Now what?
President Obama and congressional Democrats just spent 14 months passing an unpopular bill and spending the nation down the rabbit hole into epic debt. It’s not exactly Sun Tzu on strategy. Or as our earthy vice president might say, it could be a big _______ mistake.
The combination of justifiable anger, tea parties and predictions of Democratic disaster in November all point one direction – down. That leaves Obama only one logical option.
Buying votes.
No, he won’t do it with classic Democratic machine-style corruption ala Tammany Hall or Chicago Mayor Daley. Instead, he’s going to use your tax dollars to give amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants and turn them into lifetime Democrats.
In the past two weeks, Obama has made three separate statements on immigration. In his “Message to Immigration Marchers,” the president repeatedly referred to the current immigration process as a “broken immigration system.” It is broken, but he’s going to “fix” it by turning unhappy illegals into happy little Obama voters like his union buddies at SEIU and the AFL-CIO want.
What’s worse is the traditional media are going to help him do it, whether we support it or not. And we don’t.
An October CNN/Opinion Research poll showed 73 percent of the American public want illegal immigrants decreased. Democrats and their buddies at the networks want you to believe that the way to do it is amnesty. It’s not. Less than half (44 percent) support the “path to citizenship,” despite all the media maneuvering to promote it.
It wasn’t that long ago that the news shows were filled to the brim with immigration protests as wave after wave of marchers carried Mexican flags to whine about how they wanted citizenship on a silver platter. Back during the 2006 immigration reform attempt, ABC, CBS and NBC turned to advocates who wanted to give illegals citizenship almost twice as often as those who supported stricter immigration controls.
The networks made those opponents seem like monsters, opposed to the very foundation of our nation, even trotting out the Statue of Liberty to emphasize the point. The media are right about one thing. We are all immigrants.
That’s where the media narrative ends and the fictional script takes over. Network reports depict those who oppose illegal immigration or some bogus amnesty plan as racists. In 2007, former CNN anchor Bernard Shaw blamed racism for the debate over amnesty. Somehow, expecting secure borders became a battle where “some people who still believe that people of color are not needed in this country.” To Shaw, those illegals were “a vital part of the American fabric.”
Over at ABC, “Nightline” co-host Martin Bashir set out to prove that view by bashing popular Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Bashir actually asked the sheriff, “Doesn’t your brutal regime lead to brutality by your staff?” Next up on Bashir’s one-sided agenda, “How long have you been beating your wife?”
CNN’s Lou Dobbs, then one of the few media voices against illegal immigration, came out in 2007 complaining about media coverage of the issue. “We're talking about comprehensive immigration legislation as reform. We're using the word 'reform' as if it were true. There's no skepticism.” In 2009, the left-wing crusade against Dobbs and his anti-illegal immigration stand helped push him out at the network.
When the networks weren’t demonizing opponents, they were just advocating for illegals. Last June, CBS’s Anthony Mason blamed the economic downturn experienced by a small
NBC used an identical strategy, lamenting unfilled jobs on
I guess that makes hiring illegals OK. Oops, I’m not even supposed to say “illegals.” The National Association of Hispanic Journalists has called “on our nation’s news media to use accurate terminology in its coverage of immigration and to stop dehumanizing undocumented immigrants.” But they aren’t biased and have no agenda whatsoever.
To ordinary voters and taxpayers, the situation is bleak. The media are thoroughly on the side of illegal immigrants. And the leadership of both parties has shown no willingness to stop the problem. Lawmakers on the left and right seem more concerned about getting future votes than how we might pay for health insurance for 12 million or more new citizens.
Obama can take advantage of the situation to force millions more voters into the system to ensure Democrats get re-elected in the future. Obama’s strategy is in his motto: “Yes we can.”
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