Thanks largely to a controversial immigration law in Arizona, political observers agree that immigration will be a key issue for state and federal candidates in November’s election.
And, thanks largely to the federal Department of Justice’s decision last week to challenge Arizona’s law – known as S.B. 1070 – those observers say Republicans will likely get a bump at the polls.
“The Department of Justice has made this a federal issue, which drags it into every congressional race in the country,” said Douglas Johnson, a researcher with Claremont McKenna College’s Rose Institute of State and Local Government. “The decision to sue Arizona will certainly help Republicans more than Democrats.”
As evidence, he noted that three of Arizona’s five Democratic members of Congress asked the Obama administration not to sue the state over S.B. 1070, which requires law enforcement officers to verify the immigration status of people they come across in the course of duty and suspect might be in the country illegally.
The law sparked not only the Justice Department lawsuit, but also a presidential address earlier this month.
Renee Van Vechten, a political science professor at University of Redlands, said she is surprised President Barack Obama opted to speak about immigration reform, saying the move could “add fuel to the fire.”
“He’s making it into a hot-button issue,” she said. “It just surprised me he would even attempt to tackle this issue. It doesn’t create a whole lot of winners or a whole lot of payoff in the short term.”
Read the rest.
Recently there have been a number of questions raised by conservatives who have been questioning what the TEA Party organizations can actually accomplish. With a significant amount of conservative activists taking the position that we need to revitalize the Republican Party and restore it to its proper roots as Ronald Reagan advocated, the concern is whether or not this can bring about the results that the now-active center-right coalition desires. The answer is maybe.
When challenged on this subject Sean Hannity often refers to the how the Republican Party has voted recently on the health control bill, as well as its apparent unity on other issues of political importance of late. This may be a sign of one of two things; that the message has gotten through and the representatives have decided to respect their constituents, or fear that they will be fired come the next election. It is my belief that the latter has been more motivating than respect for the voter. That many of the incumbent Country Club Republicans intend to weather the storm, then return to their ways as big government advocates, only less intense than the Democrat Socialists with their “take over everything” agenda.
More of this, please:
NJEA President Barbara Keshishian visited his office this week to apologize for a recent email sent to thousands of teachers by a union official that included a mock prayer for the governor’s death. According to [NJ Governor Chris] Christie, the conversation went something like this: He accepted her apology immediately but asked if the email sender would be fired for “doing something that monumentally stupid.” When the union chief questioned why the man should be fired, Mr. Christie promptly ended the meeting.
That’s from the WSJ’s interview with Christie, which will be refreshing reading for conservatives who may be just a little tired of situations where political rhetoric exceeds actions. In this particular case, the issue of the apology is just a vehicle for the real message: to wit, the Governor of NJ is not afraid of the teachers’ unions, so if the latter wants to win their current dispute with the former they’re going to have to fight for once. Given that support for freezing teacher pay in NJ is two-to-one in Christie’s favor, the governor is in good shape here.
Of the many unflattering caricatures of Sarah Palin that litter the political landscape, the notion that she is a dummy or a puppet — a mere figure for manipulation by a superior brain — is probably the most prevalent. She has even been given a mock “endorsement,” bestowed in a YouTube video by the so-called Ventriloquist Dummies of America Association, for her supposed likeness to an inert object of play.
So let’s just say this at the top: Palin is not anyone’s puppet. It is not true for her, just as it was not true for George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and a long list of politicians who have been accused of having their strings pulled by one puppet master or another.
In 1864, the GOP relabeled itself the “National Union Party” in an effort to attract moderate Democrats in support of President Lincoln’s re-election. To reach out even further to Democrats, the convention dumped the Republican vice president, Hannibal Hamlin, from the ticket and replaced him with a Democrat, Andrew Johnson. The man most responsible for this tragedy was the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Henry Raymond.
Arizona rancher Robert Krentz, pictured here in 2008, was killed on his own property 35 miles outside of the border town of Douglas, Ariz.
Rep. Kay Granger of Texas, the top Republican on the House Foreign Operations subcommittee, told Fox News on Thursday that she would like to have a hearing as soon as Congress returns from its Easter recess to help border states whose pleas for federal assistance have so far gone unmet.
“I don’t think that we are getting everything we need,” she said, adding that the hearing would provide a platform to discuss what is needed.
Granger said the border fence that was under construction in the Southwest was not helpful.
“What we need is sensors, we need more equipment to see who’s coming across the border,” she said. “We need more roads so that border control can stop them. We need more commitment frankly. We need commitment to make sure that our borders are safe and they’re not right now with what’s going on in Mexico.”
WASHINGTON (AP) – Fed up with waiting, President Barack Obama announced Saturday he would bypass a vacationing Senate and name 15 people to key administration jobs, wielding for the first time the blunt political tool known as the recess appointment.
The move immediately deepened the divide between the Democratic president and Republicans in the Senate following a long, bruising fight over health care. Obama revealed his decision by blistering Republicans, accusing them of holding up nominees for months solely to try to score a political advantage on him.
“I simply cannot allow partisan politics to stand in the way of the basic functioning of government,” Obama said in a statement.
The 15 appointees to boards and agencies include the contentious choice of union lawyer Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board. Republicans had blocked his nomination on grounds he would bring a radical pro-union agenda to the job, and they called on Obama not to appoint Becker over the recess.
Arizona’s testy Republican Senate primary is seeping into the GOP contest for a House seat.
Nine Republicans have filed to run for retiring Rep. John Shadegg’s seat in the Republican-leaning area of northern Phoenix and its suburbs. One, former state Sen. Jim Waring, was among 35 current and former state legislators to endorse Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) over his challenger, former Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-Ariz.) on Thursday.
Paradise Valley Mayor Vernon Parker (R) has also endorsed McCain, even though he and Hayworth share a major campaign supporter: Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
Idaho on Wednesday became the first state to pass a law saying no thanks to part of President Obama’s health care proposal.
The Idaho Health Care Freedom Act says in part, “every person within the state of Idaho is and shall be free to choose or decline to choose any mode of securing health care services without penalty or threat of penalty.”
Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter, a Republican, said Wednesday he signed it because he believes any health care laws should ensure people are “treated as an individual, rather than as an amorphous mass whose only purpose in this world is to obey federal mandates.”
Several other states may follow suit.
I sometimes wonder if Americans really have any idea of the scope of the danger facing this country. I also wonder if they don’t deserve the disaster that is coming.
Americans loudly focus their anger on the President, who is seeking to profoundly alter the structure and nature of the United States. But they cannot let themselves off the hook; they elected this man, after all, and by a wide margin.
Remember, Barack Obama had long kept company with loathsome men overflowing with hatred for the United States. His associates included an anti-American, unrepentant terrorist (Bill Ayers) and a deranged, anti-American preacher (Reverend Wright). And Obama’s own stated economic philosophy is confiscatory redistributionist – “spread the wealth around,” as he so forthrightly put it.
All of this was known in 2008. And Americans elected him anyway. And now they whine and complain that this man attempting to socialize the republic? What a thoroughly unserious people – if you stick your head in the gaping maw of a ravenous lion, you would be a fool to complain when it closes its jaws. It is the nature of lions to devour flesh; it is the nature of socialists to devour liberty.
And there is another culprit who must not escape blame.
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