The theatrics of this little back-and-forth between Perry and Romney are interesting, especially because Romney basically admitted that he started to give a shit about hiring illegals only because of political appearances. But something else probably resonated just as strongly with the dozen or so Latinos who still might consider voting for a Republican. Perry took a question on the rate of uninsured children in Texas, began with a non-answer (who cares how many doctors and nurses are employed in Texas if you can’t afford to take your kid to there?), and immediately switched to an attack on illegal immigrants. Republicans either want their Mexicans electrocuted on a fence or cast as scapegoats for everything that ails America.
By the time Joe Arpaio’s best buddy Herman Cain, supposedly sensitive-to-Mexicans Rick Perry and the always-inelegant Romney are done, the charred remains of the Hispanic outreach started by the Bush family will be a unidentifiable chunk of ash in a dusty corner of Karl Rove’s memory.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
I predicted a few years ago the GOP would ramp up its disenfranchisement efforts and this is more proof of why doing is the only way they can stay politically viable.
They won’t tone down the bigoted rhetoric, they can’t maintain control if they do, so they must keep everyone who might commit WrongVote away from the polls.
JPL
What surprises me is how easily Cain lies. Sure they all lie but Cain does it with a smile.
Brian R.
Agreed.
When this point is inevitably raised in the general election debates — “we have the finest doctors in the world, and people travel from all over to come to America for health care!” — I hope Obama is smart enough to knock that slow ball out of the park.
“This really illustrates the difference between how I view our health care system and how my opponent does. For him, what matters is whether or not a rich Saudi prince or a French billionaire wants to come here to get the best treatment in the world. For me, what matters is whether or not an average American can afford to get the best treatment in the world.”
Drop the mike and walk off stage.
geg6
I know he gets flogged here all the time (for very good reason), Charlie Pierce has what has to be the best summary and analysis of what went down last night.
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/republican-debate-6518814
Mark S.
I’m loving it. We just need to get past this election (which they are helping by having a bunch of circus freaks running) and it’s doubtful the GOP can ever win the WH again as long as they are this far right and bigoted.
The asshole cop who pepper sprayed the protesters got 10 days . . . of vacation time docked. Un-fucking-believable.
Nevgu
If only it were true. Unfortunately the voter has a memory span of only a few months. The GOP will kiss up to Latinos when and only when they need them. They obviously don’t care about their votes for this election. Couple that with the fact Latinos are notiously apathetic about voting and….well they get exactly the sort of representation they deserve.
If Latinos want to stop this nonsense they need to get out and vote. It’s that simple.
NonyNony
@JPL:
Need I remind you that Cain is a corporate CEO?
Politicians and lawyers have reputations for being great liars, but there are folks who are better. The best liars are inevitably the corporate CEOs – not the guys who build their own businesses (their ability to lie with a smile varies from person to person), but the corporate mercenaries who are hired in to run companies.
Those guys are basically the best salespeople in the country – and their product is themselves. They convince shareholders and customers every damn day that they are Gods Among Men and the Smartest Guy In The Room. Politicians and lawyers may be halfway decent liars, but the corporate CEOs are so good at it most people don’t even think of them as lying bastards. If you’re really good at lying with a smile, you can make more money in business than you’ll EVER make in politics.
arguingwithsignposts
Romney and Perry just need to make out and get it over with already.
Also: Get your apples out of my oranges!
Bob
I’m not proud of this but I watched all of Morning Joe and not one mention of that Rick Perry non-answer on uninsured children in Texas. In fact this post is the first time I’ve seen it mentioned anywhere. I found this the low point of the entire debate. And, no, that was not a difficult conclusion to reach.
Bill H.
So Latinos are going to vote overwhelmingly for a Democrat whose administration just set two new annual records for deporting them. And only half of the record numbers of deportees had criminal convictions.
I especially loved the part about how when the person who is being deported has a baby born in the US who is a citizen, the baby is allowed to leave with the parent who is being deported. What largesse! Makes me proud to be an Amuricun and a Democrat.
amk
These mofos are going after the dwindling white vote. Expect them to fight like street dogs over that last piece of bone.
cleek
OT: this could get interesting:
Nevgu
Hey Bill H.
Back to troll school. Your not ready. Or maybe you need more practice in more fertile ground like FDL or that orange site that shall remain nameless.
Scott
@Bill H.: Frankly, yeah, they will vote overwhelmingly for that Democrat. The alternative is to vote for a Republican who wants to revoke citizenship and voting rights for all brown people.
jibeaux
I may be crazy, but I had kind of a different take away from that Romney line about running for office, can’t have illegals, which is basically I thought it wasn’t much of anything. Everybody knows that landscaping, housekeeping, construction, etc. are chockablock with illegal workers. If you’re in Mitt Romney’s income bracket, you’re hiring different enterprises all the time to tend to your hedges, your pool, your pool house, the hedges around your pool house, the mini pool that your pool house has out back, etc., and statistically speaking unless you’re making a real effort to put their hiring practices under a microscope, the chances that you’ve “hired an illegal” are about 99%.
jibeaux
@cleek:
Ah, the scenery at 1 a.m. from the courthouse in San Antonio….c’est magnifique…
amk
@jibeaux: That creepy snake oil salesman would have been better off admitting to it, instead of trying to snivel out of it. A completely amoral, characterless clown.
Keith
Don’t worry, they each probably have a Hispanic friend, so it’s okay. Well, maybe not Romney.
rikryah
the insults to Latinos are so ‘ in your face’, that you just have to go ‘ WOW’
TooManyJens
“Illegals” is generally considered by immigrant-rights activists to be dehumanizing language. May I suggest that when not quoting, people use a term like “undocumented immigrant” instead? Even “illegal immigrant” would be better than calling a human being “an illegal.” Thanks.
WereBear
By Republican metrics, Romney is Hispanic, isn’t he?
WereBear
By Republican metrics, Romney is Hispanic, isn’t he?
Dave
The list of people the GOP demonizes goes on: immigrants (legal and illegal), unions, teachers, Hollywood, Chicagoans, New Yorkers, liberals, moderates, RINOs, public servants, poor people, elites, unemployed, and on and on. Are there others? Who is left to vote for republicans?
Joseph Nobles
Karl Rove had me laughing last night. In the middle of the debate, he tweeted that he’d just read and enjoyed Isaac Asimov’s I Robot, and he recommended it to everyone.
ETA: And Herman Cain just needs to keep fuckin those apples and oranges…
Han's Big Snark Solo
That Perry attacked Romney for hiring illegals to do yard work is outrageous! In case Perry didn’t notice the Republicans in the Texas legislature, just a few months ago, proposed a “stiff” new immigration law that would fine companies up to a $10,000 fine for hiring illegals, unless, of course, those illegals were doing household or yard work.
The rational the Texas GOP gave for the massive loophole:
Violet
@TooManyJens:
This has jumped out at me when watching the exchanges about immigration. The Republicans don’t even seem to think the undocumented immigrants are people. They’re just “illegals.” Lots of actions are illegal, but people aren’t illegal. It’s incredibly dehumanizing to watch Presidential candidates dismiss people as “illegal.”
dmsilev
@jibeaux:
This is true, which is why a more powerful rebuttal to Romney’s statement would be “I think right now, most Americans are more concerned about losing their lawns, and their houses, than they are about picking the right lawn manicure service.”
jibeaux
@dmsilev: That’s very true, but this was a Republican primary debate. :) Amuricans what lost their houses deserved to lose ’em!
Xenos
@TooManyJens:
It gets worse. On the sewer that is conservative talk radio they are referred to as ‘criminal aliens’ or ‘crimalians’, even though violating visa status is not criminal, just a matter of administrative law. In most cases it is not a crime to overstay your visa, for example.
maya
“Illegals”? [idea!!!] How about 1%mmorals?
artem1s
@Scott:
It’s assumed that Latinos will vote Dem. I assume it too. However, Frontline did a piece on the detention/deportation system last night that was pretty disturbing.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/lost-in-detention/
At one point it’s mentioned that most of America is completely unaware of the system and how it operates. But within the Hispanic community (Spanish language media) ICE is a constant topic. Something like 50% of the community knows someone who is undocumented and another 20% knows someone who has been detained.
PBS/Frontline (and who knows who else) connected the policies to Obama, not the previous administration or the private companies profiting off the system or any one law enforcement community trying to meet the ICE quotas for deportation.
I might assume that there is only one clear voting choice but I’m not at all sure now that someone who is afraid for their families might see it that way. It doesn’t really matter if its just a propaganda/branding war against Obama and the policies being carried out in his name. Real people are being detained, abused, and violated all without any oversight or access to legal counsel. At the end of the day, I don’t know who they think is responsible or who they will blame.
Cacti
@Brian R.:
They never bring up the flip side of that example. Wealthy foreigners travel to the US for procedures…
And millions of middle-income Americans have found it necessary to travel abroad for surgical procedures, which can be found for 1/10 the price that it would cost out of pocket in the good old US of A.
Bill E Pilgrim
I don’t know, I think Romney is so much like an alien you’d think he’d want to stay away from using that word altogether.
He’s like the first fully ambulatory android they tried to add “winning personality” to, and failed hideously.
JGabriel
Jesus. The morals on display in that clip are toxic.
Someday people are going to watch clips like that and wonder how the hell anyone ever thought it was okay to call someone illegal, to turn it into a noun, just on the basis that they were born outside of this country, in the same way that we today recoil at the ethnic slurs of the 19th and 20th C.
Illegal. It’s like something out of a dystopian science fiction novel by Margaret Atwood or George Orwell.
.
scav
@Bill E Pilgrim: Sirius Cybernetics Corporation
Weren’t their CE[O]s one of the first against the wall?
Rafer Janders
By the time Joe Arpaio’s best buddy Herman Cain, supposedly sensitive-to-Mexicans Rick Perry and the always-inelegant Romney are done, the charred remains of the Hispanic outreach started by the Bush family will be a unidentifiable chunk of ash in a dusty corner of Karl Rove’s memory.
Eh, so what? It’s not as if Hispanics will become a larger and larger proportion of this country’s voters relative to older white people in the coming generation.
JPL
@artem1s:
They might not flock to the polls but I don’t see them voting for the party that wants to shoot them at the border. IMO
Rafer Janders
@WereBear:
Well, Romney’s father George Romney WAS a Mexican immigrant. So by their standards, yes.
(Actually true. George Romney was born in Mexico to Mormon parents who’d moved there in the 19th century, and his family moved to the US during the Mexican Revolution).
Bill E Pilgrim
@scav: I don’t know but I keep waiting for one of the debate moderators to just lose it and blurt out “You’re a load of useless, bloody loonies!”
And wouldn’t be at all surprised if at least one of them responded “Ah yes, that was it! That was the reason it was. Pass me the loofah, would you?”
JGabriel
@jibeaux:
Let me explain it to you with a shorter.
Shorter Mitt Romney: It’s so hard to find
goodlegal help these days.Then add near 10% unemployment to the mix, and a lot of Republicans will find it hard to sympathize with Romney’s plight — they’ll wonder why he doesn’t hire good American citizens to do that yard work.
.
Rafer Janders
@JGabriel:
Well, to be fair, it’s not “just on the basis that they were born outside of this country”, it’s that they were born outside this country and then snuck into the country in violation of its laws. Countries do and should have the right to determine who can and can’t enter. I’d love to move to Canada, for example, but don’t believe it’s my right to just cross the border and set up shop there unless Canada allows me to.
That said, I don’t love the term “illegal”, but don’t care for “undocumented alien” either as I think it’s kind of weaselly — their problem isn’t a lack of documents (I’m sure they have documents from their home country), it’s that they knowingly entered the US without proper authorization from the US.
Bill E Pilgrim
@JGabriel:
What, so he was using undocumented paralegals?
Grumpy Code Monkey
Apropos of nothing, I’m starting to see a bunch of “I’m A Mormon” (and I’m okay) billboards pop up around Austin TX. Lots of smiling white people.
This couldn’t possibly have anything to do with Romney running for President, right?
castellan
Mitt the Paranoid Android would be far more interesting a character in the debates: “Taxes…. Don’t talk to me about taxes.”
Or…
“What’s he doing now?”
