Home > Political Insider > Archives > 2006 > October > 15 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USEyes west and south, please — away from D.C.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The gay marriage crisis has passed. It’s time to worry about the fight over illegal immigration.
No, not that fight — not in Washington. Out there — in New Mexico, where 150 Georgia boys and girls in national guard uniforms stand in the hot sun, watching the U.S. border.
Two years ago, Republicans rode to glory on dozens of statewide referendums to ban same-sex unions. In Georgia, the state GOP seized the House, completing their grasp of power. Nationally, President Bush’s re-election victory was widely credited to “values voters.�
But this is 2006. Values voters are disenchanted, their enthusiasm sapped by any number of things: the Jack Abramoff scandal, Iraq, even the Mark Foley affair. In Georgia, many evangelical conservatives remain emotionally flattened by the summer defeat of Ralph Reed in the primary for lieutenant governor.
Something is needed to stir Republican blood. And so in color brochures, on TV, on radio, and in speeches, in races for the state Legislature, Congress, governor, and lieutenant governor, immigration has become the topic of choice.
You’ll remember this from Gov. Sonny Perdue: “It’s simply unacceptable for people to sneak into the country illegally on Thursday, obtain a government-issued ID on Friday, head for the welfare office on Friday and go to vote on Tuesday.�
Last month, many thought that statement a stray one-liner. Now it’s clear that it was an introduction.
Up in northeast Georgia, state Sen. Nancy Schaefer is running for re-election. She is the most vulnerable Republican incumbent in the Senate, and the Legislature’s most prominent advocate of conservative Christian causes.
But on her campaign web site, topping her list of issues is illegal immigration. She and two other Republican legislators have just gotten back from inspecting Georgia troops in Columbus, New Mexico, right across from Palomas, Chihuahua in Mexico. It’s just possible that a few pictures from their visit will be used in campaign brochures.
“It’s the No. 1 issue in my district,� Schaefer said.
“Everywhere you go, that’s what the Republican party is saying,� said Carol Jackson, the Democrat trying to oust Schaefer. “They’ve got nothing else to talk about.�
Another example: In House District 29, Democratic incumbent Alan Powell of Hartwell faces Republican Mike Griffin. Griffin is a local pastor and executive director of Ten Commandments-Georgia, a group dedicated to seeing the biblical laws on display in public buildings across the state.
Griffin has put out his first TV ad, funded by the state GOP. His issues are jobs, education, and “Georgia’s tough stance on illegal immigration.� He’s sent out a mailer, also paid for by the state party, featuring troops with binoculars on one side, and shadowy figures climbing a corrugated wall on the other.
There’s more to come in other races. We’ve come across a pair of photos destined for GOP brochures, of a Mexican bus station. The wall lists its destinations: Atlanta, Dalton, Gainesville, Rome, and las Carolinas.
Immigration may seem like a dicey choice for Republicans.
The failure of the Republican-controlled Congress to handle the issue, and the unpopularity of Bush’s solution for the Hispanic influx, are major ingredients in the national GOP malaise.
But by pointing at the troops — always a visually impressive thing to do — and at a largely symbolic piece of legislation passed by the General Assembly this year, Republicans hope to persuade their disaffected base that the GOP ticket in Georgia is filled with nothing but people on their side.
In other words, Washington outsiders.
Comments
Commenting is now closed for this entry.
By David Franklin
October 16, 2006 11:21 AM | Link to this
If State Senator Nancy Schaefer is truly a “Christian”—I want no part of her Christianity in regard to “the least of these” so-called illegal immigrants that the real Christian President George W. Bush wants to deal with. Nancy Schaefer has already lost the abortion battle with her Republican Party’s approval through its FDA of the over the counter 72 hour birth control pill to stop fertilization. Nancy Schaefer is one of the biggest hypocrites in regard to family values I have ever seen. I and countless scores in her northeast mountain district that are really Christian and not hypocrites are aware of her duplicity, lunacy, and sympathy with Scientology! No longer she is on the Republican’s most endangered list—she is C-R-A-Z-Y as Patsy Cline said it best!
By David Franklin
October 16, 2006 11:24 AM | Link to this
To the other idiot running on the 10 Commandment issue—read the Old Testament—there are 613 Commandments in God’s Holy Word there! JUdge Roy Moore in Alabama couldn’t get that through his thick skull and was as humiliated in Alabama as Ralphie Reed was in Georgia!
By David franklin
October 16, 2006 11:40 AM | Link to this
Also in regard to Sen. Schaefer’s anti-Christian illegal immigrant policy —both Christians and Republicans—-Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush gave and want to continue to give these fine people clemency. Wonder what boat Schaefer’s ancestors dropped off of in this nation of immigrants as president Bush so rightly calls us? Give me Reagan and Bush anyday over this Schaefer nut in the State Senate.
By NoAmericanTaliban
October 16, 2006 12:22 PM | Link to this
I see crimes commited all the time with no enforcement. Where is the outrage over the folks that hire the illegals and the fact that they are never prosecuted. The politicians in charge have given companies a ‘get out of jail’ card & amnesty to boot. They feel entitled to hire the cheapest labor and not pay social security & medicare taxes for these employees. Guess who will have to pay for that in the end. If you don’t like illegals being here then blame the companies that hire them & the politicians that protect them. The same politicians that claim to be tough on crime. Over 400,000 illegals in GA over the last 4 years alone. Not one employer sent to jail. Until the illegal hiring practice problem is addressed illegals will continue to flood the US. But this is typical of the christo-fascists that need issues of hate to unite their base. Something Jesus would never do.
By David Franklin
October 16, 2006 1:02 PM | Link to this
No American Taliban—Christo-Fascists is a great word for these people who either hate illegals like the Christo-Fascists hated Jews and the Christo-Fascists who hire them without paying a decent wage or offer health care to these workers. Shame shame—-something Jesus would have never ever done—yet these Schaefer types say they are Christian—yeah like Hitler was one too!