Unsaid in my critique of the Washington State Republican Party platform and its call to repeal the birthright citizenship provision of the 14th Amendment, is that their xenophobic, anti-immigration rhetoric is actually right in line with that of their national party leadership. Which I suppose explains why the RNC has named a charmer like Chris Gulugian-Taylor to head Washington State’s “Victory 2008” committee, the organization responsible for spending national party money on the statewide GOTV effort.
Guligian-Taylor was Rudy Giuliani’s regional political director for Western states (um… Giuliani had a Western states campaign?) and was the executive director of the Nevada Republican Party in 2006… before resigning his position in the midst of a mini-scandal, a month before election day.
It seems Chris Gulugian-Taylor sent out the announcement of a Minuteman rally (subject line: “Help stop the illegal invasion”) to the GOP’s e-mail list, complete with nasty little digs like this:
“If you are tired of seeing illegals catered to, then join us to send these Un-American corporations a message.
“We’ll not allow these illegals destroy our country. We’ll not permit corporations like Chicago Title, Wells Fargo Bank, and Miller Brewing promote [sic] and financially support the take over [sic] of America by the Illegal Invaders.
“Your voice is needed to let these Un-American companies know we will not tolerate them supporting illegals over law abiding citizens.”
Ouch, baby. That’s got to hurt, especially if your party is trying to appeal to Latino voters and not alienate them.
[…] Look, we don’t want to be dicks about this, but are you really surprised? Hell, we’re talking about the party that wanted to make felons out of illegal immigrants, and to declare (in contravention of the U.S. Constitution) that children born to illegal immigrants should not be U.S. citizens…
Yup, it sounds like the WSRP’s newest political guest worker is going to fit right in with the locals.
Seems the state’s GOP is bringing in new leadership from the basement of an outhouse.
par for course.
So this guy was forced to fall on his sword in Nevada for sending out a racist, xenophobic e-mail on behalf of the Minutemen (with the state party’s return address) just before the election, but it probably wasn’t because of the racism and xenophobia — it was because he criticized corporate donors to the party. And the whole incident has been no barrier whatsoever to his being hired again to high level posts, first by Giuliani, then by the RNC.
At least he wasn’t in the Bush administration. They would have promoted him, straight away.
I’m surprised Jim Gibbons didn’t keep him on as an aide…just the sort of professionalism Gibbons is noted for!
/snark
I think his digs at corporate interests did not endear him to the GOP’s real constituency.
Let’s wait and see if Rossi is stupid enough to swap political spit with this jerk.
@4 Corporatism and right-wing extremist hate groups, mixed with Christian Reconstructionists and greedy, perverted politicians makes for a very bad brew. But Republicans go into the election with the base they have, but perhaps not with the base they want.
Let’s go back to what the American people want in an immigration policy, shall we?
And the State GOP platform isn’t anti-immigration, Goldy, and you know it. From the platform:
You may rant and rave, weep and wail, and make up all kinds of stuff to say that it isn’t what it clearly is, but when push comes to shove, blanket amnesty, open borders immigration non-policy is opposed by most Americans, including most Democrats.
You may be able to flog this issue with effect to the HA Happy Hooligans, but once again, Emperor Goldy, you’re caught parading sans clothing.
The Piper
@7 Talk is cheap. People act out their real values. The actions of those on the right speak loud and clear. Your party’s pandering to extremist hate groups reveals where you really come from – and it isn’t a very nice space.
Perhaps Chris Gulugian-Taylor should celebrate his employment in Washington State by having a drink or three with failed Senate candidate Mike!
Ken, it’ll be a long haul for that drink with Mike!. He’s now living the good life as CEO of XL Capital, Ltd. in Hamilton, Bermuda.
OTOH, if Chris does go there, it’ll surely go on Mike!’s tab. He can afford it.
Somehow I’m amused that Mike! has offshored himself.
Wow Pooper is one arrogant (as well as cum-drunk) piece of shit isn’t he? I mean maybe it’s just the GOP blood in him that makes him think he speaks for anyone other than himself. But he’s a worthless motherfucker who barely deserves to speak, let alone on behalf of others.
Read Pooper’s post for code words…
“blanket amnesty, open borders immigration non-policy”
Now these are words that Pooper is using to describe the position his own candidate FlipFlop McCain held until he FlipFlopped recently to run for President.
