TX GOP can't decide whether to shit or go blind over "sanctuary cities"

[PDittie]

I have blogged previously about the ridiculousness of this premise by Mark Jones (of Rice University's Baker Institute) that the defeat of "sanctuary cities" legislation in the regular session was a 'strategic victory' for Rick Perry. It appears that there are some prominent Republicans who are trying desperately to validate Jones' argument. Read this from Julian Aguilar at the Texas Tribune:

A series of email exchanges between Republican Party boosters and the office of Gov. Rick Perry indicate some conservatives believe passing the contentious “sanctuary cities” bill may cripple efforts to recruit more Hispanics to their ranks.

The correspondence signals a potential rift between Perry, who appears intent on addressing immigration issues during the current special session, and some of the party’s backers as rumors surrounding a possible Perry presidential run continue to swirl.

“At the end of the day you should understand that Hispanic voters will not support a party that wants to deport their mother and father,” Norman Adams, the co-founder of Texans for Sensible Immigration Policy and a member of Texas GOP Vote, a conservative website, wrote to Ray Sullivan, Perry’s chief of staff. The messages are part of an email exchange that began June 2 and were obtained by the Tribune.

Dr. Steve Hotze, the chairman of Conservative Republicans of Texas, is included in the exchanges and urges Perry and Sullivan to reconsider. Hotze contributed at least $60,000 personally and at least $640,000 via his PAC to GOP House and Senate candidates in the last election cycle.

“It seems that we should focus on recruiting Hispanics to the Republican ranks," he wrote. "It appears this bill might accomplish just the opposite.”

Clicking on Dr. Hotze's name above will carry you to his immigration video, where he makes the case against the hostile anti-immigrant rhetoric by the GOP. You should go and watch it. Here's a brief excerpt:

We cannot turn our back on immigrants and their families with anti-immigration rhetoric and legislation. If we do so, then we're not just sending the wrong message to the Hispanic community, but we're also denying our own conservative values and beliefs.

It's nearly impossible to comprehend that Hotze -- besides being ardently anti-Obama, anti-health care reform, and anti-everything else you would expect the head of Conservative Republicans of Texas to be, he is also a vicious homophobe and misogynist -- voices a call of reasonable moderation in this regard. He'll eventually earn the title of "RINO" from the TeaBags for it. More from Aguilar at the Trib ...

“When it comes to the Sanctuary City bill, we believe you should thank God for the opposition from our police chiefs and sheriffs across the state. Its failure to pass was a blessing for you and for Texas Republicans,” Adams wrote Perry on June 2, before the governor added the legislation to the call. Speculation that Perry would add the item had already gained momentum by then, however, and it is also the day state Sen. Tommy Williams, R-The Woodlands, filed SB9, which includes the legislation.

“The irony of this whole thing is that the governor had a winning ticket if he wants to run for president" with the success of the regular session, Adams said today in an interview. “He avoided Arizona-style legislation, which has caused nothing but an economic disaster , in his own state.”

The problem with that, of course, is that no single issue -- not the state budget cuts, not abortion, nothing -- incenses the Texas TeaBagging base like non-citizen immigrants. You don't have to listen for very long to hear it: Ill Eagles are responsible for everything that is wrong in the world: the budget shortfall, exploding Medicaid expenditures, overcrowded school classrooms, global warming, the Astros' losing season ... you name it. And any public forum that includes Texas conservatives commenting on current events quickly reveals this weird alternate reality where mass deportation of all undocumented people is the only thing that will solve every single problem facing the Great State.

It is an unrelenting, unyielding caterwaul.

Dr. Hotze speaks an inconvenient truth for Texas Republicans, and as an electorate they are no more likely to heed his warning than they were to split their tickets in 2010. They are only going to support candidates that demand the borders sealed by the federal government AND deportation. Not so much penalties for employers who hire the undocumented, mind you; that goes against the governor's "Texas Miracle" economy (as well as the wishes of his mega-donors Bob Perry and Bo Pilgrim).

Anyway, that's Rick Perry's stated strategy, and he's sticking to it. (Today. Keep in mind that these are the same people that are also telling us today he's not running for president.)

Sullivan said today that Perry will not get distracted from what he views as political theater.

“What Dr. Hotze and Mr. Adams talk about is politics. We are talking about public safety and policy,” he said. “We are not looking at this through a political lens. This is ‘How do we make Texas streets and neighborhoods and individuals safer?’”

