December 10, 2007
Memo From Mexico,
By
Allan Wall
The GOP’s Sell-Out Seven Have Their Own Univision Panderfest
Several months back,
the Democrats had a
bilingual panderfest
hosted by
Spanish-language network Univision.
Not to be outdone,
the Republican candidates (with the heroic exception of
Tom Tancredo) attended
another Panderfest with the same format last night
(December 9th).
The fact that only
Tancredo understood that
pandering
was a bad idea tells us
more about the state of the GOP than it does about Tom
Tancredo. As he explained the day before the forum:
"It is the law that to
become a naturalized citizen of this country you must
have knowledge and understanding of English, including a
basic ability to read, write, and speak the language. So
what may I ask are our presidential candidates doing
participating in a Spanish speaking debate? Bilingualism
is a great asset for any individual, but it has perilous
consequences for a nation. As such, a Spanish debate has
no place in a presidential campaign."
[Tancredo:
GOP Candidates ‘Pandering’ At Spanish-Language Debate
The Denver Channel.Com Dec. 8th, 2007]
Patriotic Americans of Hispanic descent don’t need
to host a Panderfest, because they vote for candidates
based on what they think is good for the country—not
just for their ethnic faction.
The existence of a
Univision-sponsored "debate"–really a managed
forum—implies that Hispanics have separate interests
from other Americans.
Do they?
If they don’t, what’s
the point of this pandering?
If they do, maybe
somebody should spell out just how Hispanic interests
are different from American interests.
Furthermore, does
Jorge Ramos, a Mexican citizen, have any business
being one of the moderators of an American political
debate?
Would Mexico allow an
American journalist—Lou
Dobbs, say—to moderate a Mexican political debate?
To ask the question
is to answer it. Here in Mexico, we foreigners are
forbidden by law to meddle in Mexican politics, even by
marching in a demonstration.
Mexican Jorge Ramos,
on the other hand, is an open promoter of the
transformation of the United States into a
Latin American country. Ramos predicts that
transformation will be complete within a century , and
if present trends continue, he’s right.
[100
Dias Para La Boda,
JorgeRamos.com, May 14, 2007]
Of course, he’s doing
his part to bring such a transformation about. But maybe
American citizens, and not just blond Mexican anchormen
should have a say in the matter.
In an interview
several months back, Ramos gloated that
"…all the time we
[Hispanics] are
more numerous, richer, all the time we gain more
acquisitive [sic—or maybe not] power, all
the time we are stronger politically, and all the time
we are taking over the United States more…I think that
the growth of the Latino Community is unstoppable, but
there is much to correct, especially, the cases of
rejection and persecution against other Latinos, but
we’re doing well, definitely."
[Jorge
Ramos y el libro que lo hizo llorar.
Nuevo Siglo,
August 24, 2007
This is the arrogant
activist whom the seven Republican presidential
candidates came to pay their respects to.
And Ramos was
certainly pleased that they participated. After the
Republican forum he said
"This forum couldn’t
have occurred twenty years ago. They [the candidates]
are obliged to speak about Hispanic subjects. And the
fact that they have come is because they know that they
need the Hispanic vote."["Sin
el voto hispano, no llegan," Univision Online
December 10, 2007]
Shame on these seven
candidates for not understanding this: John McCain, Mitt
Romney, Rudolph Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, Fred Thompson,
Duncan Hunter and Ron Paul.
And bravo to Tom
Tancredo.
Thanks in large part
to Tom Tancredo’s dogged pursuit of the topic, now even
candidates like John McCain are trying to sound tough on
the border. And yet it was the consensus of the
mainstream media that the Republican candidates played
down their get tough policy to—well—pander to Jorge
Ramos and Univision:
Or for the shorter,
less technical version, the late Sam Francis's
So Who Really Needs the Hispanic Vote Anyway?
The questions were
loaded, of course. The first was about "declining
support among Hispanics for Republicans".
Mike Huckabee blamed
Republicans for not pandering enough:
"If the Republicans only
got 30 percent of the vote, somehow we didn't do a very
good job of communicating that that's what we would
provide in terms of opportunity and fairness."
McCain blamed "the
rhetoric that many Hispanics hear about illegal
immigration" which "makes some of them believe
that we are not in favor nor seek the support of the
Hispanic citizens in this country."
Duncan Hunter started
talking about the
Bay of Pigs in 1961, and El Salvador in the 1980s.
