The Republican Party of Texas has taken a new position on immigration. It’s being hailed as an “unprecedented change to their official party platform,” but is in reality a toothless, largely symbolic gesture that underlines the desperation of the GOP. The non-binding addition to the party’s platform calls for a “national guest-worker program,” but sadly is nothing more than a naked act of pandering.
“It takes away a tool that Democrats have used for years to drive a wedge between conservative Hispanics and Republicans,” said TexasGOPvote.com’s Bob Price, who is also a delegate at the Republican Party’s state convention.
The “tool” Price describes, is everything Republicans have ever said or done on the issue. Darn old Democrats.
After years of using the subject of immigration as a political futbol (a.k.a. soccer ball, the one they never stop kicking) Texas Republicans have been baffled as to why Hispanics don’t vote for them very much. In order to rectify that situation, they’ve decided to insult the collective intelligence of the Hispanic population. By offering this ‘change’ in direction, the Texas GOP are only symbolically throwing out the welcome mat and hoping that will be good enough to obscure both the history of their actions, and the halfheartedness of this move:
- Last year Texas Republicans nearly passed a bill that would have permitted local law enforcement agencies to target ‘suspected illegal immigrants,’ an unmitigated civil-rights disaster of an idea, which actually calls for racial profiling.
- Also in the last year, a state bill similar to the ‘national registry’ they’re proposing now, never made it out of committee. It was vehemently opposed by conservative ‘activists.’
- Republicans never seem to want to acknowledge the incontrovertible fact that they already allow, however tacitly, migrant workers to operate in their state. Or are we supposed to pretend that it’s all those liberal agricultural concerns in Texas that are hiring these workers? (Democrats oppose ‘guest worker’ programs as too restrictive. They also argue that the language in these laws open the door to too many worker abuses.)
So all the Texas GOP is really doing is saying they don’t object to the proposal of a law that both Republicans and Democrats are against, to codify actions they already (unofficially) condone. In other words, after years and years of sneaking you into our back door to do our dirty work, we’re willing to say that we will admit to letting into our back door to do our dirty work. That ought to make your hermanos vote for us.
Really, the only concession they’re making is that they’ll tone down the overt discrimination, in exchange for some good P.R. That would seem like an easy decision to make, but it wasn’t:
It passed the floor of the convention after many delegates resisted what they called a watering down of conservative principles.
“It was a tough pill to swallow; it didn’t go down easily,” said William Kelberlan, a delegate from Williamson County.
Imagine that. Resistance to some wording that will have no concrete effect on anything, ever. It doesn’t even call for an end to discrimination, it’s just passing the buck on discrimination, to try and win some votes. But it still made them choke going down.
But it will all be worth it in the end, if the brown guys can help them get the black guy out of the White House. Then they can go back to business as usual.
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