Lying in two languages
In France, the nation conservatives love to hate, when a lousy and punitive labor law is answered with massive protests, they drop it. It's called listening to the effected population, a staple of a functioning Democracy.
With the Republicans it's different. When a mean-spirited bill to criminalize all undocumented workers -- threatens to send them to prison for 6 months for just being here -- is met with huge protests, they just lie and say "he did it!" pointing to the Democrats. But they do it in Spanish. I mean, who speaks both languages? Who'd ever find out?
Turns out plenty of people do. A new Republican smear campaign includes this line: "Harry Reid played politics and blocked our leaders from working together. Reid's Democrat allies voted to treat millions of hard-working immigrants ... as felons."
Except it was the Republican "Sensenbrenner Bill" that sought to treat immigrants as felons. Which, you know, makes that last statement less than accurate.
The Republicans finally opposed their own bill due not only to fear of a latino electoral backlash but due to this little-mentioned consequence of criminalizing immigrants: the cost of public legal counsel, from digby:
the Republicans' stated reasons for trying to withdraw it were hardly because it was wrong to use such harsh methods, only that it would cost too much and would allow the "aliens" to have a lawyer and a fair trial.And one final note. With all the limpid focus-tested rhetoric out there, I was surprised to find myself actually moved by a passage in the Reid/Pelosi statement -- especially the first line:
"We are a better country than that. We must work together for real, bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform that protects our borders, honors our values, and that we can all be proud of. The Sensenbrenner bill fails miserably and is antithetical to our basic values as a country. We will continue to vigorously oppose it."(DailyKos, Hullabaloo)
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