He also said the issue would not damage the party’s efforts to recruit Hispanics.

“There is a broad agreement throughout the state, regardless of geography and political persuasion, that law enforcement should be encouraged to do their jobs to the best of their abilities,” he said. He added that a lot of the criminal activity the bill seeks to address occurs in “urban centers and minority communities,” and pointed out that every Hispanic Republican in the Texas House supports the sanctuary cities legislation.

Sullivan also dismissed Adams’ emails that insist a majority of law enforcement officers are opposed to the bill.

“We have been hearing for well over a year from police officers and police associations who have seen their colleagues killed by individuals in the country illegally,” he said.

If there are GOP legislators who actually don't want to pass this bill, they are going to have an extremely difficult path to walk to do so; for one thing they are much more vulnerable to backlash in 2012 from primary voters than is Perry.

Paul Burka has previously documented Rick Perry's flip-flop on sanctuary cities -- he was for them before he was against them -- as well as the odd sight of Republican legislators celebrating after the legislation's demise in the regular session. And keep in mind that "sanctuary cities" are as elusive in reality as voter fraud and unicorns, according to one leading Republican in the Lege.

How is the GOP going to defeat sanctuary cities again in the special, thus preserving Perry's 'strategic victory' and saving the long-term future of the RPT, mollifying establishment conservatives like Hotze and Adams but enraging their base? Or does Perry just intend to go for the short-term political gain and stroke the freaks, exerting his will to get the bill done, damn the long-term consequences?

It looks to me like he's betting on the latter, and so am I.

Related:

Hotze: Hispanic Christians Will Be "Our Natural Allies Against the Democrats and Muslims" (Right Wing Watch)

Should Rick Perry be thankful for an unanswered prayer? (Lisa Falkenberg, Houston Chronicle)

[hobbit709]

1. Maybe both will happen to them.

[Vogon_Glory]

2. Unfortunately, Mexican-Bashing Is Likely To Be A More Successful Strategy To The Middle-Term

Unfortunately, Mexican-bashing looks to be a successful strategy for Republicans and right-wingers now and into the middle-term. The trouble is that many Texas Hispanic voters simply DON'T vote. The Texas Hispanic voter turnout at the last election was DISMAL. I'm convinced that miserable turnout is one of the reasons the Republicans got a super-majority in the last election. THEIR voters were fired up and angry; OUR base was lackluster and the non-voters did it to us again.

I am still in despair. Why did the Republicans even BOTHER thinking up vote-suppression schemes here in Texas when so many Hispanics don't bother to go to the polls? What would it take to enlighten Mexican-American voters to the idea that you elect state representatives, state senators, and statewide officials to represent your interests, not because they're pretty, manly-looking or "popular with the other guys"? Would conveying the idea that "silence (or inactivity) implies consent" do any good? Would carrying the message that "they're doing this to you because you let them" do any good?

I don't know. I'm an Anglo-Saxon gabacho. I'm stumped.

:argh:

[sonias]

3. Low voter information state - part of gaming the system by the GOP

The GOP is perfectly fine with low voter turnout and low information state in Texas. They want to choose their voters and not the other way around. How dare we even think voters are smart enough to elect the "right" representative. :mad:

No excuse for the 20 point difference in Latino voting turnout in Texas compared to California, but it certainly doesn't help when the GOP demonizes and threatens brown people with arrest and jail times for voting. Even if you're legal and a registered voter, you can be turned off to it and stop voting.

NY Times 4/26/11

The Republican Threat to Voting

Less than a year before the 2012 presidential voting begins, Republican legislatures and governors across the country are rewriting voting laws to make it much harder for the young, the poor and African-Americans — groups that typically vote Democratic — to cast a ballot.

Spreading fear of a nonexistent flood of voter fraud, they are demanding that citizens be required to show a government-issued identification before they are allowed to vote. Republicans have been pushing these changes for years, but now more than two-thirds of the states have adopted or are considering such laws. The Advancement Project, an advocacy group of civil rights lawyers, correctly describes the push as “the largest legislative effort to scale back voting rights in a century.”

Anyone who has stood on the long lines at a motor vehicle office knows that it isn’t easy to get such documents. For working people, it could mean giving up a day’s wages.

