent conservative spokesman for its passage.

Conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham, who had Rubio on her show twice in the past few months to let him make his pitch for the bill, signed onto the open letter that says the “unsalvageable” measure “would do more harm than good.” The statement, signed by more than 100 conservative groups and leaders, argues that the bill is laden with earmarks and “rewards” lawbreakers by allowing most of the country’s 11 million undocumented immigrants to legalize if they pass a background check and pay fines.

Some influential conservatives have argued that the party needs to embrace reform in order to combat its declining support among Hispanic voters and to fix a broken system, even though the bill is also high on President Barack Obama’s agenda.

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Bush didn’t get his wish, but the Gangsters are still pushing for it, none more than Lindsey Graham. The South Carolina Republican has cited “labor shortages” (see video below) in his state as a reason for passing the bill despite the fact that 340,000 South Carolinians are unemployed.

Lindsey Graham

One consequence of the Boston Marathon bombings could be the demise of that immigration bill now before the U.S. Senate.

If so, that would be a good thing. We will get a welcome respite from hearing Republicans mouth the mantra: “First, we have to secure the border.”

That may sound like tough talk. But translated from political-speak, here’s what it really means: “A lot of my backers in business and agriculture want cheap labor. And I intend to deliver it.”

That’s the real message coming from the Republican members of the so-called “Gang of Eight” who are pushing that bill. If you doubt that, consider the example of the Sept. 11 hijackers. They didn’t come over the border. They entered legally with visas. Four of them overstayed those visas, but the federal government had no system for detecting that. The United States is one of the few countries on the planet that checks passports coming in but not going out. About 5 million of the approximately 11 million people in the country illegally are visa overstayers.

Don’t worry, say the Gangsters. The bill contains provisions for exit checks. That may sound good — until you consider that such a law has been on the books since 1996 but it’s never been enforced.

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