re: #159 HappyWarrior

I feel bad. I don’t want to beat him up over this but I am sorry DF it was a lame excuse.

Of course its lame, the entire way sane presidential candidates have to tiptoe to avoid online mob attacks is lame. But what’s the choice? If someone like Marco Rubio refuses to pay the rhetorical equivalent of Danegeld, the online Danes will give him an electronic version of the Blood Eagle.

And to a great extent, this really is the fault of the Republican Party leadership, whose actions towards its base on the matter of illegal immigrants for too long has been making gestures but not taking notable action or “Funning the Bozo”, as my mother calls such tactics. This is both at the behest of business donors who want cheap labor and also to avoid the media criticism that action would prompt, for measures that would combat illegal immigration will in some cases have to be harsh.

In that way, illegal immigration, like drugs in Glen Fry’s song Smuggler’s Blues, is something where “They say they’re gonna stop it, but it doesn’t go away.” And Republican officials’ attempts to have it both ways has won them no points with Latinos and earned them the scorn of their own base. And I’m not sure what the way out of this mess is for the GOP, but until it gets out people like Marco Rubio will continue to have to DERP to avoid getting savaged by voters who don’t trust them.