Choose or lose: NumbersUSA, the candidates, and immigration
You know how I feel about the GOP’s open borders drag queens. Roy Beck of the grass-roots immigration watchdog, NumbersUSA, weighs in with an Iowa caucus-day e-mail missive today on the presidential race and immigration. GOP Rep. Duncan Hunter wins the group’s highest overall rating, and deservedly so. Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney earn the next-highest rating. Every Democrat gets a bottom-of-the-barrel rank. Beck shares interesting analysis of the GOP front-runners and divulges details of his conversation with Rep. Tom Tancredo:
All polls for several weeks have shown Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-Ark.) and Gov. Mitt Romney (R-Mass.) far ahead of all others in the Republican contest.
Neither is in the top two of immigration-reduction candidates (that would be HUNTER & THOMPSON). But I do rank them No. 3 and No. 5 of the 14.
Immigration has been a hot issue among them, with the two trading charges about each other’s weaknesses on the issue.
Many immigration-reduction activists and groups have weighed in with their own interpretations of these two governors’ records and their sometimes confusing statements about their immigration positions.
Both Huckabee and Romney have been difficult to rate. Their statements to the media have often been inconsistent and have sometimes sounded contradictory. Neither has taken a public pledge that is iron-clad against any kind of amnesty for illegal aliens.
…
No candidate — not even Rep. Tom Tancredo — has beaten the immigration issue drum more loudly or more often than Mitt Romney this past year. He has continually advertised on the issue, particularly pointing out the weak immigration positions of John McCain and Rudy Giuliani. He has raised the issue repeatedly in candidate forums and debates.
Romney deserves as much credit as Tancredo in the fact that immigration is the No. 1 issue among Republican voters in Iowa and one of the top issues for Republican voters nationwide.
He is obviously much, much better than McCain and Giuliani who are terrible on immigration. But there have been lots of doubts among immigration activists about how good he really is on the issue.
The amnesty issue has been the most obviously troubling.
Before talking about just how troubling, I’ll note that you will find on the GRID that we now rate his amnesty position as “GOOD.” I upgraded it after a long talk with Congressman Tancredo last weekend and after Romney’s latest immigration ads stating forcefully his opposition to amnesty in contrast to McCain’s positions.
You deserve to know about what Tancredo told me. But first let me talk about why so many people — including me — have mistrusted Romney’s anti-amnesty commitment.
After stating for months that he is opposed to amnesty, he went on NBC in December and let Tim Russert tie him in knots on the issue. Romney sounded defensive about his positions, as if he didn’t really want the elites of the nation to think him hard-hearted enough to send millions of illegal aliens back home.
…
Good grief! Good grief! Good grief! If you are going to run on this issue, get it down pat, speak clearly and with conviction, leaving no doubt where you stand. I’m a great lover of nuance in public policy, but …..
Romney’s staff — like the staff of many of the Presidential candidates in recent weeks — phoned me and tried to explain that the answers to Russert weren’t what they sounded like.
I sort of could see what the staffers were saying, but I couldn’t buy it. I didn’t know what to buy.
Then last weekend, I had my long phone visit with Congressman Tancredo, the man who started before the 9/11 atrocity and stood up and talked day after day, month after month in Washington DC when nobody else would and forced immigration onto the congressional agenda and eventually into the 2008 Presidential races.
I knew that Tancredo would never compromise on immigration. But when he announced his withdrawal from the Presidential race and then gave his endorsement to Romney I wondered if he had been somehow misled.
Here’s what Tancredo told me:
Before he gave his endorsement to Romney in Iowa on Dec. 20, 2007, the two met for nearly two hours. The main topic of the conversation was Romney’s confusing comments to Russert. Tancredo was drawn to Romney because of the way he had “Tancredoed” the immigration issue throughout the campaign so aggressively, but he had to have some answers.
“I said there is no way I will endorse you unless I get a satisfactory explanation about the Russert interview,” Tancredo told me. “I had the transcript in my hand. We went over everything.”
Of special concern to Tancredo was this part of Romney’s response to Russert: “But my view is that those 12 million who’ve come here illegally should be given the opportunity to sign up to stay here … ”
“I pushed him hard on the ‘to stay here’ phrase,” Tancredo said.
In the end, Tancredo said he was completely satisfied that Romney’s plan was a no-amnesty plan, even though it wasn’t exactly the plan he would have.
He said Romney has the idea that if illegal aliens will come forward and sign up they can get a card that will allow them to stay in the country legally for maybe six months, maybe a year, to give them time to wrap up their affairs, let their kids finish the school year and then move themselves and their families back to their home countries.
