Ted Cruz On Limbaugh: Gang Of Eight Bill Is A ‘Disaster’

From today’s show, evidence of why Cruz might be the best and brightest Republican the Senate has to offer…

Breitbart has excerpts in case you don’t have time to listen. The most compelling part of the interview is where Cruz explains why this bill has the momentum it has…

Asked about the motivations of Democrats and Republicans for pushing amnesty, Cruz said, “Democrats want it for pure politics. No citizenship, no bill. They want more Democrat voters, or have it voted down and use it as a political issue in 2014/2016.”

On the Republican side, he said, a lot of the support is unfortunately political, as well. “After 2012, all the Washington political consultants and MSM came to Republicans said you’ve got to do better with Hispanics, and the way to do better with Hispanics is amnesty, and Republicans are scared.” Cruz said that argument is nonsense, but there are a lot of Republicans who are scared and listening to the consultants.

Washington consultants advise on immigration, abortion, and gay marriage “that Republicans give up our principles and become Democrats.”

“It’s interesting. You’ve got a number of politicians who are listening it [to the New York Times’ advice] who have not heretofore gotten significant support in the Hispanic community. In my race in Texas—Texas is a majority-minority state—over 40% of the Hispanics in Texas voted for me in the Senate race, and I was very clear in the race from day one in opposing amnesty and supporting border security and improving legal immigration.”

Spot-on correct. Cruz, as a Hispanic himself and a successful Republican politician in Texas among Hispanic voters, understands the dynamic of the Latino vote. He dismisses the notion that it’s monolithic or that it’s actually motivated by immigration policy.

He correctly says neither of those are true.

Hispanic voters will be mostly Democrats regardless of what the GOP does on immigration. Acceding to Democrat demands to make bloc voters out of some 11 million illegal aliens is hardly going to improve the electorate for Republicans in the future.

What Cruz doesn’t say, but is also true, is that Latin American political tradition is rich with the idea of the caudillo – the strongman leader from whom all social benefits flow. Wikipedia summarizes caudillismo as follows

The related caudillismo is a cultural phenomenon that first appeared during the early 19th century in revolutionary South America, as a type of militia leader with a charismatic personality and enough of a populist program of generic future reforms to gain broad sympathy, at least at the outset, among the common people. Effective caudillismo depends on a personality cult.

Mass immigration from Mexico or other parts of Latin America will mean the injection of the caudillo idea into American political culture. And that is an intensely hostile idea to our constitutional culture which demands a separation of powers, checks and balances and limits on the power of government.

Which is not to say that we shouldn’t take immigrants from Latin America. We should. There is a wealth of talent and spirit we can profit from as immigrants from south of our borders join us. But we have to be able to assimilate those people who do come, and swallowing 10-12 million people in one gulp makes that assimilation impossible. It means balkanizing our country.

Democrats are fine with that concept, because a balkanized country means politicians get to play the tribes off against one another in an endless orgy of identity politics. Which is how they do business.

But it so happens that the way you play those groups off against each other is by buying their votes with free stuff from the government. Everybody gets a little something, but to get everything they want they’ve got to turn out more votes in the next cycle.

And there’s never enough money to buy off the tribes with goodies from the government, so ultimately you break the country. Which the Democrats will somehow try to blame on the Right.

Assimilation into American culture means you don’t want free stuff from the government. It means you want the government to leave you alone so you can improve your own life. The best way for that assimilation to take place is to bring people aboard in small numbers, which does NOT mean legalizing, with a path to citizenship, 11 million Mexicans (they’re predominantly Mexicans) in one fell swoop.

As Cruz says, there is an alternative. We don’t have to deport all of these people, particularly when they may have kids who are American citizens by virtue of being born here (though allowing “anchor babies” was a stupid decision in both law and policy, it might well be more trouble than it’s worth to try to end that practice). Allowing some sort of guest worker program to take the illegals in so that they can continue to work here and pay for the privilege (and the social services they’ll require while here) but yet never be able to vote Democrat is the happy medium.

But the problem is, that’s not what the Dems want and it’s not what they’re willing to bargain for. They want the whole enchilada. And somehow, the consultants Cruz pins this debacle on have been led to believe there is some percentage in giving in to Chuck Schumer on the issue (quick tip: never give Chuck Schumer what he wants, period).

This is going on while absolutely nothing is being done to present this issue to the black community for what it is – a complete sellout of their interests by the party they give an almost monopolistic amount of support to.

Making 11 million low-skilled Mexicans into citizens and incentivizing millions and millions more to follow them here…how is that going to help reduce unemployment in the black community? How can black kids, who already have a strike or two against them thanks to public schools which specialize in turning out low-skill workers, get decent jobs when they’re engulfed in a sea of immigrants willing to work for Third World wages?

Don’t the Democrats spoiling for this legislation show a frightening disregard for loyal black voters by throwing them under the immigration bus?

The GOP and conservative groups should be all over urban radio with messaging to this effect. So far it isn’t happening because the GOP somehow seems to believe the 20 percent of the black community which votes to the Left despite agreeing with Republicans on the majority of the issues in front of the country is harder to get than Mexicans who broke the law to come here in the first place.

That has to be the calculus, because there is no showing in any poll which says that a GOP capitulation on amnesty is going to move the needle with the Hispanic electorate which is made up of CITIZENS.

It’s one thing to stop treating Hispanic Americans as foreigners and criminals, as too many dumb Republican politicians do. Getting the Tom Tancredos to shut up, and beginning to pay attention to people like Rick Perry, who gets a huge proportion of the Hispanic vote in Texas despite not compromising conservative beliefs, is something totally different from throwing open the gates to Chuck Schumer.

Thank God for Ted Cruz. If not for him, all hope of preventing the GOP from descending completely into the ranks of the Stupid Party might be lost.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Interested in more national news? We've got you covered! See More National News
Previous Article
Next Article

Trending on The Hayride