What the GOP wants is a way to make sure as few minorities as possible enter America. Primarily because the minorities vote for candidates from the Democratic party.
And non – policy? Well I guess you have nobody but the GOP to blame for that. Baby Bush has had more than seven years to address this “crisis” and instead, he’s fucked around in the Middle East mining for other people’s oil.
The GOP and Pooper are a racist bunch who don’t want people voting. Period.
Piper;
Why should immigrants have to embrace “our culture”? And who decides what “our culture” is? A “culture warrior” such as Bill O’Reilly? The guy who is suprised that a restaurant owned by African Americans didn’t have anybody yelling “…where’s my MFing ice tea!”
Since when has America ever required that people give up their culture before they came here – our ancestors didn’t have to convert to the Native American culture to immigrate here (although a few backwoodsmen and hunter/trappers did). Although there was certainly a lot of discrimination against the Irish and Italian and Polish Catholics, and the German Lutherans, and the other various groups, none had to give up their cultures and pretend to be White Anglo-Saxon Protestants in order to cross our borders, neither did they have to learn English.
I know lots of Republicans who believe “our culture” includes “our religion”, defined as being Evangelical Protestant, or even more specific. You might get lots of debate between the “English” establishment and the “Scots-Irish” establishment about whether barbeque, fried chicken, country music and NASCAR are properly part of our culture – but if you give them the chance, they would probably both accept the other’s definition, as long as you excluded Mexican-sounding music, low riders, bandanas, and other features of Hispanic cultures in the country (although Americanized Mexican food would be made an exception).
Talk about opening a can of worms! That part of the Republican platform is just another way of saying: “Don’t make us spell out the rules – just put us in charge, and we will decide who gets in and who stays out, depending upon what we had for breakfast that morning. And the more you look, sound, and act like us, the better your chance of getting in. Everybody else can stay the hell away”.
This is where I break with the Republicans and their redneck Minutemen type. I had the misfortune of being at a Home Depot once down in San Diego and seeing their ugly display of hate towards the day laborers who were hanging out looking for work. It was truly disgusting. I wanted to come home and take a shower after listening to these people.
Just prior to the 2006 election the Republicans realized that they were in real trouble – the war in Iraq wasn’t going well, the economic recovery post 9/11 was stagnating, people were losing their jobs to large-scale corporate outsourcing, people’s retirement savings were dissapearing in corporate accounting scandals, yet corporate CEOs and the the otherwise very wealthy were receiving unheard-of riches while getting tax brakes.
Some of the vulnerable GOP Congressmen started looking for a life preserver, and thought they had found it in the immigration issue. Since illegal immigrants can’t vote, they figured that there was no down side to re-directing voter anger in their direction. So they attempted to blame the economic problems faced by average working-class people on the “illegal immigrants who are taking your jobs”.
I try not to equate other groups with the Nazis or their philosophies, because the Nazi crimes are so enourmous I don’t want to dillute their impact with such comparisons. But in this case, the comparison of this anti-immigration tactic with the early Nazi anti-semitism campaigns of the 1920’s is too close not to mention in passing.
Of course, the advantage to the Republicans who use this tactic is that “illigal immigrant” is the cover for corralling all “anti-immigrant” sentiment. It collects as supporters not only those who are concerned about illegal immigration, but also those who don’t like any immigrants, those who assume all immigrants are illegal immigrants, as well as those who are racists and don’t like anybody who is different from themselves (immigrant or not).
In the meantime, the Republican Party can still officially distance themselves from the obviously racial aspects of this campaign by insisting it is only about “protecting our borders”, and applies only to “illegal immigrants”, even while they accept the money, votes, and support from all the others from which they are trying to distance themselves.
But in 2006, the efforts of these Republican Congressman wasn’t initially organized or sanctioned nationally. That’s because the real power in the Republican Party is in corporations that benefit from cheap labor, and immigration in general (and illegal immigration especially) keeps wages low. So even as these individual Republican Congressmen were trying to win votes and distract the American voters from Republican failures by focusing on the immigration issue, any attempts at real reform were quietly derailed by their national leadership.
