Political Blog

Political Blog
January 7, 2008
Nick Redford

Simply too many requests to ignore. Today, I give my opinion and back it up with facts on this overly heated Primary season. This blog will take me some time to complete, (probably three or four blogs) but it will help you, and probably help me, decide where to put our support this year.

It is no secret that this election could very well be the most important election in our lifetimes. So much depends on it, yet we have to listen to candidates talk about “floating crosses” in campaign ads, or how many times the candidate voted “present” in meaningless votes. Its just silly. We need to focus on the issues. As I write this, as far as I am concerned there are 7 realistic candidates for President of the United States. I intend to talk about the most important issues and where each of them stand on that particular issue. Yes, this is going to be very long, so I intend to make it as entertaining as possible. Enjoy.

The seven realistic candidates are (in alphabetical order so no one thinks I am playing favorites):

Hillary Clinton
John Edwards
Rudy Guiliani
Mike Huckabee
John McCain
Barrack Obama
Mitt Romney

On to the issues:

Illegal Immigration

Me- Honestly, this used to be a non-issue for me. It really did. I rationalized it this way: If you are skillful or smart enough to get across the border and outsmart the border guards, then you deserve to be in America and probably have something useful to contribute to this society. Then I learned that “outsmart” wasn’t exactly the right word. As it turns out, the only skill you actually need is the ability to use the Marty McFly Point-and-Scream “What the hell is that?!?” and run across the border as the guard falls for your all-too-clever-ruse. Clearly, something needs to be done. Lets see what the candidates think it should be.

Clinton: Said the plan to give illegal immigrants Driver’s Licenses “made a lot of sense”. But to be fair, she did deny saying that later, so I guess we have to give her credit for both sides of the issue. (I checked the quotes, she did say it to the Nashua Telegraph on October 17, 2007.)

Edwards: Has repeatedly said that we need Immigration Reform. That’s pretty much all he’s said on the subject. Here and there he says that we should give them drivers licenses if they are “on the path to citizenship”. No, I don’t know how you could define that either.

Guiliani: Wants to build a “technological” as well as a physical fence for the border. (good) However, during his time as Mayor of a town so nice, they named it twice, Rudy ran a “sanctuary” city, even renewing a law that made it illegal for city workers to report the names of illegal immigrants if they reported a crime. Yes, so someone who is committing a crime by living here illegally can report someone else for doing a crime, and be let of the hook for their crime. (bad).

Huckabee: Confusing stats here. Supported a bill that gives illegal immigrants college scholarships, well, kind of. In reality, the bill makes it possible for anyone in Arkansas to be allowed to get the scholarship as long as they go to high school for at least 3 years in Arkansas, he just didn’t make it so that illegal couldn’t get the scholarship. So, not good. I like his policy on the whole “path to citizenship” debate. He says that the path should start at the beginning, back in their own country.

McCain: And I thought Huckabee was confusing. McCain seems to say exactly what his audience wants to hear, but doesn’t seem to mind if it goes against what he already did. I am currently looking at about 15 different instances of him supporting illegal immigrants (bad), yet I see lots of votes against them. Voted for establishing English as the official language of the US Government, voted yes on the border fence, Of course, those happened relatively recently, you see, his votes get more conservative as he gets closer to an election year. Earlier (in 2006) he voted for establishing a guest workers program, voted for allowing illegal aliens to be able to participate in social security (dear god you have got to be kidding me) and voted yes on allowing more foreign workers into the US for farm work. (yikes)

Obama: Supported that failed attempted to give drivers licenses to illegal. (strike one) Wants the 12 million illegal immigrants already in the US to be made citizens.(strike two), Wants to provide Government Services in Spanish (buh-bye). Of course I did find a quote from him in Sept 2007 advocating a “wall” be built. Hmmm.

Romney: Wants the first people to be considered for citizenship to be the ones who are waiting patiently and doing it legally. (a novel concept) Took a very hard line on immigration, vetoing a bill similar to the one Huckabee signed on scholarships. But that’s only as of late. Earlier in his career, he wasn’t nearly as hard on “undocumented workers” as he is now. Did he have a change of heart, or decide to lay the foundation in case he decided to run for a higher office?

Next blog: Social Security.