Republicans Eat Their Young!

Orders have just come down from Kos to post this. I have no choice:

Daily Kos: RI-Sen: NRSC goes racist: Scaaaaary brown people are invading Rhode Island. I wonder what "moderate" Lincoln Chafee thinks about this NRSC fear-mongering. Apparently, it's bad that Laffey, a real wingnut mind you, didn't put Mexicans in concentration camps as mayor of Cranston. As an aside, that's the Republican Party running ads against Republican Steve Laffey...

Nobody who is an immigrant or the descendant of immigrants has any business voting Republican. Nobody.

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Kos follows up:

Daily Kos: RI-Sen: NRSC puts everything into rescuing Chafee: Not only is the cash-strapped NRSC spending millions running racist ads against fellow Republican Stephen Laffey in an effort to rescue the flailing incumbent Lincoln Chafee (R), but they are sending all the bodies they can as well:

Democrats were right in 2004: the Republicans have adopted a draft. It only applies, however, to party workers employed by state victory committees in the east of the Mississippi. For many it will be worse than boot camp. They are to be sent to Rhode Island to try to rescue Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee's re-election campaign in the September 12th primary.

Workers start arriving Friday and will be charged with sorting out the mess that Washington operatives believe is the Chafee campaign. First task may be to get Republican voters to forget Chafee's erratic performance in the last two of the four broadcast debates between the incumbent and his lively challenger, Cranston mayor Stephen Laffey.

Scores of GOP workers will begin arriving this week and stay through the open primary as they search for and then try to persuade some of the 70,000 registered Republicans and several hundred thousand independent voters eligible to participate in the open primary to support Chaffee. Draftees, many of whom may be more compatible with Laffey, will be paid by their home-state committees. Food and lodging expenses will be picked up by Republican National Committee.

Keep in mind what this means: assuming this report by the Hotline is accurate, the NRSC is pulling valuable workers in important battleground states like Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania for a full two weeks.

They are weakening their effort on behalf of weak candidates to rescue one of their incumbents from a primary battle. As the Hotline blog notes, some of those NRSC's staffers won't be happy to go and work for Chafee and against Laffey. It would've been like the DSCC forcing staffers to abandon their posts in hot contested races to go work for Lieberman and against Lamont.

Redstate's Mike Krempasky is already seeing red (pardon the pun) over the NRSC's anti-Laffey spending.

This is what your money is being spent on - attack ads on behalf of Lincoln Chafee. Give me a break. We're fighting on enough fronts to keep the Senate - and this is what Liddy Dole sees as a priority. No wonder their fundraising is in the tank. If Republicans want to make a real statement about their committment to winning elections, they ought to yank her BEFORE election day. Period.

Krempasky wrote that before the NRSC redirected half of their national staff to Rhode Island. I'm sure he'll be particularly pleased at that bit of news.

Comments

[Andrew Donoho]

The amazing thing about the Republican effort for Chafee is that he is a RINO (Republican In Name Only). There have been significant sums of money spent by Norquist et.al. to weaken Chafee for a Republican challenger. They are reaping what part of their party sowed.

Bless them for their pogroms against insufficiently 'pure' Republicans. Checks and balances may be restored by their unbalanced behavior.

Andrew

[Emma Anne]

Like Andrew I am finding this very odd. The NRSC must think they will lose the seat if Chaffee is knocked out, *and* that the seat is crucial.

[andres]

"Nobody who is an immigrant or the descendant of immigrants has any business voting Republican. Nobody."

That's the spirit. Of course, given that all homo sapiens are descended from African-originating immigrants, you just cut the Republican vote to natives of Kenya/Tanzania. I'm sure they'll be pleased.

[sm]

My experience of immigrants to the US and Canada is that even if they had a hard time, they can easily fall back on the notion that new immigrants "aren't like us" and can strongly resent the easier ride newer migrants are supposedly getting.

[s9]

"Nobody who is an immigrant or the descendant of immigrants has any business voting Republican. Nobody."

Native Americans are free to make up their own minds, of course.

[derrida derider]

sm, that's a very common phenomenon. Here in Australia the most firmly anti-immigrant groups are the older English, Italian and Greek groups. And now there are signs that the Vietnamese have been here long enough to look down on fleeing Afghans and Iraqis.

Most immigrants want to slam the door behind them - it's very human. It puts you in mind of the dictum "A developer is someone who wants to build their cabin in the woods this year. A conservationist is someone who built theirs last year".

[rea]

"Native Americans are free to make up their own minds"

The "native American" part of my ancestry immigrated across the Bering Straits a few tens of thousands of years ago, so not even them!

[save_the_rustbelt]

I don't really care what color they are, we have 7 - 11 million people in this country with fake ID and either phony or stolen Social Security numbers.

That is a legitimate problem for numerous reasons, and I'm certain this makes me a racist for saying so.

(PS: On a technical note, a lot of stolen SS numbers apparently now belong to children. If you get a credit card application or something else hinky addressed to your 2-year-old, do some checking - quick.)

[andres]

"I don't really care what color they are, we have 7 - 11 million people in this country with fake ID and either phony or stolen Social Security numbers. That is a legitimate problem for numerous reasons, and I'm certain this makes me a racist for saying so."

It does not make you a racist, but it does make you a grade-A jerk if you also think that illegal immigration can be reduced by stricter prohibition combined with bigger military muscle. Try thinking of ways to reduce the need for foreigners to immigrate here and you'll have a better approach to the problem.

[Tushar D]

>>Try thinking of ways to reduce the need for foreigners to immigrate here and you'll have a better approach to the problem.

If the US economy goes down in the dumps, immigrants will stop coming. You don't want that, do you?

[andres]

Good point Tushar. But if it makes Zarkov, rustbelt, and all the other anti-immigration shills stop whining, it may even be worth it ;-)

[DCM]

andres

- you'll have a better approach to the problem. -

There is no “need” for foreigners to immigrate here. There is a great desire of many to immigrate here and a number of people here also want certain people to immigrate, primarily, I think, to hold down the cost of labor, be it IT engineers or dish boys and gardeners.

It also strikes me that many politicians, bloggers and commentors oversimplify most problems, partly to justify their “clever” points.

Your “Try thinking of ways to reduce the need for foreigners to immigrate here” is an attempt to say that if we made the rest of the world a wealthier, healthier, more peaceful and free world, that some of the foreigners coming to the US (legal and illegal) would opt to stay home or go somewhere else. That is all good and nice, and I agree that we should attempt to made the rest of the world a wealthier, healthier, more peaceful and free world, for that reason and many others. However, we must recognize that there are many people that do not want us to make the world a wealthier, healthier, more peaceful and free world and that process will take years if not hundred of years or maybe never.

In the meantime, and at the same time, we need to do additional things to solve the immigration problems that we face. We do need to enforce our laws and keep illegal immigrants out of our country. This enforcement must be directed at both the illegal immigrants and those who hire them once they are here. Illegal immigrants should be arrested and shipped back across the border. Employees need to suffer economically for hiring low cost illegal immigrants.

If by “bigger military muscle”, you mean using force to patrol and defend our borders from invasion by illegal immigrants, then we definitely need to use bigger military muscle. We need an extensive border fence. Will a fence keep all illegal immigrants out? No, but it will greatly reduce the number and will allow our border patrol manpower to be more effective. Will a fence “send the wrong message”? No. A fence will send the right message, i.e., we enforce our laws and, if you want to immigrate to the US, go to your local US consulate and apply for immigration.

There are a number of other steps we need to take, but to many of us are not concerned about the best interests of the US, but are only interested in playing each issue for the immediate perceived self-benefit. Democrats are abdicating advocating any responsible solutions to the immigration problem, in large part, because they think the illegal immigrants will vote for Democrats (either before or after they become citizens) and the Republicans are abdicating advocating any responsible solutions to the immigration problem, in large part, because they thing the illegal immigrants will hold down labor costs and that the Democrats may succeed in making it into a political issue against them.

[Joe Lammers]

"Republicans are abdicating advocating any responsible solutions to the immigration problem, in large part, because they thing the illegal immigrants will hold down labor costs and that the Democrats may succeed in making it into a political issue against them."

What evidence, if any, do you have that a goal of the Republican party is to "hold down labor costs?" I realize some business owners would like to do so, but I haven't seen Republican politicians pushing this line.