So one of the great things about being an anti-immigrant xenophobe in a nation of immigrants is that you get to point to great things done by Americans born in other nations and take credit for them, and blame immigrants for all the bad things they may or may not be responsible for.

Consider Duncan Hunter in yesterday’s Republican debate in Iowa when he was asked to outline his education policy:

REP. HUNTER: Three words: Jaime Escalante and inspiration. Jaime Escalante was a great math teacher who in the barrio of Los Angeles taught young kids calculus, and he taught them so well that the school district called up and said, “We got a problem. We think your kids are cheating on the tests.” And he said, “Test them again.” And he established this incredible system of calculus in the school district by inspiring young people.

How many of us have — have our careers — can — can point back to a teacher and say, “That teacher inspired me”? What we have to do is take away the bureaucratic credentialing of teachers and allow people who are aerospace engineers and — and pilots and scientists and retired folks to come in and inspire young people in third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grades. Let — let’s inspire them to reach for the stars and give them the incentive to work hard enough to get there — inspiration, changing the credentialing system, and school choice.

MS. WASHBURN: Hasn’t that teacher since left the public school system?

REP. HUNTER: And you know why? I read the — the — the post- mortem on Jaime Escalante is that the unions ran him out of the school district, and I think that goes right to one of the — one of the big problems that we have.

You’ve got to hand it to Hunter for getting the shot in at the teachers’ unions. But when you consider where Border Wall Hunter stands on immigration, there are some inconvenient facts that we might want to consider when he holds up Dr. Escalante as an inspirational example to sketch out his education policy:

• Dr. Escalante did not speak English when he came to the United States from Bolivia by way of Puerto Rico looking for work
• Dr. Escalante took a job with an electronics company that an American citizen probably could have performed
• 99% of the students at Garfield High where Dr. Escalante’s inspirational story began are of Latino origin, and while the LA Unified School District doesn’t report on this, I bet you a whole lot of them did not immigrate to this country legally

None of that is skin off my back, but in an America led by Duncan Hunter, or any of the other hotheads who are trying to “out Tancredo Tancredo,” I suspect that you’d see fewer Jaime Escalantes. Men of his mettle, because they would face more barriers to entry in our country, would not be able to reach out to and educate hundreds of thousands of Latino students who are studying in poor schools because we want to keep them and their families part of our underground economy.

Presidential Debates, Duncan Hunter, Tom Tancredo | 3 Comments »

The GOP had a debate in Iowa today, and AmericaBlog did some running commentary. I think the most interesting moment was when Unca Fred tried to take his ball and go home on the question of global warming, petulantly saying “I won’t answer the question unless I get a full minute to debunk decades of established science with this position paper from Exxon’s public relations outfit.”

Give your thoughts in the comments.

Presidential Debates | 3 Comments »

Booman offers the best roundup of the Republican YouTube debate that I’ve seen. I have only seen parts of it. But as far as I can gather, it was a lightning round of immigrant-bashing, historical revisionism (public opinion lost the Vietnam War), Jesus praise (apparently, there is a religious test for office on the Republican side), and anti-tax rhetoric. It was a Wednesday, the day of Grover Norquist’s weekly conservative meeting, and so I guess that’s why he got to ask a question even though he has unfettered access to Republicans. I already mentioned Rudy Giuliani’s stumble through questions about his taxpayer-financed booty calls. You had Mitt Romney refuse to call waterboarding torture until he consulted with an executive for Blackwater. Mike Huckabee came armed with an excellent amount of one-liners that allowed him to sidestep substantive questions. Fred Thompson made it through the whole debate without sleeping, though there was one touch and go moment where someone had to hold a piece of glass up to his nose to ensure he was still breathing. And CNN didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory by failing to disclose that one of their questioners is on a steering committee for Hillary Clinton.

All in all, I’m pleased with my decision to be somewhere else last night. Anyone else have any thoughts?

Fred Thompson, Presidential Debates, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney | No Comments »

Seeing the potential for a generational decline at the polls due to alienating the fastest-growing demographic in the country, the GOP candidates abruptly changed their tune and agreed to participate in a Spanish-language debate held by Univision in December. After spurning minority voter forums repeatedly, they suddenly came around. Simon Rosenberg thinks he knows why. Republicans in Virginia based their entire appeal on stopping illegal immigration and LOST, big-time, this week, relinquishing the State Senate to Democrats and giving up four seats in the House of Delegates. Suddenly, immigration issues don’t look like electoral gold for Republicans anymore. They never should have, but now there’s tangible evidence that it’s a short-term loser, as well as a long-term bit of electoral poison.