A survey by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law found that 11 percent of citizens, 21 million people, do not have a current photo ID. That fraction increases to 15 percent of low-income voting-age citizens, 18 percent of young eligible voters and 25 percent of black eligible voters. Those demographic groups tend to vote Democratic, and Republicans are imposing requirements that they know many will be unable to meet.

If this sanctuary cities bill doesn't light a fire in the belly of Latino voters - nothing will. We're cattle, dazed and confused lining up for the slaughter if we put up with this. :shrug:

[Vogon_Glory]

4. Your Hypothesis Has Made Me Think Of Something

Your hypothesis made me think of something--the contemporary Republican Party's hostility towards the League of Women Voters.

The League of Women Voters for many years served as an open, non-partisan source of information for voters trying to determine which candidates to vote for. The League would submit questions to political candidates in the primaries, and try to interview them before primary elections and again by the general elections. My mother, whose political views drifted rightwards later in life, was a longtime LWV voter.

I should have known something was likely to be up in the late 1970's and early 1980's when I began to read articles in the (now defunct) Conservative Digest and certain right-wing radio talk shows denouncing the LWV as "ultra-liberal." Of course, I don't think anybody expected things to turn this bad.

In the last 10 years right-wingers have become increasingly un-cooperative towards the League. They've refused to be interviewed, chose not to answer questions, and made allegations of LWV "bias." Coincidentally, right-wingers also started their campaign against so-called "vote fraud."

The League is still around and still trying to do its mission; they even try to be non-partisan in a day where the Right distorts the truth and routinely resorts to lies and slander. Maybe it's solipsistic, but I believe that the facts these days have a "liberal" bias and that if even moderate conservatives noticed what the present-day Texas Republican Party was up to, they'd either vote Democratic or stay home.

Maybe that's why the Texas Republican Party and other Republican Party organs want to marginalize the League, to reduce the flow of voter information.

I confess that I never did join the League. Considering how little voter info is out there, maybe I should change that, since they now take male members.

[sonias]

6. LWV like ACLU defends everyone

When it comes to voting. And you are right, the wingers have taken it upon themselves to brand any group that seeks to expand the voting franchise as "liberal". Not that there is anything wrong with that. But you know the code speak of the idiots. :eyes:

Anyway they are now also targeting AARP - because afer all they just can't handle to many letter combinations. The wingers have settled for only one acceptable letter group - the NRA.

Do join the LWV, there are some good men doing exactly that. I know several here in Austin that help lobby with them.

I'm a member too! I love the League!

[w8liftinglady]

5. Pos, nosotros que pueden hablar los dos necesitamos.

We ned to get in the community and encourage early voting-.Many of my Hispanic friends are shift workers like I am and are able to vote at funky times...necicitamos educarle.

[sonias]

7. Si Se Puede Cambiar

"Si Se Puede Cambiar" by Andres Useche

YouTube

We need more of these types of PSAs - not necessarily for Obama - but for waking up the change!

[texastoast]

8. What about Riddle's bill?

The one that had initially protected the "domestic help"? I didn't keep up. Did that provision make it through or get tacked on somewhere else?

[sonias]

9. Weird - Can't find it anymore

The bill was HB2012

CNN 3/1/2011
Texas immigration bill has big exception
Amid a number of bills filed in Texas that address the issue of illegal immigration, one, proposed by Republican state Rep. Debbie Riddle, stands out.

As proposed, House Bill 2012 would create tough state punishments for those who "intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly" hire an unauthorized immigrant. Violators could face up to two years in jail and a fine of up to $10,000.

But it is an exception included in the bill that is drawing attention. Those who hire unauthorized immigrants would be in violation of the law -- unless they are hiring a maid, a lawn caretaker or another houseworker.



It is a tough immigration bill with a soft side that protects those who hire unauthorized immigrants "for the purpose of obtaining labor or other work to be performed exclusively or primarily at a single-family residence."

But when you go look up the bill on the Texas TLO (Texas Legislature Online) website, you get a whole different bill by Representative Thompson on wineries.

HB2012 82nd Regular Session

:shrug:

I have no idea what happened to the Riddle loophole or to the original bill filed.

[texastoast]

10. Thank you, ma'am

I was wondering if it got renamed or slipped into some of the special session stuff. She is a crafty, mean idiot.

[sonias]

11. She is evil incarnate

But I would never call her smart. She's just a mean old bitty who gets lots of press for being so vile in public. :puke: