Sunday, April 16th, 2006...6:41 pm
Republicans Are For Immigration Restrictions Depending on What Radio Station You Like
Years ago, I read a book called The Lincoln-Douglas Debates: The First Complete and Unexpurgated Text, edited by a fellow named Harold Holzer. Holzer used Democratic transcripts of Abraham Lincoln’s speeches, and Republican transcripts of Stephen Douglas’s speeches, believing that a candidate’s opponents would give a “warts and all” version of the speeches.
One thing that struck me was the way in which Lincoln would change his tune regarding the question of slavery depending on what town he was in. In Illinois’s northern towns, his rhetoric would be more abolitionist, but in “Little Egypt,” he sounded almost like a white supremacist . He could get away with that in those days with communications the way they were back then.
We snide liberals love to point out that today’s Republican party embraces Lincoln, but doesn’t seem to have learned much from him. It seems that they have learned much from his debating strategy, however.
The Republican pary is running ads claiming that Democratic congressmen attempted to brand illegal immigrants felons. You are asking two questions. One is: how the heck can they claim that? I won’t try to address the rather tortured logic because I think others have done that better than me.
Your second question is: how the heck can they get away with that when Republicans like Randy Graf, Don Goldwater and Rep. J. D. Hayworth are trashing Democrats for not voting for strong immigration measures?
Well, it’s simple: they are running the ads on Spanish language radio. I don’t imagine that Graf’s base is listening to Radio Tejano.
I’ve got a suggestion for the Republicans: if this is your message, you should be proud to run these ads in English. Heck, why stop there? Run them on country stations…’specially in Sierra Vista.
The Democratic party is taking action on this and raising ads to counter the message. If you want to help, check out Wactivist for more information.
3 Comments
April 17th, 2006 at 10:38 pm
This is another one of the !!@$#% outrages that Al was referring to.
Very Orwellian. Often the Republican-speak sounds Orwellian to me.
April 17th, 2006 at 11:45 pm
The best counter would be to just publish the verbatim translation of that ad and of a Hayworth speech in the paper right next to each other.
Light is the best antidote for lack of illumination.
April 18th, 2006 at 11:05 am
This is the typical dirty tricks the Republican party uses to depress turnout.
Has anyone been following the New Hampshire “phone jamming” scandal in their last Senate race? Ties have been now linked to the RNC and the White House.
I keep thinking that one of these scandals (wiretapping, NH phone-jamming, Abramoff, etc.) is going to get people to say “enough” or even lead to some justice, but instead, it appears that there are so many scandals that there is just a bunch of “white noise” for voters.
Last, all of this shows why we need to take back the House and Senate (AZ and Federal). Without power on the committees, there is no real means to investigate any of this. The Republicans just don’t seem to be breaking away to be principled.