The GOP’s decision to go to Miami next month is a good one for the country. Let us hope it signals a new era for the Republican Party, one that ends both their demonization of immigrants and their strategy of blocking all common sense immigration reform legislation. In 2006 it was the House Republicans who blocked the big immigration reform package. In 2007 it was the Senate Republicans. Perhaps their admission of defeat will allow a new era where the two parties can come together and design a new 21st century immigration system that reflects the strong values of our great nation and meets the needs of the changing modern American economy.

I think there’s still a major split within the Republican Party about how to proceed, or whether they’ve gone so far out-demagoguing one another that their base will not allow them to return to a position besides demonization. Whatever the case, the December debate should be interesting, for purposes of chronicling flip-floppery.

Presidential Debates | 2 Comments »

Bringing the number to umpityteen.

In recent weeks, Republican presidential candidates have found time in their busy schedules to speak or debate before the Republican Jewish Coalition, “Value Voters,” conservative Floridians, even Wyoming Republicans, who hold virtually no sway in the primary race. They’ve also agreed to appear at the CNN/YouTube debate they at one point shunned.

But it appears that some GOP frontrunners are once again letting an opportunity to appear before African-American voters lapse…. The Congressional Black Caucus Institute announced in September that it had scheduled a debate for November 4 on Fox News for Republican presidential candidates. But a spokeswoman for the group confirmed to the Huffington Post that it has now been postponed, with no new date set. […]

Republican candidates have cited scheduling conflicts in resisting new proposed dates, [CBC Institute spokesperson Georgella Muirhead] said.

Yes, talking to white people does conflict with any date the CBC would set.

One of the biggest things forgotten in this reign of Bush is that the President of the United States is the President to all Americans. He doesn’t pick and choose his constituents. We’ve seen that these Republican pretenders to the throne have no desire to talk with very large sections of the population. Not just no interest in their concerns - no desire to even TALK to them. It’s a sad day for the Grand Old Party, which is building walls and gates around themselves so they don’t have to interact with the rabble. The problem is that what left inside is inevitably too small to be a ruling party any longer.

Presidential Debates, Candidates | 2 Comments »

As you may recall, John McCain put out an ad entirely based on a pre-scripted line used in a recent Fox News debate, prompting Fox News to send a cease and desist letter to McCain’s campaign demanding that he not violate their copyright. It didn’t take too much digging to discover that plenty of other campaigns, like Rudy Giuliani’s and Mitt Romney’s, were using Fox News footage all over their websites. So Fox News was forced to apply their standard fairly and bar all Republican candidates from using their footage in any capacity. A tiny crack of sunshine from reporters who raised an eyebrow to the initial McCain letter forced a shift in Fox News’ attempt to tilt the playing field. That’s something to file away and remember for later.

Presidential Debates, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney | No Comments »

OK, this one is hilarious.

So John McCain’s writers came up with a decent line for last week’s Republican debate, basically calling Hillary Clinton a dirty hippie, and the crowd ate it up. Deciding to press their luck, McCain turned the debate clip into a TV ad, using 19 seconds of footage from the debate (and a really bad 60s knock-off music cue).

One thing though. Fox News would like a word…

Fox News Channel confirms that it has ordered the campaign of Senator John McCain to cancel its new ad featuring a clip of him at last Sunday’s debate, which was sponsored by Fox News. The news network prohibits candidates from using debate clips in their political advertisements […]

…the spot prominently features the Fox News logo in the corner of the screen. Of course, campaigns use debate clips from time to time to the anger of the networks, and they do not tend to mind the extra publicity these clips bring to their ads. But Fox News officials say they are taking this matter seriously.

Based on what I know about these matters (and I’ve dealt with a fair bit of this), Fox probably has a case that McCain can’t use their logos and footage in a commercial spot promoting his campaign. Their lawyers certainly think so. Normally, the networks don’t mind the free publicity. But most networks aren’t run by Rudy Giuliani’s former media consultant.

It’s entirely possible, of course, that Fox News tried to call the campaign HQ to tell them not to run the ad, but McCain didn’t have the cash to keep the phones running. And he’ll probably need to pass the hat for the $500 needed to pay an editor to blur out the logos.

UPDATE: They’ve now recut the ad.

Presidential Debates, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani | No Comments »

Republicans debated in Orlando, Florida tonight on FOX News.

Soren Dayton liveblogged the debate.

Rett Hatcher of race42008.com posted a few early reactions from conservative blogs, including RedState and the National Review’s Campaign Spot.

Redstate:

Tonight’s GOP debate was truly the Huckabee and McCain show. Huck demonstrated the same smooth, articulate, can-sell-snake-oil-to-a-merchant demeanor that has propelled him to where he is now: one of the Big Five that actually deserves to still be attending these debates

[…]
NRO:

Mike Huckabee: After the FRC summit, he’s the social conservative choice, and if he gets the nomination, Hillary won’t know what hit her. This guy can sell ice to Eskimos. Kept his momentum, and played against his “the funny one” typecasting with his argument, “there’s nothing funny about Hillary Clinton as Commander in Chief.” [emphasis added]

The unifying theme: Mike Huckabee has a smooth talkin’, car salesman-like quality to him — and we like that!

