…and Paul Campos doesn’t like it.
The Rocky Mountain News columnist is appalled at the unmitigated gall of the Republican National Committee in running a Spanish-language radio campaign accusing the Democrats of “voting to treat millions of hard-working immigrants as felons.” Well, as Campos admits, by voting against the Republicans’ amendment to change the penalty back to a misdemeanor, they pretty much did just that. Campos’ point is that the Republicans voted for the felony thing first, so they must somehow be obligated to say so in their ad. Dude, it’s a political ad.
The obvious truth is that neither party wants the felony language to pass into law. I’ve written before about how last fall, the Stupid Party House members (according to Campos, apparently at the behest of the Bush Justice Department) thought they’d score political points by pushing a felony bill so that Stupid Party members in tight districts could be on record voting for it, then safely dissolve the issue by counting on Democrats to join in voting for an amendment stripping the felony language from the bill. The Democrats saw their chance and sprung their trap by unexpectedly voting against the amendment pretty much in lockstep.
What’s the trap? As a commenter on this post by GeekWithA.45 noted a while back, “if there are 9 million illegal immigrants they’ve got 225% the members of the NRA.” Now obviously, illegal immigrants can’t vote. But as I’ve mentioned before, they virtually all have legal relatives who do. If the Stupid Party fails to pass felony language, they will piss off the base that got all excited about it, and the base will stay home from the polls. But if the felony language becomes law, the 9 million or so legal relatives of the illegals will instantly become single-issue voters as committed to voting against Republicans in the next election as any NRA member is against an anti-gun politician. This terrifies Republican political consultants. Right now, it seems to be a numbers game: which is worse? Losing the base or creating a massive, single-issue anti-Republican voting force?
As for the ad, hey, the Stupids are still stuck twisting on the horns of this dilemma they created for themselves by falling into the Democrats’ trap. If the RNC can at least gain a little political mileage among Latinos from this debacle with an ad or two, bravo to them.
However, unlike a political organization paying for an ad, which has no obligation except to make the strongest case for its side that it can, columnist Campos presumably has an obligation to inform his readers completely about the Democrats’ reasons for voting against the amendment. Sure the Republicans introduced the felony bill, but the Dems did just as much to keep it in play. By discussing the vote without including the “inside-baseball” political context, Campos has misled his readers. Tsk, tsk.
Has EVERYBODY missed the fact that NO political message can be effective if it’s over the head of it’s audience?
This gotcha game of “who put the language in first, and who voted for it to stay there” is over the head of the average English-speaking US citizen, and considering the fact that most of the illegals don’t have the US equivalent of a 3rd grade education, just how in God’s name are they going to grasp this issue?
The political points to be made from this fiasco can only be made by oversimplifying and lying about the issue, which, evidently, BOTH sides are doing.
I think the real issue is, how many guns do they have and when do we meet them on the field of battle, and when we begin to do that, will the MX gov’t send them military aid, requiring us to re-defeat Mexico as in 1848?
THOSE are the questions we’d better get sorted out, and quickly.
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