Also, the issue has some unexpected land mines. It may be true that illegal immigrants can’t vote, but many of their relatives and friends do. Congressmen in some districts in the interior of the country may not be too worried about that, but those in swing states with any significant immigrant, or even a significant native-born Hispanic population, perhaps can’t afford to offend such a group. And these were groups which, as late as 2004, the Republican party was targeting for support.
I suspect that this will remain an “under-the-table” issue among the Republicans. They will continue to try to draw support from the anti-immigrant population, but only with vague positions which won’t require any real action. On a national level, they will keep it confined just to “securing our borders against terrorists”, although local efforts (from which the party organization can distance itself) will still try to get the benefit of the other aspects of this campaign.
But they are going to try again this year. It will be interesting to see how they handle this nationally. My guess is that they will
@13…rhp6033…
Didn’t have to learn English? Then why did they?
Certainly, immigrants have always brought something with them from the old country, and often what they brought got melded into the American melting pot – ethinic foods, customs, celebrations, words, and lots more all have become as American as apple pie.
But when the great waves of immigrants came from Southern and Eastern Europe, it was learn English or perish. Speak what you will at home, but in the broad marketplace, English ruled.
A common language is a great unifier – if you can’t speak the tongue of the country in which you live, you will never be able to participate in the life of that country since you’ll never really know what’s going on.
There is an American culture born of our history, English common law, traditions, the English language, and shared values.
No law, nor any Republican, insists that an otherwise lawful immigrant who resides here has to give up the richness of home in order to become an American. But if you wish to become an American, then you must embrace what it means to be an American.
Speak whatever language you wish at home, but the language of our common marketplace, educational system, government, and culture is English.
The Republicans I know are indifferent to how you worship or where. At the State GOP Convention in Spokane this past weekend, I was with lots of Catholics, Mormons, evangelical and mainstream protestents, non-believers, Muslims, and more.
Each comes from a unique faith tradition, but in the public square, we focus on what unites us, not what divides us – we think of each other as individuals, not as members of a racial, religious, or ethnic group.
With those on the left, however, it always seems more to be how this group is different than that, should remain different, and never the twain shall meet, which is a sure-fire recipe for Balkanization.
The assimilation of new immigrants is never easy, nor should it be. They come here, so they should learn the rules and customs of here and, at least so far as areas of common interaction with who is already here, practice them.
What they do at home is their business entirely.
I have two Chinese nieces – my sister’s adopted daughters – and try as she will, they won’t learn Chinese or embrace Chinese culture – it’s too “foreign” and “quaint” for them. They’re American kids into American customs and American things like their IPods, Hannah Montana, ballet lessons, horses, and the mall.
Now, my sister is more liberal than most, so don’t think this is a Republican thing – it’s an American thing.
Certainly, there’s room within the flexible definition of American culture for groups like the Amish, orthodox Jews (been to NYC lately?), Sikhs and others who either dress or live completely outside the mainstream. There’s even room for those who celebrate Celtic traditions, occasionally dress in a kilt (Irish kilts are plain – Scottish have a tartan), and play a pipe. But I still wear an American flag lapel pin on my Highland jacket.
Live and let live.
But even they conform to some common standards and cultuaral norms and values. The Uniform Commercial Code is just as applicable to them as it is to a suit in an office in New Jersey or a farmer in Kansas or some techy lib on Capital Hill in Seattle. And if any one of them wants to talk with any other of them, they’ll probably do it in English, even if the Jersey suit is originally form Moldavia.
The idea of a culture that resembles more the Tower of Babel than a unified society is foolish. Bi-lingual societies rarely work, and where they exist they have systemic problems that hinder maximum development and unity.
My youngest daughter is recently returned from four-months in Quebec where English speakers are discriminated against in ways a good HA Happy Hooligan would find deeply offensive.
Yet, my oldest daughter was married in an Iglesia in Greensboro, NC that was so typically Mexican it wasn’t funny. Parts of that ceremoney are sure worth incorporating into American culture. The lasso ritual was very symbolic and meaningful, and the fact that, in Mexican weddings the church puts on the wedding feast, pleased me no end since I then didn’t have to pony up the $$$.
Delicious Chicken Mole!
Perhaps our bottom line is again best expressed as what unites us, not what divides us – how can we share similar things, not how can we be so different as to be unable to understand each other?
As Franklin said, “If we don’t all hang together, we’ll all hang seperately.”
The Piper