“He’s dunking his teabag at us!”
jibeaux
@JGabriel:
Sure, my point is just that he’s hiring services, he’s not sitting down and interviewing the gardener. Actually, he’s probably hiring services to hire services. And in those sectors, there are a lot of illegal workers, many of them are going to have some sort of false papers so they can get work but that wouldn’t stand up to digging — which most employers aren’t going to do. You really will have to go to some effort to make sure you aren’t hiring a company that doesn’t wink and nod at illegal workers.
Scott
@artem1s: Well, when the choice is “Obama probably deports more people than he should” vs. “The GOP campaigns loudly and proudly about how much they hate brown people,” I still don’t think it’s a difficult choice.
JGabriel
@Bill E Pilgrim: Heh.
Hey, not my fault that Republicans have redefined “legal” to mean “noun — documented citizen”. You have to learn to treat GOPSpeak as if it were a heavily divergent dialect/different language, like Scots or Orwell’s Newspeak.
.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
That, and they’re running Monty Python reruns maybe.
Bill H.
@Nevgu:
@Scott:
Or, maybe, not vote at all?
TooManyJens
@Xenos:
Words fail me.
Bill E Pilgrim
@JGabriel: No no, Scots, I can barely understand most of the time. Republicanese, I can, but wish I hadn’t. Big difference.
Mnemosyne
@Scott:
I think the danger for Democrats is more that Latinos could decide “fuck all y’all” and sit the election out.
catclub
@jibeaux: Ask your wingnuts friends: “Which do you hate more, unions or mexican immigrants?”
It is union busting employers that are attracting them by hiring mexicans, blame _them_ for the problem.
Also, since soylent green is people, maybe that would be a less fraught term than illegal alien.
elmo
@Han’s Big Snark Solo:
Jesus, really? They’re that blatant about it? How much clearer can they be: Mexicans are for
slavegrunt labor and nothing else. They can behouse slavesservants and field hands, but if you help one of Them rise above their proper station, we will punish you.JGabriel
Rafer Janders:
Right. And should label anyone who enters without proper
papersdocumentation an “Illegal”. Not “Undocumented Immigrant”. An “Illegal”, a person without rights, an infection to be dispelled as soon as possible.Get real. Talk to any GOPer bitching about illegals speaking Spanish instead of English like good Americans, then point out to them that they don’t know someone isn’t a citizen just because they speak Spanish. Then watch them scoff and snort.
Republicans don’t give a shit whether someone is here legally or not. It’s just a way to tag all foreigners, but especially brown people and Hispanics, as “Illegal”, to demonize them and characterize them as subhuman.
.
Rafer Janders
@JGabriel:
I know Republicans don’t care. But I do care. And it’s not a matter of proper “documentation”, it’s a matter of permission. Illegal immigrants are in this country in violation of US laws and statutes. It’s not that they didn’t get the right papers, or filled out the wrong form, or misfiled a certificate, or anything else implied by the term “proper documenation” — it’s that they knew the US doesn’t want to allow them in, but they don’t care what the US allows and they’re gonna do it anyway.
One of my own parents is an immigrant — but they did so legally. I’ve worked with international refugees who’d dearly love to move here but can’t. The fact that millions of others think they have the right to jump the queue and say screw it, I’ll just move here anyway and who cares what American laws say about it is a sore subject with me.
Samara Morgan
demographics is destiny, mixie.
are any of your glibertarian homies brown?
i think libertarianism is race limited.
Morzer
@Mnemosyne:
This is looking quite plausible – although it should be pointed out that Latinos have historically had a rather low voting rate compared to other demographics.
EconWatcher
@Rafer Janders:
If you were living in Mexico and needed to sneak across the border to make enough money (through honest labor) to feed and clothe your kids, would you do it? Which trumps, your feeling of duty to feed your kids, or the moral imperative to obey U.S. immigration laws?
That would not be a tough call for me.
Rafer Janders
@EconWatcher:
Of course I’d do it. I’d also steal a loaf of bread to feed my family. I’d rob someone at gunpoint to feed my family. But that doesn’t mean that stealing loaves of bread or robbing people at gunpoint should be legal, and it doesn’t mean that the US shouldn’t be able to enforce its immigration laws.
I don’t blame the individual immigrant — of course you expect people to act in their own self-interest. But “let everyone act in their own self-interest wihout regulation” isn’t really a compelling or sustainable way to run a country. You can always come up with a compelling individual case for a certain individual not to obey a particular law. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have those laws, because if everyone acted on that imperative society would be ungovernable.