Everybody has to go home where they can sign up to come back if they otherwise qualify, according to Tancredo’s reporting on Romney, but they can’t have any special pathway or extra visas to do so.
All of that meets the definition of “no amnesty” and of “attrition through enforcement” that causes illegal aliens to go home over time, Tancredo felt.
“I told him that in return for my endorsement I didn’t want any position in his administration or any nice things said about me or anything at all for myself,” Tancredo said. “I said that what I had to have was a ‘guarantee on your word’ against any kind of amnesty and that the illegal aliens have to go back home. He gave me his word.”
It did not sound like Romney gave his word in order to get Tancredo’s endorsement but that he gave his word because that was his real stance on amnesty.
On the basis of Tancredo’s word and the fact that his account of Romney’s explanation also matches what Romney’s staffers have been telling me — and because of Romney’s aggressive new anti-amnesty advertising, I’ve given him a GOOD rating on amnesty, although I would much rather have done so on the basis of simple, unconfused statements directly from the candidate himself. We’ll keep watching.
Here’s Beck on Huckabee:
On the day of the Iowa Caucuses, I am giving Huckabee these overall ratings:
FAIR - In opposition to amnesty for illegal aliens and a plan for them to go back home without a special path or extra visas to return to the U.S.
GOOD - In having a detailed plan to stop future illegal immigration.
FAIR - In intentions to reduce overall legal immigration to protect American workers and communities from the costs of over-immigration.
BAD - In actual performance concerning immigration as governor…
…
Huckabee has an overall plan for preventing future illegal immigration and driving current illegal aliens out of the country that is excellent in most respects. And he has pledged to end the visa lottery and a considerable part of chain migration.But his amnesty promises lack the public intensity or clarity — or a Tancredo-like validation — to warrant anything better than a “fair” rating at this time.
In the end the rating that will matter when you vote is your own.
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Categories: 2008 campaign, Immigration
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Income tax elimination and shuttering the IRS are two real BIG incentives for voting Ron Paul. The report card doesn’t matter when these kind of accomplishments are achievable.
It is very important to realize that these are real lives being dealt w/. This kind of discerning compassion is appropriate as long as it is accompanied by deporting illegal criminals immediately.
I am growing frustrated with Iowa Republicans and their willingness to support a decidedly un-conservative candidate. Why the hell is Huckabee outpolling Fred, when Fred has better positions on everything! Are they allowing themselves to be led by the nose, or are they just not very conservative Republicans?
Maybe there is an intoxicating effect to the pork-laden ethanol fumes they are all breathing out there.
Huckabee is pandering to the evangelical base and it is working. I think he is a wolf draped in sheep’s clothing. I don’t think he is the right to lead this country.
Hunter ‘08!
lol tatters, I think you’re barking to the wrong audience here regarding Ron Paul…. sheesh.
Holy Carp with the Ron Paul again. You think Ronny boy can shut down the IRS or even change it? Might as well rebuild the Titanic, slam it into an iceberg and claim - this time she will not go down.
Anybody can stand strong on an issue that is a non-issue. The IRS is here to stay and no amount of “wanting” it to go away or saying you will fix it will make it so. Most of the candidates have a “fix it” plan. That is just pandering to peoples hopes that some day we will see change. You know like, election reform where candidates spend millions (hundreds of millions) for a job that pays less than half a million?
Anybody that wants a 9/11 denier for president needs to take a long hard look at RP. That is what he is about.
Ha! If RuPaul were to somehow become President, do you really think the Democrat Party is going to abandon the unionized big government tax agency that they love above all others? The instrument of social justice that is staffed by union-libs from top to bottom? Never going to happen.
That unachievable plank is not worth quitting on our security relationships with our allies around the world.
The USA must remain engaged globally against the jihad movement, there is no way in hell I will ever get behind a candidate who wants to quit protecting America and hope our unilateral good will will protect us. That is precisely why any Democrat is unacceptable.
The President of the United States is constitutionally obligated to protect and defend the Constitution itself, the people, territory and international interests of America. So, Ron Paul has an unconstitutional national defense policy platform.
He should leave the oath of the Presidency to someone who actually intends to carry it out.
@Brian72
Blame the evangelicals who could care less how conservative the candidate actually is.
Well-said Brian!
Iowa is self described as 45% Evangelical Christian and also self described as a Populist state , both of which explain the Huck strength.
More reasons why the test track states need to be moved out of Iowa and NH to more politically and ethnically representative states with broader issue bases and a voter base size that can be influenced by the opinion of one single modest size newspaper and who cant even come up with another group to moderate the debates.