(Hey, Duncan—those are interesting topics. They might
get the attention of Cuban-Americans in Miami. But most
Hispanics
are Mexicans who don’t give a hoot about the Bay of
Pigs or Central America. In fact, Mexican activists
resent
Cuban influence.)
Candidates were also
asked if they were "taking a risk" by appearing
at the forum. That’s funny, it took more guts for
Tancredo to stay away from the event than for them
to attend it.
Mitt Romney called
for pandering: "Republicans are going to come and
speak to Hispanic Americans in the language they
understand best, so we can get their votes and they can
understand that we are the party of strength and the
party of freedom."
Rudy Giuliani said
that "Hispanic Americans are Americans, just as much
as all other Americans. They have the same values, the
same interests."
(Well, if that’s
true, why pander to them? Why have a special forum for
them, translated into a foreign language?)
Then Huckabee got
going again, and said that if he had refused to appear
on stage "It would insult every voter in the country".
Huh?
The Huckster even
thanked his hosts for allowing him to grovel: "And I
want to say thanks for letting us have this audience on
Univision."
On the question of
Official English, McCain said he wanted English used by
all Americans.
(So why was he at
this Spanish language forum then?)
Ron Paul said all
federal business should be in English, but made a weird
pop psychology diagnosis: "I sometimes think that
those who attack bilingualism sometimes are jealous, and
we feel inferior, because we’re
not capable."
(Why did he say
that?)
The GOP candidates
were asked what should be done with the illegal aliens
in the country.
Giuliani said we
should first get control of the border, then get a
tamper-proof ID for the illegals who are in the
country (amnesty, in other words). The only people
Giuliani would kick out would be the people who don’t
show up to claim their amnesty!
Huckabee too, though
he denied it, seems to support a form of amnesty as long
as the illegals go home first. And he wants a guest
worker program which is fast and easy to get into. The
former Arkansas governor drew applause when he trotted
out a
totally irrelevant credit card analogy:
"If you can get an
American Express card in two weeks, it shouldn’t take
seven years to get a work permit to come to this country
in order to work on a farm. So if our government is
incapable of making that process in that length of time,
then we should do it in a way to outsource it."
"Outsource it"?
To whom? To the government of Mexico—for whom Huckabee
arranged the installation of a Mexican consulate in
Little Rock?
Then Huckabee lapsed
into a "compassion" riff inevitably leading to
Big Government solutions:
"When people come to
this country, they shouldn't fear. They shouldn't live
in hiding. They ought to have their heads up, because
the one thing about being an American is, we believe
every person ought to have his or her head up and proud,
and nobody should have to be in hiding because they're
illegal when our government ought to make it so that
people can reasonably come here in a legal fashion."
Increasingly, this
guy reminds me of
George W. Bush back in 2000.
Which is
not good.
Why not just legalize
the illegal aliens, Thompson and Romney were asked and
both pointed out that it was unfair to immigrants who
had gone through the legal process. Duncan Hunter
correctly stated that an amnesty would encourage more
illegal immigration. McCain tried to cover all the
bases, talking about
border security, Hispanic anchor baby
soldiers in Iraq, and love and compassion. Mitt
Romney’s hiring of a company that used illegal workers
was brought up, and the former Massachusetts governor
used it to call for an employment verification system.
Anchor babies were
brought up. Thompson was asked the loaded question:
“Do these children have the right not to be separated
from their parents?"
Thompson could have
responded that every day American citizen children are
separated from their citizen parents, due to work,
business, travel, incarceration and military service
abroad. So why do we hear more sob stories about the
illegal alien deportees and their children?
Thompson copped out ,
by saying that "our courts have ruled that such
children…are United States citizens. That’s part of the
14th Amendment
as has been interpreted by the courts, as I
understand it."
"As I
understand it"?
Come on Fred, would you give a mealy-mouthed answer like
that on
Law and Order?
To their credit
though, Thompson and Romney did come out against chain
migration, which is a big step forward.
Mitt Romney, though,
seemed even more convinced by the
anchor baby loophole than Thompson. Romney said
"And the Constitution…indicates that those that are born
here do become United States citizens by virtue of being
born here."
They all need some
education on this topic.
Univision addressed
the "negative tone" of the immigration debate,
which is supposedly affecting Hispanics. Apparently,
sensitivity to this issue means we shouldn't be allowed
to talk about it.
Duncan Hunter said he
got the
San Diego wall built and still won Hispanic votes,
and he
dragged in the Statue of Liberty.
Giuliani, asked how
to "stop that anti-Hispanic sentiment that affects
legal residents in America", replied that
while we’ve all made mistakes, that illegal
immigration is bad and
legal immigration is great. And he came out for a
"sensible, secure system of coming in with a
tamper-proof ID card".
Ron Paul later came
out against such a card because he fears it
would lead to a national ID card.
Huckabee, when asked
how to "curb that
anti-Hispanic sentiment", boasted that "I was
governor of the state that is the
second-fastest growing state for Hispanics in the
country."
And he launched into a "compassionate" ode to
persecuted immigrants :
"But it's a terrible
thing when a person who is here legally, but who may
speak with an accent, is
racially profiled by members of the public, and
people assume that they may be illegal.
“It is in everybody's
best interest—it is in most of all the best interest of
the legal immigrants—that we fix this problem, so nobody
questions the legitimacy of their being here, which
often happens, unfairly, unnecessarily and, frankly, in
a completely un-American manner."
On the "resentment
topic" Ron Paul discussed it as a
purely economic problem, completely avoiding the
cultural dimension. Paul seems to believe that if only
the economy was going well, and the welfare state was
controlled, mass immigration would be A-OK.
Foreign policy came
up—Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, and then Iraq. Giuliani
even pontificated on the
2006 Mexican election, claiming that
"I think the people in
Mexico were sending a signal. They don't want to go in
the direction that Castro wanted to take Latin America.
They don't want to go toward socialism and communism.
They want to go to free markets, they want to go to
freedom. I think it's the essential nature of
the people of Latin America…"
Actually, Mexican
politics are completely statist. Even the
"right-wing" government of Felipe Calderon wants
more, not less,
government intervention in society.
Thompson, meanwhile,
promised to overthrow
Castro.
Health and education
were discussed, but nobody brought up the massive effect
that legal and illegal immigration have on these issues.
Romney, to his
credit, did promote English immersion in school.
The last question was
introduced in this gloating manner:
"Hispanics are the
biggest minority in the United States, and by 2050,
we're going to be 25 percent of the population. Three
months ago, I asked the same thing to the Democratic
candidates. What would you think would be the biggest
contribution from Hispanics, but we want to ask you what
is the role—what role do you think Hispanics will play
in the development of our nation and our society?"
Huckabee responded by
talking about "E
pluribus unum" and said that anybody who
comes to American is an American and automatically
"share(s) our hopes and our dreams and our aspirations. "
Hunter talked about
El Salvador again, freedom, and Abraham Lincoln.
Fred Thompson
extolled the Hispanic defense of liberty and work ethic,
and said that "They ask for
very little and contribute
very much."`
McCain waxed jubilant
about the growing Hispanic demographic:
"My vision of America in
the future when Hispanics are a very large percentage of
our population is that we will be enriched. We will be
enriched by their music, their
culture, their food, their
language, and most of all,
their love of America. "
Ron Paul, at least, mentioned the
Constitution:
"The most important
thing Hispanics can do is what all Americans do: Join us
in our effort to restore our Constitution and our great
country."
That’s fine of
course. But the Constitution did not emerge out of a
historical vacuum. It was produced by a particular
culture. And if the culture changes, or is transformed,
or is replaced, we can’t automatically assume the
Constitution will mean the same thing to future
generations.
Giuliani was simply
ecstatic:
"Hispanic Americans have
already reached great heights in America. They’ve
contributed so much… They pushed us to be better. They
have the basic values that make us better, values of
family, hard work, getting a good job, education as the
way to success."
Romney said that
"America needs all Americans", then after listing
some problems, declared that "We spend way too much
money in Washington, particularly on entitlements that
are growing more and more weighty on us."
Yes—but is all this
pandering to the
Hispanic lobby is going to improve that situation?
Univision moderator
Ramos closed out the Republican Panderfest with
gratitude to the seven
pandering Republicans:
"Thank you. Thank you
very much to all the candidates for being here with us
tonight…Thank you so much for coming.
Thanks a lot."
Yeah, GOP candidates.
Thanks a lot !
American citizen Allan Wall (
email
him) resides in Mexico, with a
legal permit issued him by the Mexican government. Allan
recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq with the
Texas Army National Guard. His VDARE.COM articles are
archived
here; his FRONTPAGEMAG.COM
articles are archived
here his "Dispatches from
Iraq" are archived
here his website is
here.
