Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

I really should read my own blog.

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Giving in to doom is how authoritarians win.

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Bark louder, little dog.

Trump should be leading, not lying.

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Petty moves from a petty man.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

You are here: Home / Right or Wrong, Weak or Strong

Right or Wrong, Weak or Strong

by | 43 Comments

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When faced with Marco Rubio’s hints about an immigration compromise, the Washington Post is acting like Sally Draper at a Beatles concert:

In recent days, Rubio has quietly reached out to a number of immigrant advocates who are usually White House allies but have grown frustrated with some of the president’s policies. Some of the activists say they are open to Rubio’s effort — even though it would stop short of a provision in the Democratic-backed Dream Act to create a path to citizenship — because it would at least provide some relief to people at risk of being deported.

Rubio has not put his plan on paper, but his office describes it as an “alternative” to the Dream Act that would legalize certain young people who came to the United States while they were children. The measure would grant non-immigrant visas so qualified young people could remain in the United States for college or to serve in the military.

If that’s not weak enough for you, then check out the rest of the article. It takes a fair number of weasel words (Obama “seems” to be responding to Rubio, Obama “could risk” losing Hispanic votes) and a few cherry-picked quotes from “activists” and back-benchers to animate the fantasy that Republicans will vote for some kind of immigration compromise. Luckily for the Post, Peter Wallstein, who was apparently once lead writer for Teen and Tiger Beat, has what it takes to get the job done.

Reader Interactions

43Comments

  1. 1.

    Seth Owen

    Naturally it will not matter because it starts us on the ‘slippery slope’ to a ‘back door amnesty’ and therefore no Republican outside of Rubio will support it.

  2. 2.

    Valdivia

    Everything I have read is that the activists find his version of the Dream Act to create two classes of legality for immigrants in this country. What a fucking wanker.

    Also–this guy has been in the Senate for 2 years and has done nothing.

  3. 3.

    c u n d gulag

    Quiet!
    The Strawman speaks.

    “Some say, the President might___________ and could ___________ and possiby____________ maybe ________________, if he wanted to be seen as even just a tiny bit like a bipartisan politician, and not the most partisan President in history!”

  4. 4.

    Linda Featheringill

    If Rubio wanted to put his ideas on paper and then participate in the discussion, he probably would be made to feel welcome. But a verbal plan is not worth the paper it’s written on [to paraphrase some old movie guy].

    Rubio’s current status is much higher than he deserves, of course. He was born of Cuban parents but hasn’t proven [to me] that he’s ready for national office.

    If the Republicans think that all Hispanics/Latinos are alike and will be attracted by a Cuban, they are welcome to him. A lot of folks who identify as Latino don’t really hate Cubans but don’t love them either. Rubio won’t fix the Republican’s Latino problem.

  5. 5.

    Ash Can

    File this under “the press needs to manufacture its own horse races, because these days one side ain’t got shit.”

  7. 7.

    Tone In DC

    Weasel words are all the Kaplan Post seems to have on subjects like this. Fred Hiatt’s crowd is so into theoretical situations, conjecture and optics, they ought to just relocate the damn paper from 15th and L Streets to NASA’s installation in Greenbelt. They’d be more at home.

  8. 8.

    Steve

    I confidently predict that there is no conceivable immigration plan by Rubio that would put any pressure on the White House, because the Republican Party is guaranteed to strangle it in the crib. I guess the media is constitutionally obligated to flip out over any momentary glimmer of moderation from the GOP as if it means something.

  9. 9.

    El Cid

    Rachel Maddow referred to polls which showed that Romney’s chances in Florida decreased with Rubio on the ticket, even among Latinos. I think.

  10. 10.

    the Conster

    The Village is desperate to find a Republican something and someone interesting to talk about because Romney’s just so phony, so slippery, so uncomfortable to watch and listen to and so flat out unlikeable and untrustworthy, that literally anything and anybody else will do. Romney doesn’t have any good will built up with the press like McCain had, so the press is forced to manufacture something out of nothing. Those horse race stories won’t invent themselves you know, and there’s nothing like serial man-crushes to get you through a long hot summer.

  11. 11.

    schrodinger's cat

    Will the beneficiaries of the legislation Rubio is proposing be eligible to get a Green Card and apply for citizenship later?

    ETA: If not that leaves the Dreamers at the mercy of their employers so it is not really a solution.

  13. 13.

    Tone In DC

    @the Conster:

    …because Romney’s just so phony, so slippery, so uncomfortable to watch and listen to and so flat out unlikeable and untrustworthy, that literally anything and anybody else will do.

    True dat.
    The Post’s enabling borders on nauseating. Kind of like Romney on the campaign trail.

  14. 14.

    schrodinger's cat

    We finally got the news that we were expecting but hoping not to get. My father-in-law passed last night. I am still dazed.

