Rim Country Gazette: Eye roll at the media: Apparently something vast majority favor is a 'hard turn left'

Friday, January 19, 2018

Eye roll at the media: Apparently something vast majority favor is a 'hard turn left'

NEW YORK, NY - AUGUST 15: Dozens of immigration advocates and supporters attend a rally outside of Trump Tower along Fifth Avenue on August 15, 2017 in New York City. The activists were rallying on the five-year anniversary of President Obama's executive order, DACA - Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, protecting undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. Security throughout the area is high with President Donald Trump in residency at the tower, his first visit back to his apartment since his inauguration. Numerous protests and extensive road closures are planned for the area. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

In one recent poll, nearly 80 percent of Americans—including 64 percent of Republicans—said that they not only want Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients to stay in the U.S., they want them on a path to citizenship. Shit, even Fox News polling says these young people should be able to stay in the only country they’ve ever known as home. So why in the world is the New York Times labeling advocating for something the vast majority of Americans want “a hard turn left”?

The next presidential election is nearly three years away, but in the Capitol the race is already unfolding, with no fewer than six senators — Mr. [Cory] Booker and Ms. [Kamala] Harris, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Kirsten E. Gillibrand of New York and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota — eyeing the Democratic nomination in 2020, with each angling to get to the left of the others. [...]

Five of the six presidential hopefuls have long said they would not vote for any spending bill that does not include protection for hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children, who have been shielded from deportation by an Obama-era program that Mr. Trump rescinded. (The sixth, Ms. Klobuchar, also voted against the last short-term spending bill.)

But some red-state Democrats like Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia (a state Mr. Trump carried with nearly 68 percent of the vote) are equivocating, clearly worried that Democrats could take the blame for a shutdown if the spending bill does not pass.

Oh, please—who controls the White House, the House of Representatives, and the Senate? If Republicans are unable to govern despite having the White House and the majority of seats in Congress, that’s for them to figure out. And probably because it would topple this claim that protecting Dreamers is “a cause célèbre on the left,” the Times fails to mention that at least three Congressional Republicans so far—Sen. Lindsey Graham, Congressman Carlos Curbelo, and Congresswoman Illeana Ros-Lehtinen—have said they will oppose the spending bill because it omits a DACA fix.

Not to mention that the DREAM Act is a bipartisan bill. The question is, why aren’t more of them putting people over party? Standing up for immigrant youth isn’t a remotely controversial issue. This is not a partisan issue. This is an American issue. And one that must be settled now.