Meg Whitman: GOP needs to grow up on immigration

[alp227]

During an interview at the George Bush Institute in Dallas, 2010 California Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman addressed the immigration issue and Republican Party: "My view is that the immigration discussion, the rhetoric the Republican Party uses, is not helpful; it’s not helpful in a state with the Latino population we have. We as a party are going to have to make some changes, how we think about immigration, and how we talk about immigration."

Ruben Navarrette, Jr. Washington Independent, I like Navarrette but didn't know he contributed to a right-wing site. I couldn't find it anywhere else). Navarrette comments:[br />

Whitman’s epiphany sounded a lot better than what she allegedly told her ex-housekeeper Nicky Diaz Santillan after firing her in June 2009 — shortly before Whitman announced her candidacy for governor. Whitman had employed Santillan for nine years and treated her like what the former eBay CEO described as “a member of our extended family.” That is, before the housekeeper asked for help in legalizing her status. After that, it was: Adios, Nicky.

Diaz Santillan alleged that Whitman fired her in a phone call, saying: “From now on you don’t know me, and I don’t know you. You never have seen me and I have never seen you. Do you understand me?” Then, Diaz Santillan said, Whitman hung up. The housekeeper said she felt as if she had been tossed away “like a piece of garbage.”

Now Whitman is saying that the Republicans’ approach to immigration is garbage.

Personally, I think that Republicans have to figure out how to even talk about immigration without sounding like one of the characters from The Wizard of Oz. Most of the time, on this issue, Republicans either come across like the Scarecrow (no brain), the Tin Man (no heart), or the Cowardly Lion (no courage).

[Demeter]

1. The GOP Needs to Grow Up, Period

And learn how to handle reality. Including the existence of other people in the world, and their rights to equal and fair treatment, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, etc...

[damntexdem]

2. Yes, that's my reaction. But it won't.

Instead, it will continue to throw two-year-old-style tantrums.

[Shagbark Hickory]

3. A convenient comment for such a hypocrite

[Wounded Bear]

4. Read: "We need to polish this turd"

Cue Mythbusters episode where such is accomplished.

As usual, it sounds like a cry for better PR material, not policy change.

[Motown_Johnny]

5. A lose-lose situation for them. Embrace any policy that treats people of color as equal

and they lose many of the wing nuts.

Don't treat people as equals and you lose them.



P.S. The Republicans are Tin Lioncrows, no heart, courage or brains

[JohnnyRingo]

6. More appropriately, the GOP base needs to grow up

Those pols in the party and their message machine just tell the rednecks and racists what they want to hear so they don't form their own third party. They've come close with the Tea Party, but so far they're still republicans in their heart of hearts because the party shifted to suit them.

It started with what I originally thought was mass temporary insanity after 9/11, but thanks to eight years of Bush using fear of brown foreigners in bomb belts as a means to their ends, and Fox News fanning those flames of hatred, the symptoms have become even more pronounced and mainstream. The hatred and fear that once was hidden beneath the social surface in many has become a politically acceptable position, and the party they favored has adapted to accommodate them.

If only we'd spent those years falsely portraying Bin Laden, the Taliban, and AlQaeda as drunken cross dressing Broadway show fans, we could have done to the terrorists what they did to us.

What used to be the GOP "southern strategy" has morphed to encompass a broader national base, a sort of "Bigots Without Borders".