Sean Hannity: immigration reformer? (photo: John Amis/AP)
12 November 12
Bravo to the GOP for entertaining an amnesty program for undocumented immigrants. But it won’t make a difference at the ballot box until the party stops its race baiting.
ell, it's all very touching now that Sean Hannity
wants the Republicans to embrace immigration reform, isn't it? And
Charles Krauthammer, bless him, calling on the GOP to repeat the word "amnesty"
as if it were some tantric mantra of salvation. Look, I think it would be great if Republicans would vote for a bill including a path to citizenship for people who came here illegally. But if they think they don't have a long list of other problems, these people are just delusional. And the list of problems starts with the phrase made famous by Mitt Romney, a little phrase perfumed enough in racial code to have raised a wry smile on Jesse Helms's face.
Let's travel back in time to Romney's infamous NAACP speech, the one he gave (in my view)
basically so that he could be booed by a black audience in order to
impress his skeptical base. That was July 11. The next day, he spoke at a
fundraiser in Hamilton, Mont.-I'm just guessing here, but it was
probably a pretty melanin-deprived room. And he told them:
"When I mentioned I am going to get rid of Obamacare they weren't
happy, I didn't get the same response. That's OK, I want people to know
what I stand for and if I don't stand for what they want, go vote for
someone else, that's just fine.
But I hope people understand this, your
friends who like Obamacare, you remind them of this, if they want more
stuff from government tell them to go vote for the other guy-more free
stuff."
The superstitious mind pondering any question latches
on to the first answer that is both a) plausible and b) supportive of
its darkest suspicions. And so, just as some in the olden days concluded
that a woman was guilty of being a witch if she didn't cry when she was
accused, today's conservatives took to Romney's analysis like Donald
Trump to styling mousse. Of course! It explained everything! These
people-or, to put it in the usual way, "those people"-just want
government to take care of them.
Then came the famous 47 percent video. Remember what
Romney was asked that occasioned his infamous comments? He was asked
what he would do to convince Americans that "you've got to take care of
yourself" instead of depending on the government. Remember that Romney
said he'll "never convince" the 47 percent to live that way. And
remember, finally, that after David Corn made the video public, the
overwhelming majority of conservative pundits and thinkers, far from
shuddering at Romney's remarks, urged him to take the argument public
and run on it.
How out of it can millions of Americans be? Do they
really have no idea that they're talking about the people who, generally
speaking, are the hardest-working people in the country? What exact
"stuff" do they think comes "free" to people who pick lettuce, bus
tables, clean their offices after they've left for the day, mulch their
perennial beds?
They are completely out of their minds.
The statistics tell us that a lot of these workers-I
mean people who earn less than the median wage of $48,000-don't get much
free stuff at all. Many aren't offered employer-sponsored insurance.
Virtually all pay a higher share of their income in taxes than most
millionaires, because even though some of them don't pay income tax, the
payroll tax socks them pretty good. And yes, maybe they can get their
kids free care at a clinic, but thank God for that, unless we want to
start blaming children for their parents' socioeconomic status (which of
course some do).
Or maybe the Romney people would say, "No, no, we
don't mean people who work hard, they're OK. We just mean the moochers."
But what exactly do they mean by that? People on welfare? That's 4.6
million people. I'm sure you can do this math yourself, but that's not
exactly 47 percent of the country. It's 1.5 percent. Are they really so
divorced from reality that the difference between 1.5 percent and 47
percent is just a rounding error?
And there was Bill O'Reilly on election night carrying
on about how the results proved that most Americans want dependency.
It's madness. And it's racist. I'm certain O'Reilly doesn't even hear
that it's racist. And not just O'Reilly, but the whole cohort-no ability
whatsoever to put themselves in the position of the office cleaners or
garden mulchers, so many of whom are black or brown or immigrants, and
imagine how it sounds to be accused of freeloading when you're breaking
your back, often serving white people who just ignore you, to try to
support your children.
And they don't even hear the racial paternalism, I'm
sure, in the stock assertion that Latinos "should be natural
Republicans," or however the phrase goes, because they believe in God
and family and traditional values. Putting aside the fact that their
stupid assumptions are often wrong-exit polls showed that two thirds of Latinos
support legalized abortion-this notion is both puerile and designed to
reassure conservatives that they don't really have to work that hard.
So sure, path to citizenship. Bravo, right. Although
let us note that just because Hannity and Krauthammer and a few others
say something doesn't remotely mean that the Republican Party is going
to do it. As I wrote the other day,
the party will undoubtedly hope they can fool people with cynical
symbolic gestures before it succumbs to reconsideration of actual
policy. But if conservatives want people of color to take them
seriously, they'd better start taking people of color seriously, and
that's something that will take a very, very, very long time.
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