The time for these two non representative states to play the part of king makers is to be thanked for their service and replaced is long overdue.
I suppose that’s it, in a nutshell. There must be enough Iowa Republicans whose priorities are as follows:
Christian
Republican
Charming
Funny
Supports Ethanol Socialism
Not Mormon
Not Southeastern
Conservative
Except for Duncan Hunter & Ron Paul (who is off base on everything else), all the Republicans have serious flaws on immigration. The question might be which one of them would be most susceptible to pressure of the sort that we saw this summer. In that sense, Romney might still be the best, even though I agree that, even, very recently, he has expressed what amounts to an amnesty position.
From his actions as Governor of Arkansas I have absolutely no faith in the Huckster to protect our borders. I have very little faith in the other RINOs (Romney, McCain, and Giuliani) to handle this critical issue to our nation’s security. Thompson will work, but my favorite on this issue is Duncan Hunter.
I don’t trust any of them on immigration (Well, any candidates that are likely to survive to February, that is).
This is an issue that falls on the shoulder of the people. When the people have finally had enough (which will be too late) then we’ll see some legislation backed by action.
And with this sellout so goes the GOP as far as I am concerned.
Ditto: Except with the whole “vote the name I recognize” mentality in this country, a 3rd party isn’t a viable option. You might as well vote demoncrat as vote 3rd party.
Not that I’ve seen any truly conservative 3rd party candidates either.
There’s a problem developing overall among conservatives; yes, immigration is hugely serious, but when dealing with senators and governors who have flip-flopped, we’re betting on pure theory and crossing our fingers with wishful thinking over the kind of leadership one can point to which has manifest, tangible results. Politicians say what they know their core constituents want to hear, and we’ve been duped time and time again over the years.
I say start with the candidates who have proven records of solid leadership and accomplishment as leaders - with manifest, tangible results you can see and know to be illustrations of what they can really do, instead of who has the best speech writers. That eliminates all senators and leaves us with 2 Governors and one Mayor, which is really how it should it unless we want to walk through this process with one foot in reality and the other in the land of wishful thinking.
Talk is not just cheap, it’s too cheap for poiticians - and too expensive for us once they’ve conned their way into office.
Anything other than supporting candidates with proven manifest results while in office is rolling the dice on truthfulness and a determination to keep to their promises regardless of mainstream pressure once they’re in office. I can’t imagine anyone gambling on a senator with any other options. It may be good enough for already misdirected democrats, but it shouldn’t be for us.
So who has the best record of tangible accomplishment - the things you can see and look at and understand. And let that be your guide - and don’t be duped by nimble speechwriters.
We all know that there is no perfectly right candidate(I have many moments of ambivalence myself),but we must keep in mind that there is at least one PERFECTLY WRONG candidate-and we all know who she is.I have expressed my opinion before that the conflict between Obama and Clinton is a sham,and that Obama is nothing more than a shill for Clinton.There is still time for conservatives to debate and disagree on who we want as POTUS,but on election day we had best be in agreement on one and only one,even if he is not our personal choice.While I’d like to see Hunter,who ever the GOP nominates is my choice over the Beast.
Can you imagine a President Ron Paul’s military boot camp? “Okay, people…the first thing we must learn, is to communicate to those foreign parties engaging in hostilities against us, that WE are not a threat. First, raise both your hands high over your heads, and keep them there. That’s it…we’re done! No one will hate us anymore, and they will leave us alone.”
I keep hoping the Republican party and the Conservatives will wake up and back Duncan Hunter. If you look into his considerable record, he is a man of action and has not changed his stance just to run for President. He is truly the ONLY true Republican/Conservative running in this crazy election!
Hunter & Tancredo were both great but in terms of overall record, I am fully convinced Romney has it and gets it. Tancredo’s endorsement was icing on the cake. I like the insights in this article.
I think the further we go along the more smoke and mirrors will be thrown up to confuse the voters on the illegal immigration issue.
I trusted Tancredo on Romney even though Mitts MTP interview was troubling and After reading Beck’s comment above I think thats right.
Any time a politician uses the same catch phrase over and over to describe their opponents you can bet that catch phrase applies the politician using it more than the those they’re spewing it at.
Usually its liberals who do it and this time is no exception other than he spouts scriptures in concert with his boomerang defamation.
Governor Huckabee, just because you carry a bible is no excuse for dishonesty nor for acting like a moonbat by playing every victim card Hillary ever did only more cowardly by hiding behind God all the despicable while you do it.
MM - busted in a lie?
