Right-Wing Blog PeachPundit Jumps on Anti-Immigrant Paranoia; Misses the Point

Their congregation likely reads PeachPundit.


Jason Shepherd at PeachPundit can't contain the glee he has over Rep. Nathan Deal (R-GA) and his longshot bid to end birthright citizenship:

However, not even the bill’s sponsor gives it much of a chance of passing the House. Deal said, “I think the current makeup of the Congress is such that this will never get a hearing and will never be an issue that we get a chance to vote on, but I think it’s important to keep the issues that are part of the immigration problem alive.”

While I applaud Deal for making this stance, I only wish he had proposed this legislation during the period from 1995-2007 when the Republican Party controlled the House and there would have been a better shot of it passing. In fact, legislation like this might have softened the immigration reform debacle that helped cost the GOP control of Congress in the 2006 midterm elections.

While I think those who want to end birthright citizenship -- a hallmark of our citizenship policy since the Civil Rights act of 1866 and the fourteenth amendment -- are kind of crazy, and most likely just latent racists who want to see less Hispanic citizens, they'd be more politically effective if they didn't convince themselves that most of the country is right on board with them. Sheperd rights that the immigration issue helped the GOP lose the Congress in 2006.

Of course, he's right, but not in the way that he sees it. He thinks that the GOP lost because they didn't go far enough to the right on immigration. As far as I know, there's no data to support that.

Heck, Rep. Sensenbrenner's (R-Crazy) bill that would've turned undocumented immigrants into felons sparked some of the biggest protests in American history and drew opposition from leaders of both parties.

If anything, their party has gone way out of center way too far to the right on most issues across the board. Now, if they want to advocate right wing policies that are completely out of touch with the American people, they should go ahead. That's part of living in a free country. But they shouldn't act like their positions are popular. They're not (thank God).