Tone in DC
@Mnemosyne:
Just might happen, I think. I cannot blame them for apathy, given what is going on (and has for years).
Brachiator
Scapegoating is easily done, and even seems “reasonable” to many people, not just Republicans. The line is that the economy is in a shambles and we don’t have any money, so it is “not right” to spend any money that might go to illegal immigrants.
@JGabriel:
I agree that the nasty rhetoric demonizes Latinos, but I don’t think that Republicans, or other people concerned about illegal immigration are trying to tag all foreigners.
And if the implied solution is amnesty or simply ignoring immigration laws, then the Democrats will be begging to get thrown out of office.
@Mnemosyne:
I don’t see this as happening, especially in California or Texas, where Latinos have some political clout.
And things could really get interesting if Florida Senator Marco Rubio agreed to become the GOP Vice Presidential candidate.
TooManyJens
@Rafer Janders:
Actually, in a lot of cases, it’s exactly that. I understand that’s not what people are usually talking about in these debates, but it’s hard as hell to get and stay in status. You absolutely can become an “illegal immigrant” because somebody made a mistake with your paperwork, and be forced to leave your job and family.
Anyway, “unauthorized immigrant” would seem to cover your complaint without reducing people to “illegals.”
Brachiator
@EconWatcher:
I don’t think that a person in this circumstance has a moral imperative to obey US immigration laws. This does not mean, however, that the US has a moral obligation to ignore its own laws, or to refuse to apply them.
Also, not all Latinos are pobrecitos trying to feed their families. They are people who want to work in the US because of the opportunities here, and the relative lack of opportunities in their native countries. Similarly, not every Latino who comes here is aching to become a US citizen, which muddies the simplistic notions of a “path to citizenship.”
Hob
@JGabriel:
One of the better ideas in Paul Theroux’s somewhat clunky SF novel O-Zone was that in near-future America, people use so much dehumanizing slang for immigrants and the poor — they’re all called “aliens”, with subcategories like “Diggers” based on which survival strategy they’re using — that you can get halfway through the novel before you realize that they’re talking about people rather than aliens from outer space.
AA+ Bonds
@Bill H.:
Yeah, they will, because they know Republicans are racist against Hispanics.
This isn’t rocket science. It’s why black Americans won’t vote Republican. Until the party stops pandering to its racist base, it won’t get votes from racial minorities. And when that pandering stops, if it ever does, it means the Republicans are on their way out and the new right-wing party is on its way in.
AA+ Bonds
After reading Bill H’s shitty blog, I amend my comment to “GTFO Balloon Juice”
AA+ Bonds
@Brachiator:
What they are, are home-buyers that we desperately fucking need to get the economy back in shape, and I honestly don’t believe that most of the Republicans up there are in any way against immigration or even against illegal immigration.
I’m certain that Perry and Romney, at the very least, are pro-illegal-immigration in the same way that Bush was, Romney because he’s a liar but not an idiot, Perry because he’s Governor of Texas. Certainly Newt Gingrich is all for it. The corporate money is all for more immigrants, by any means necessary.
Pretty much anyone with a basic understanding of economics and a pro-big-business point of view wants increased immigration.
Which is why it’s so troubling to see all of the top Republicans contorting themselves frantically to look more anti-immigrant and xenophobic than the last yahoo. They’re fucked in the long run.
Rafer Janders
@TooManyJens:
Eh, I’m a lawyer, I’ve worked with immigration attorneys, and this only applies to a fairly small group of people. The overwhelming majority of people who are in the country illegally entered into it knowing full well they were in violation, and intended to stay here in violation. Most everyone knows if they’re in status or not.
That said, of course sometimes mistakes get made. But it’s a very small proportion of the total, and it’s not really the group of people under discussion.
ed_finnerty
Scott – October 19, 2011 | 9:21 am · Link
@Bill H.: Frankly, yeah, they will vote overwhelmingly for that Democrat. The alternative is to vote for a Republican who wants to revoke citizenship and voting rights for all brown people.
Reply
And fry them on a fence like the TRex in Jurasic Park
AA+ Bonds
Your message for the day: The Republican front-runner likes to joke about murdering women and children.