Since my Rep Tancredo left, Hunter has been the top rated on immigration. But Thompson has been relatively close. Romney, on the other hand, has come up but still trails in terms of being right on immigration - and he’s not even close, much less 3rd. He’s ***4th***.
You’re you’re dead wrong about the ratings.
Here are the Actual Ratings. Now they are rated on issues - lets assign them points - negatives for crappy immigration stances, positiives for acceptable ones, and 0 for being so-so.
Abysmal = -3, Bad = -2, Poor = -1, Fair = 0, Good = 1, and Excellent = 2.
Tanc = +32, Negatives = 0 (perfect score)
Hunter = +25, Negatives = 0
Thompson = +19, Negatives = 1
Huckabee +11, Negatives = 4
Romney = +8, Negatives = 5
OK MM, now you see why I claim you are being biased against Thompson?
Huckabee, as much as it pains me to admit it, is BETTER than Romney on Immigration. He has less negatives and a higher total score.
And Thompson is far better then either of them on total scores and on negatives. Not quite Hunter, but definitely far better then Huck or Mitt.
Its right there in front of your eyes. Do the math.
The more accurate assessment is “Hunter is rated best, followed by Thompson. Huckabee and Romney trail.”
Equating him and Romney at is at best a misleading call, and at worst (if deliberate) disingenuous and dishonest.
Michelle if you are going to continue to be anti-Thompson, at least have the decency and honesty to come out and do so openly. If this was unintnetional, then perhaps you should stop and think and check yourself for bias before posting.
MM - Do the right thing. Correct yourself.
p.s. for reference:
Giuliani -13, neg = 10
McCain -16, neg = 9
(D) Chris Dodd -20, neg = 11
(D) Hillary -21, neg = 12
Yo slick, be a little more brainy than to throw the lie word around so carelessly.
Michelle has hardly been anti Fred so get you panties untwisted.
Either your a troll or you don’t have the respect for Michelle you should have in either case you’ve shown no class whatsoever.
Michelle deserves no respect when she throws words around as carelessly and one-sidedly as O’reilly does. She has bitten down hard on Politico’s lies - and republished them with comments that agree and further the deceptions.
So back up there chum. I showed you the numbers. I showed Michelle’s errors. I asked her to do the right thing and correct herself or apologise for the “unintentional” error. She has, as of late, clearly been Anti-Thompson, look a the unthinkingly reposted smear jobs from Politico, and her constant negative takes (unspported at many times) of nearly everything Thompson says or does. I have yet to see her retract what turned out to be utterly incorrect statements, not have I seen her apologize for posting what have turned out to be hit pieces. Corrects and?o apologies are called for is she has a shred of personal integrity.
She has done neither. She perpetuaates the lies and smears of others, injects her bias without admitting it, and never correct herself or apologizes. So what does that make Michelle?
Some would say a liar, others a dupe. I say she’s unaware of her bias and needs to look at herself and admit it - then fix it!
MM - wake up, you’re damaging your rep and HotAir’s as well with your refusal to admit errors and bias and that you were taken in by Politico’s repeated hoaxes and dirty tricks.
Do you want to ecome the Right’s version of Dan Rather?
Hat games. Non-denial denial. Shame!
Wake up Michelle!
Ordinary Coloradan
Nice try “Speakup” at turnign the argument to me.
The argument here is a series of blatently biased republishing of Politico hit-jobs and lies by MM. And her refusal to recant the lies and post the truth.
Accusing me of anything doesnt change that fact. Furthermore, I backed all my stuff up. MM posted innunendo and has not backed it up.
MM has been the one with “truth issues”. And she is the one with the public influence.
She still has not apologized for publishing the “Thompson Quits” BS.
So there you have it. Maybe you ought to cut the hero worship and see the MM is starting to show some very personal flaws in character when it comes to telling the truth about some presidential candidates.
The case has been made elsehwere, its not just me. For instance, I read a comment on “Rantburg” (a righty snarky news site, highly recommended) that called her a “stupid b*****” for her repeating the politico smear.
I would not go that far - but I do think its time Michelle apologized and starting thinking before she posts yet another Politico smear job, or unwarranted snide remarks about Thompson yet again.
Its the right thing to do. And all I see from MM is silence in all the cases. That in itself speaks volumes about her character and honesty, or lack thereof in this case.
MM - as a fellow Catholic, need I remind you that sins of omission are sins none the less? Bearing False Witness ring a bell?
Or do you only wear your Catholicism on your sleeve when convenient?
You are a troll, Michelle was right not to feed you and neither shall I, again.