Possible GOP candidates and immigration: it’s not looking good (so what’s new?)

Clark Coleman writes:

NumbersUSA has a scorecard for a collection of 2012 presidential (possible) candidates. The mediocre Tim Pawlenty gets a grade of “C” and is at the top of the heap!

I was discouraged when I saw their headline, because I am hoping for Mike Pence in 2012. However, when I looked at their scorecard, I see that Pence is not included (because he has no announcement or exploratory committee yet?)

I checked on his NumbersUSA grade and it is an A+. So, out of all possible candidates for 2012 that we know of at the moment, there is exactly one true conservative across fiscal and immigration issues.

- end of initial entry -

Bill Carpenter writes:

When I saw the reference to Mike Pence as a solid candidate, I remembered that he supported amnesty under the McCain plan. Here is Pat Buchanan’s contemporaneous article, from June 2006. And here is a Vdare piece on Pence’s amnesty proposal.

LA replies:

Interesting. Here is the key text from the Buchanan article:

As Bush backs away from the Senate bill (“we don’t have to choose between the extremes—there’s a rational middle ground”), Pence uses identical rhetoric to describe his plan, now being hailed by Newt Gingrich, Gary Bauer, David Keene of the American Conservative Union and The American Spectator. It looks like the fix is in.

Pence calls his plan a “middle ground” proposal, a “no amnesty immigration reform” in which “securing our border is the first step.”

This is fraudulent. At the heart of the Pence plan is amnesty. Illegal aliens here return to Mexico for one week with an assurance they can come back to their jobs. Down there, they visit “Ellis Island Centers” to register as “guest workers” and return with “work permits.” The illegal are made legal and put on a path to citizenship.

The only difference between the Pence plan and the Kennedy-Bush amnesty is the one-week vacation employers would happily fund, as it means blanket amnesty for them as well as their illegal hires.

Charles T. writes:

I am afraid the Republican establishment will give us a Bush clone. Therefore, we must ask: Do we even want another Bush open borders Republican in the White House? Would this do the country any good? Republicans seem to fight harder for what they believe in if there is a Democratic president in office.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 19, 2011 06:51 AM | Send