Are all Republicans idiots?

By Raoul Lowery Contreras/HispanicVista.com

 

Jerry Kilgore is an idiot.  He is a Republican idiot.  He has led his Virginia Republicans into the political toilet, perhaps for a long time to come. 

Virginia Republicans carried the state handsomely for President Bush one year ago. Nonetheless, idiot Kilgore has handed the state to another Democratic governor and he did so in a critical lead up to the 2006 elections.

How could a well-known Virginia Republican blow a statewide election in a solid Republican state?  Idiot Kilgore campaigned on illegal aliens, not taxes, not education, not jobs, but illegal aliens.

He campaigned against in-state tuition for longtime residents brought here illegally as CHILDREN.  He attacked organized hiring sites for mostly Hispanic day workers.  Every other word out of his mouth was “illegal.”

Unfortunately for Kilgore, the brilliant consultants who counseled him to use the “illegal” class as his campaign target underestimated the power of that word, the negative power that resulted in his defeat. They should have asked California Republicans what the long-range consequences of such stupidity have been in fact, not theory.

Virginia counties that traditionally vote heavily Republican voted against Kilgore and his “illegal alien” crusade, causing his defeat. Droves of Virginia Republicans voted against Kilgore and his hate “illegal alien” campaign while electing Republicans as Attorney General and Lt. Governor.

Leslie Sanchez is a former Deputy Press Secretary of the Republican National Committee and former Executive Director of the White House Excellence in Hispanic Education. She wrote in the Washington Post:

“Substantial numbers of immigrants (not to mention their children and grandchildren, too) hear attacks on "illegal" immigration as attacks on them -- so that a discussion of, say, day laborers can quickly turn into an anti-Hispanic free-for-all.”

Day laborers were a big Kilgore issue.  The San Diego Union wrote: “It didn't work this week in Virginia, where Republican Jerry Kilgore tried to ride the illegal immigration issue to victory and wound up getting trampled in the process. It's not that he wasn't warned. The state Republican Party advised him to drop the tactic and leave the immigration issue where it belongs - in the federal arena. But Kilgore didn't listen.”

He ignored that advice. The Union: “That got the Republican candidate applause from crowds, favorable mentions on right-wing blogs, and glowing coverage on cable television shows like "CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight," which specializes in sensationalizing the illegal immigration issue for the sake of ratings.”  But, it cost him the election.

Now that idiotic anti-immigration politicians have destroyed the Republican chances in traditionally Republican Virginia and did so a decade ago in California by their being stuck on stupid, will Republicans learn from those disasters?

In 1984 the sixteen years-in-power California Republicans led by Governor Pete Wilson glommed onto an illegal anti-illegal alien proposition (Proposition 187, to which the State GOP contributed $300,000) and won reelection.  In reaction, California Hispanics swung heavily Democratic in  1996 and the Democratic Party swept the state, grabbed control of the state legislature and continued to do so until Arnold Schwarzenegger defeated a slate of thousands to become California governor upon the recall of Democratic governor Gray Davis.

Arnold, himself, has taken up the Virginia stupidity.  He labeled the men President Bush called vigilantes, the Border Minutemen, as “fantastic.”  California Minutemen founder James Chase thinks they aren’t so “fantastic.”

“You have murderers in your ranks. You have Nazi's, other anti-Jews, and anti-Hispanic racists side by side with you. You are whom you run around with. Proud to be a Minuteman now?” So wrote Chase to his former Minutemen colleagues, the same people Arnold calls “fantastic.”

Arnold reneged on his word to support driver’s licenses for illegals, if the new licenses met certain Arnold conditions.  The legislature passed a law based on his own criteria, then he vetoed the Arnold law. Stabbing his base in the back, he has appointed a Democrat Chief of Staff, a white Anglo woman who served disgraced and recalled former governor Gray Davis. One cannot find a Hispanic Republican appointed by Arnold to any important or cabinet level position.

In a phrase, Arnold has simply not done what intelligent and Republican Hispanics expected him to do when they voted for him. Hispanic Republicans are the ONLY growing sector of the California Republican Party. Intelligent politicos know that highly visible Hispanic Republicans ought to permeate Arnold’s regime if he wishes to run and win a complete term and build a future party. A press secretary who is half Mexican might satisfy Arnold’s political guru --Mike Murphy-- but it doesn’t go far with the California Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, or this writer.

Example: Arnold’s disgraced predecessor appointed many times more Hispanic judges than Arnold has.  Arnold’s all-white and Anglo advisors, like their Virginia counterparts, advise Arnold not to appoint more than 3-percent of his judges Hispanic because there aren’t many Hispanic lawyers, especially Hispanic Republican lawyers.  So, he appoints a Democratic woman to be Chief of Staff-------So much for not many Hispanic lawyers around. 

In other words, Arnold’s White Anglo advisors are imposing a reverse quota system and reverted to the old standby of mostly White Anglo Saxon judges in a state where whites are a minority. Arnold displays extremely limited vision by listening to them.

Here’s a suggestion: Why doesn’t Arnold appoint former prosecutor and termed-out Republican state legislator Rod Pacheco to the open seat on the California State Supreme Court?  Federal Appeals Judge Janice Roberts Brown former seat has been open for months.

It remains to be seen if Arnold will follow the Virginia path of emotional anti-illegal immigrant posturing that led to a crushing defeat.  One key to whether or not Arnold will lead himself to a crushing defeat will be the position he takes on the proposed State Border Police Initiative being huckstered as a grandson of Prop. 187 for the June 2006 ballot.

That initiative would set up a state border police to enforce federal immigration laws in California at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. The force would rampage through businesses and residences looking of illegal alien workers. It will rummage through everyone’s bank accounts looking for canceled checks to people with Spanish surnames as leads and stop and frisk on the street or on buses and trains anyone looking Mexican who would have to prove on the street that they are legal. The force would work directly for the governor. Like 187, this proposed initiative will be declared illegal by all courts.

No court in the country will ever approve such an egregious violation of the Constitution of the United States.

Arnold says he voted for the illegal Proposition 187 in 1994.  He was wrong then; will he be wrong again in 2006 and lose the governor’s office in the process?   Will Arnold be Virginia Déjà Vu all over again?

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Contreras’s newest book—THE ILLEGAL ALIEN: A DAGGER INTO THE HEART OF AMERICA published by Floricanto Press is available and reviewed at www.amazon.com and www.barnesandnoble.com

 

Contreras’s newest book—THE ILLEGAL ALIEN: A DAGGER INTO THE HEART OF AMERICA published by Floricanto Press is available and reviewed at www.amazon.com and www.barnesandnoble.com