Republican obsession over Senator Hillary Clinton (D-New York) continued tonight. GOP candidates (and the conservative moderators) have essentially declared the Democratic nomination over as they mentioned her name 27 times and never uttered the names of her fellow Democratic candidates. Not once.

Speaking of the Republican candidates and Hillary, Rep. Ron Paul argued that he is to the left of the junior senator from New York on Iraq.

MSNBC’s Erin McPike wonders just how important Iraq is to FOX News:

Just asking: Was the only mention of Iraq so far (with just twenty minutes left) the question posed to Ron Paul about his opposition to the war and the similarities/differences with Hillary?

To be fair, I missed the first 15 minutes so I cannot say unequivocally, but I can only recall it being brought up tangentially or in relation to other foreign policy questions.

Here are a few clips from the debate worth watching.

Republicans in attendance boo the American people: Ron Paul cited polling that shows over 70 percent of Americans want the to begin withdrawing U.S. forces.

Senator McCain came away with probably the most memorable line from the debate.

Presidential Debates | No Comments »

Watch the debate live on FOX News from Orlando, Florida and join the discussion in the comments below.

One of the highlights is that former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson was the “single biggest obstacle to tort reform in the Senate.”

The Democratic Party is running a fact check of the debate here.

Presidential Debates | 24 Comments »

Matt covered a little of this, but it was truly astonishing to see the Republican nominees so completely out of touch on the economy yesterday. Steven Pearlstein offers the definitive takedown in The Washington Post:

…for two hours yesterday, the nine white men who would be president were each peddling the Big Lie that the only way to ensure economic growth is by cutting all the taxes ever created — and when you’re finished with that, cutting them some more.

Two hours, nine candidates, each one vowing to slash federal spending, but only one (Mitt Romney) able to mention a program whose funding he would cut (some advanced technology program).

Two hours, nine candidates and not one with anything to offer to millions of Americans now facing foreclosure on their houses in what is shaping up as the worst housing crisis since the Great Depression.

Two hours, nine candidates, each acknowledging that something needs to be done to rein in entitlement spending, but only one (Fred Thompson) willing to offer a concrete suggestion for doing it (indexing Social Security benefits to increases in cost of living, not wages).

Two hours, nine candidates, and lots of debate about whether globalization has been good or bad, but only one (John McCain) with anything fresh to offer to workers who are the losers from free trade (wage insurance for displaced older workers).

Two hours, nine candidates, every one professing his support for the right of workers to form a union, but not one willing to acknowledge that that right no longer exists because of rampant employer intimidation.

Two hours, nine candidates, but only one (Mike Huckabee) willing to draw the connection between growing disenchantment with the economy, widening income inequality and the obscene pay packages of chief executives and hedge fund managers.

The truth is that this has become a major problem for the GOP. Just like nobody believes the President when it comes to Iraq, nobody believes the party when it comes to all their happy talk on the economy. Fred Thompson was the worst offender at the debate, calling the economy “the greatest story never told.” Americans, who pay their own bills and look at their own finances, don’t agree (h/t Steve Benen):

A growing number of people say the economy is the nation’s top problem, with the less educated among the most worried, an Associated Press-Ipsos poll showed Tuesday.

Yet even with a credit crunch and soft housing market, economic angst remains well behind war and domestic issues among the public’s chief concerns, according to survey results.

Given an open-ended opportunity to name the major problem facing the U.S., 15 percent volunteered the economy. That was six percentage points more than named it when the AP-Ipsos poll last asked the question in July.

“They talk about a big surge in Iraq; well, there hasn’t been a big surge over here,” said Sadruddin El-Amin, 55, a truck driver in Hanahan, S.C., who named the economy as the top problem. “The job market isn’t getting any better, not for the working class.”

Since the only economic solution any of these guys can think of is tax breaks, and we couldn’t possibly have had more tax breaks than we have over the past 6 years, the well is dry on ideas. So they have to spin this idea that the economy is robust, which it is - for hedge fund managers and the ultra-rich. But more and more people are falling behind, and magic tax cuts aren’t helping. So all they have left is to either lie about how good things are, or scare the public into thinking that spending is freakishly out of control (like claiming that the Medicare prescription drug benefit costs $60 TRILLION more than it actually does).

The problem is, there are no answers. Just empty platitudes. Such is the GOP circa 2007.

Presidential Debates, Fred Thompson | 2 Comments »