Apparently, Illegal Immigration Is A Super Duper Major Big GOP Issue For 2012

02 Sep, 2011 by William Teach

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It’s hard to know where the Washington Post is going with this story. It’s so typical for the liberal media to have some sort of agenda, especially when it comes to political news. Is it meant to indicate that Republican voters are not concerned about the economy as much as illegal immigration? Is it meant to show that Republican candidates are big meanies when it comes to illegals. Of course, a majority of Americans have a big problem with illegal aliens being in America, taking jobs, using our social services, draining money away. Illegal immigration is flash point for Republican White House hopefuls

Mitt Romney opened his town hall meeting here talking about the economy – his thoughts on growing business, getting government out of the way – just as he does nearly every other campaign event. But when he opened last week’s forum for questions, the first voter he called on didn’t seem concerned about any of that. He wanted to know the Republican presidential candidate’s stance on border security.

A similar scene played out in South Carolina a few days later, when Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) attended a town hall meeting she assumed would center on the economy, jobs and the federal deficit – only to see the assembled voters react most passionately to her comments on illegal immigration.

Polls may not suggest it, and the candidates may not be catering to it, but immigration is an issue that voters won’t let the GOP White House hopefuls escape.

Well, true. GOP voters can actually focus on and discuss more than one issue. In case the Washington Post missed it, liberals will have the same demands of Obama, as the liberal interest groups go after him along the lines of gay issues, how Obama can give them Someone Else’s money, and how Obama can legalize illegal aliens.

Republican primary voters keep bringing immigration up as the candidates campaign in back yards, opera houses and recreation halls across Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. To a sizable chunk of those who will pick the GOP’s presidential nominee, immigration is an urgent issue, even a litmus test.

“Immigration is not even close to the top issue for most Republicans today, but it is an issue that is heavy with symbolic importance to Republican voters,” said GOP pollster Jon Lerner, who advised Tim Pawlenty until he dropped out of the race last month. “If a candidate is squishy on immigration, that symbolically suggests that he’s probably unreliable on a whole host of other conservative issues.”

Well, yeah. It is very much a core issue with a lot of Republican voters, who want to know if a future POTUS is going to uphold the rule of law and not go down any sort of amnesty/legalization/comprehensive immigration reform route.

The view in the Republican Party on immigration has shifted dramatically to the right since 2006, when President George W. Bush proposed an overhaul that would have combined a legalization plan with tighter border security.

No, it has not. Most Republicans were livid that President Bush was pushing any sort of legalization program, and mad at other elected officials, like John McCain and Lindsay Graham, who were involved with pushing “comprehensive immigration reform.”

Anyhow, the article goes on to describe the positions of Perry, Romney, and Bachmann. Romney wants to secure the border before dealing with any sort of “comprehensive reform”, along with cracking down on employers. Bachmann simply wants to secure the border from illegals, drugs, and terrorists. Perry has a much longer record, which Ann Coulter thinks is a bit too much like Bush’s. Squishy.

You can’t blame Conservatives for asking about immigration stances: there’s a long way to go till we have a candidate to officially run against Barack Obama, and it can’t all be about the economy. We need to vet our candidate hopefuls on a variety of issues. Real ones, not hope and change.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.