  15. 15.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Ash Can:

    Nail. Hammer. Hit.

    The Village is desperate. This election is a rewind of 1984. Rmoney is going to be trounced, and badly.

  17. 17.

    Valdivia

    I am now convinced after seeing all the fluffing Rubio gets from the media that Romney will never pick him. It would make him look irrelevant, stodgier than he is, and make Rubio the star of the ticket. Romney’s ego will never take that.

  21. 21.

    the Conster

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    My sincere condolences. MY FIL passed away unexpectedly (after a brief hospital stay) on March 28th. It’s so weird – he’s been in my life for 35 years and now he’s gone, but I still haven’t really felt it yet because the hole he left isn’t in my life, it’s in my MIL’s life. My life just looks and feels the same, but the sense of time marching on is much more acute now. My husband is now the family patriarch being the oldest boy, and he’s feeling old.

  22. 22.

    rikyrah

    As a Black person, here’s how I talk with my Latino friends about this.

    As a BLack person, when I look at Rubio, and his non-response about Immigration and the DREAM Act, IF it is to be believed that this is important to the Latino Community.

    Pretend that it’s the early 1960’s.

    And, we have the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act being offered.

    Yet, there is a Black Senator in the U.S. Senate, and he goes around telling folks that he has no position papers on this, ‘ because it’s not that important’.

    Then, this said Senator goes cozying up to a Presidential nominee who has been joined at the hip with Bull Connor and George Wallace. (2012-SB1070 Korbach and Pete Wilson)

    BUt, now, is trying to say that all the times we BLack folk saw him with Connor and Wallace, it was just our imagination, and it didn’t mean what it meant.

    And now, said BLack Senator is looking us in the face and telling us, just forget about that Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, and look at the piece of Jim-Crow lite that I’m proposing.

    I usually end it with saying:

    I guess Latinos are far more understanding than BLack folk.

  23. 23.

    Valdivia

    @rikyrah:

    I read that yesterday in Political Wire. It made my head explode. Most important is to remember the country was deep in the shit economically and these guys only cared about getting power back!

  24. 24.

    Gin & Tonic

    @lacp: That’s a great story. He “mistakenly believed” that he had completed his doctorate.

    I don’t have a doctorate, but I do have a number of PhD’s in my family and close circle of friends. Believe me, they were/are acutely aware of what needs to be completed and when. You *cannot* mistakenly believe you’ve finished when you haven’t.

  25. 25.

    balconesfault

    “qualified young people could remain in the United States … to serve in the military”

    Wow. That’ll have them lining up.

    No pathway to citizenship for you … but feel free to sign up for our war in Iran!

  26. 26.

    ET

    Ay immigration advocates who believe the GOP is going to compromise on immigration are naive at best idiots at worse.

    Rubio knows the GOP is loosing Hispanic votes and has been designated (or designated himself) as the/a person to make nice – after all he is one of them. Sort of like getting African American republicans to start showing their face just to prove that the GOP is friendly to African Americans – all evidence to the contrary.

  28. 28.

    MattF

    Yeah, negotiation works so well with wingers. They have no actual intention of agreeing to anything, ever. It’s called ‘bad faith’, and no, it is not a generally accepted negotiating tactic.

  30. 30.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    I’m (re)reading Gone with the Wind (it’s been 20 years since the last time) to get some storytelling ideas. Talk about weaseling. All of the white characters are mischevious or dangerous or both, but the negros are devious in ways only negros can be.

    It’s also interesting seeing the casts system Mitchell sets up in order to make it so that the blacks don’t seem to have been mistreated. Heck, those owned by wealthy families were better than the whites that are so poor they have no slaves.

  38. 38.

    Tone In DC

    @rikyrah:

    Thanks for this, you and LoD rock.
    That video just makes concrete what I should have suspected ever since late 2008.

  40. 40.

    RalfW

    These sorts of signals and hints, like the above post on Grenell and gays, are just such bullshit!

    Look at the GOP platform. Look at the shit-awful bills passed by retrograde legislature after retrograde legislature since 2010.

    That’s the road map. No amount of leaks and hints and occasional niceties will matter one single fvcking bit. Oh, and sorry, James Fallows. You’re being way too cute about this.

  41. 41.

    jl

    Funny mistermix mentions Teen and Tiger Beat. Those august publications have come to my mind recently whenever I have decided to expose my self to the corporate and DC Village political coverage.

    I wonder how many of them started on beats like that.

  42. 42.

    Chet

    I’ve always said, what Balloon Juice needs is more threads with titles taken from Neil Diamond songs.

    Hoping something noteworthy happens with the HJC soon, just so we can be treated to “Not even the chair”.

  43. 43.

    carver

    @
    Linda Featheringill:
    Many Latinos see Cubans as a favored class – if they make to our shores they are home free – whereas, all others (many from conditions far worse than that found in Cuba)are classified as illegal

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