They Really Are Unbelievable
The latest lie by the Republican party leadership really takes the cake. Faced with an incredible backlash by Hispanics for their draconian House legislation on illegal immigrants and realizing that, after making great strides in 2004 to make gains among Hispanic voters, they are facing the potential for a motivated Hispanic bloc to turn out en masse against Republicans this November. Already facing an uphill battles, Republicans realized that they needed to change this perception and fast. So here's what they came up with:
Here's what happened: Late last year GOP Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI)
wrote and sponsored a bill that makes illegal immigration a felony. It's
currently a civil offense.After he got the bill out of committee, it caused
such a hue and cry that Sensenbrenner tried to backpedal, and offered an
amendment to soften his language, and make illegal immigration just a
misdemeanor crime. (That's still worse than a civil offense.)
Over 190 Democrats joined 65 Republicans in voting against that
amendment because they didn't think it should be criminalized at all.
The bill went to the floor with the felony language included; it passed
on overwhelming Republican support.
The RNC wouldn't return my calls, and Senate Majority Leader Bill
Frist's (R-KY) office was closed. When I reached a spokesman for House Speaker
Dennis Hastert (R-IL), he told me that the GOP claim was based on the
committee's vote on the amendment: "It was based on the 191 dems voting on the
Sensenbrenner amendment to change it from a felony to a misdemeanor."
So while a GOP Chairman came up with the idea of making immigration a
felony, introduced a bill to make it a felony, and pushed it through the House
on Republican votes, the Democrats' refusal even to make it a misdemeanor means
they're the ones who want to make it a felony.
The RNC is now running Spanish-language ads blaming Harry Reid for trying to make being an illegal immigrant a felony, when THEY are the ones who proposed it and Democrats have always opposed criminalizing the conduct in any form. Ken Mehlman -- king of deceit? Will the media let them get away with it?
