On this weekend's McLaughlin Group Newsweek's Eleanor Clift used the
occasion of Barack Obama's immigration speech to opine that Hispanics "know which side, which party is on their side" and implied it's not the GOP as she declared Republican Governor Jan Brewer of Arizona has "negative attitudes" towards them. During a discussion about Obama's immigration speech last week Clift even bragged: "This president has done far more in terms of security crackdown than George W. Bush did."
This was all too much for the Washington Examiner's Tim Carney to bear
as he wittily retorted that instead of having an open dialogue with the
governor of a major border state like Brewer, the President chose to
talk about the vital issue with Desperate Housewives star Eva Longoria [1], as seen in the following May 15 exchange:
ELEANOR CLIFT, NEWSWEEK: This president has done far more in terms of security crackdown than George W. Bush did.
RICH LOWRY, NATIONAL REVIEW: That's not true.
CLIFT: It is true and we can compare statistics later.
LOWRY: It's barely more, just barely more deportations.
CLIFT: You used up your time. Rich, you've used up your time. My turn. And I think he does have a good record to the point where he has liberals complaining that he's cracked down too much. He got two-thirds of the Hispanic vote in 2008. He may get it up to four-fifths because he's the most prominent official on the Democratic side talking pro-comprehensive immigration. And you have Governor Jan Brewer of Arizona, the most prominent Republican official on the other side, sending out very negative attitudes when it comes to Hispanics. So I think, sure, there's a political benefit here for the President. But if he could get comprehensive immigration reform tomorrow, along the lines that you outline, he would love it. He can't get it because Republicans are opposing him. And so it's a clear political divide and I think Hispanics know which side, which party is on their side.
JOHN MCLAUGHLIN: Tim, what do you think of that?
TIM CARNEY, WASHINGTON EXAMINER: I don't think he's trying to work at all with Republicans. He didn't invite Jan Brewer. He didn't invite Texas Governor Rick Perry to the White House to talk about immigration.
MCLAUGHLIN: Who's Jan, who's Jan?
CARNEY: Jan Brewer - the governor of Arizona. And to show his seriousness on this, who did he invite to talk about immigration at the White House? Rosario Dawson [2]and Eva Longoria. He brought in actresses. He's not serious about this. He wants to set up a debate and induce Republicans into arguing against immigration, then call them racists and push himself up to 40 percent of the Hispanic vote. It's, it's pure, cynical politicking. He has no interest in real solutions.
- Geoffrey Dickens is the Deputy Research Director at the Media Research Center. You can follow him on Twitter here [3].