Or, if you’re worried about the general election, drop this one in mixed company:
I wonder how many illegal immigrants Mitt Romney will hire to work on the White House.
(Also, my POV on Pierce: Romney knows damn well that when he talks about hiring people to ‘work on his property’, the teeth-gritting far-right xenophobes will imagine up a better lending environment where Hispanic slaves toil to build a two-floor dog condo for their ugly wife’s little shit machine.)
The prophet Nostradumbass
@cleek:
That phrase could be used to describe anyone in this country who isn’t an American Indian.
AA+ Bonds
Republicans, even struggling middle class ones, are all about hiring illegal immigrants to work on their yards as long as they can look down their noses at them and treat them like shit and fantasize about deporting them.
Like most homeowners, they really care about the cost of the work, not the legal status of the laborers. Unlike most homeowners, many Republicans have true disdain for non-whites, but they keep the “illegals” rhetoric for debates and when they need to achieve erections quickly.
It’s the same sort of balls-to-gut rush that even non-land-owning Southern whites got from antebellum slave culture. They didn’t have to actually own people to look out over a field and feel like superior beings.
DFH no.6
@Nevgu:
This, exactly.
It’s frustrating as hell – in AZ the percentage of eligible Latino voters who actually do vote is significantly less than the percentage of eligible white and black voters who vote.
On the order of 15% less. And, despite SB1070, 2010 was no different (and I’m not sanguine about 2012, either).
The result is far less political power for Latinos in AZ than their numbers would indicate.
Latinos constitute about 30% of AZ’s population (according to the 2010 census), but the eligible-voter Latino population is only about 17% of the state’s population (mostly because of the high percentage of Latinos who are under 18, and to a lesser degree due to the number who are non-citizens).
And of that 17% who could vote, only around a third actually do (while around 50% of eligible white voters vote).
With that poor level of participation the demographics don’t mean nearly as much politically as some think they do (looking over at matoko-Morgan).
Brachiator
@AA+ Bonds:
. The number of illegal immigrants, and the number of illegal immigrants with sufficient income to buy homes, is exceedingly low. I’ve seen arguments floated by activists here in Southern California suggesting that illegal immigrants sustain the economy, jump start the economy, or can stimulate the economy. None of these arguments have much in the way of facts behind them.
As an aside, a scandal that gets pushed aside in the scapegoating that goes on is the extent to which illegal immigrants were exploited and thrown more deeply into poverty by banksters during the the housing fiasco.
True. But the Wall Street conservatives have been unable to contain the ignorance and the anger that other conservatives continue to whip up over this issue.
The most vehement Republicans are not noted for their understanding of economics.
AA+ Bonds
@Brachiator:
I wasn’t talking about current immigrants under our current crappy system, but rather about the labor influx we could have under another system, that is, the workers and home-purchasers who would meet equilibrium in their respective markets if they weren’t restricted by our border policy and internal policing. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.
To make it simpler, if we flung open the borders to Mexico like the money behind the Republicans would prefer, I’m pretty sure any housing surplus would get taken care of quickly, both directly by family buyers and indirectly by developers of rental properties.
Also, to be clear: I don’t actually think open borders are the best idea in the world, but I think Romney and Perry do think that, just like Bush, just like the money behind all of them, and all of them have to lie about it because the Republican Party depends on racist xenophobes to win elections.
Cain? I think he might actually be ignorant enough about economics that he genuinely wants to kneecap Godfather’s Pizza in order to electrify some Hispanics to death.
Jeffro
Amen to anything that pi$$es off Karl Rove (and the way Republicans have blown their chances with Latinos is surely #1 on that list)
Triassic Sands
Last night, for the first time, I watched some of the Republican “debate.” Frankly, I was embarrassed. It seemed less like a debate, than a bunch of people falling all over each other to be recognized as the stupidest person in the world. In the end, I think Perry, for sheer brainless stupidity, wins, with Cain close behind. Man on Dog is just a pervert who longs to head the Spanish Inquisition II; Bachmann and Paul are both just crazy, but in very different ways; Newt’s immersed in his own Newtie-Admiration-Society; and Mitt’s just trying to figure out who he is and what he believes.