"A day after she appeared to struggle to give her views on the subject, Hillary Rodham Clinton offered support today for Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s effort to award New York driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, as her campaign sought to contain potentially damaging fallout from what her own supporters saw as a tense and listless debate performance.
Mrs. Clinton’s statement affirming her support of Mr. Spitzer in his office came less than a day after she offered a muddled and hesitant position on the bill, prompting a round of denunciations by her opponents. It signaled the extent to which her advisers viewed that moment as the biggest misstep she made in the debate, and one with long-term potential to undermine her candidacy.
“Senator Clinton supports governors like Governor Spitzer who believe they need such a measure to deal with the crisis caused by this administration’s failure to pass comprehensive immigration reform,’” her campaign said.
"
Clinton knew that the Race and MecHA could potentially destroy her campaign if they thought she was a threat to the open borders and North American Unionistas.
This is what Liberals do.
Not only is Chertoff finally getting on his horse, but Numbersusa is reporting progress in weeding out anti-nationalist Republicans from the party and progress in the enforcement first arena. Their latest email.
DEAR OPPONENTS OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION LOOKING FOR SOME GOOD NEWS,
I want to bring you several pieces of breaking and recent good news. Many things are moving in the right direction. Some of them have action items. Please note and enjoy.
REPUBLICANS BEGINNING TO GET EXCITED ABOUT THE DEMOCRATIC ‘SAVE ACT’
Many Republicans have been cautious about a Democratic “Enforcement-Only” bill being promoted by Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.) and gaining dozens of Democratic original co-sponsors before its introduction next week.
With nearly all the top leaders of the Democratic Party promoting amnesty and other rewards for illegal immigration, the question among Republicans has been whether the “SAVE Act” that comes from mostly lower-level Democratic Members of Congress can be trusted to truly combat illegal immigration?
Key Republican leaders of the anti-illegal movement have been giving the SAVE Act close scrutiny this week.
Doubts began to melt with the enthusiastic endorsement of the SAVE Act by California Republican Brian Bilbray, who earlier this year replaced Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) as chairman of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus (when Tancredo began running for President).
Bilbray promoted the SAVE Act at a key meeting of House Republicans today. And Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Fla.) was reported to have received a strongly positive reception from his fellow Republicans after walking them through the details of the bill.
You can read a lot more about the SAVE ACT (Secure America with Verification and Enforcement) at:
www.numbersusa.com/interests/attrition.html
Our Capitol Hill Team has been in the offices of our best Republican allies against illegal immigration all day. The report from the team is that these Republicans, after looking it over, believe in Shuler’s bill.
So do dozens of Democrats whose offices we’ve visited recently.
The fact is that this is becoming an incredible bi-partisan bill that represents the will of the American people to finally turn the tide on illegal immigration.
…
WOULD DEMOCRATIC LEADERS POSSIBLY ALLOW AN ENFORCEMENT-ONLY BILL TO COME TO FLOOR FOR A VOTE?
Even a month ago, that seemed highly unlikely. After all, the career immigration record of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) rates at only 3% in our grading system! Only 11 of the 435 Members of the House are worse.
But all of you and many other Americans have made so much noise about illegal immigration that we are hearing some slight openness among Democratic leaders to allowing concerned Democrats to make their case.
Democratic leadership this week sent around this quote:
Democrats are reviewing poll after poll showing sagging popularity not only of Congress but also of their congressional leaders. So, some lawmakers have begun to argue, it just might be in everyone’s interest to show that Washington can actually tackle a serious issue without all of the theatrics and games.
–"New Congress at War Over Everything,” The Politico, 10/30/07
Real enforcement against illegal immigration sounds like just the issue, doesn’t it? Keep up the pressure. SENATE AG CHAIRMAN STRONGLY OPPOSES ANY VOTE ON AgJOBS AMNESTY ON HIS FARM BILL NEXT WEEK
Chances of a giant amnesty for ag workers and their dependents diminished significantly this morning at the National Press Club.
Sen. Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, told a group of reporters that he is adamently opposed to the Democratic leadership allowing the AgJOBS amnesty to be introduced as an amendment to “his” Farm Spending Bill.
Harkin noted that he is an original co-sponsor for the amnesty for illegal aliens working in agriculture. But he said immigration should not be legislated in the Farm Bill.
In fact, he said, immigration policy should not be taken up again until after “the next election.” That would be 2009!
Your NumbersUSA Capitol Hill Team is noticing intense friction among Senate Democrats behind the scenes. Some are determined to keep trying to find a way to get some kind of amnesty through for at least some of the country’s illegal aliens. But many other Democratic Senators are saying that they just can’t stand the thought of another bruising battle over amnesty. They believe their losing battles so far this year have hurt them with swing voters and hurt morale among their base.
…
YOUR PHONE CALLS & FAXES THIS WEEK CREATED AN IMMEDIATE STIR – AND SURPRISE
Late Sunday night, I alerted you to the possibility of an introduction of Rep. Shuler’s SAVE Act. I suggested that some of you might want to start calling your Representative to ask them to take a look at the bill.
By late Monday morning, Shuler’s office was being pounded with phone calls from other congressional offices in the Capitol.
The staffers were asking Shuler’s staffers, “What is this immigration bill that our constituents are calling us about this morning?”
Most of them hadn’t heard a thing about Shuler’s SAVE Act to keep illegal aliens out of U.S. jobs. So, they were really startled when NumbersUSA members started calling them as soon as they arrived at the office Monday and kept calling all day.
After three days of tens of thousands of faxes and thousands of phone calls, every office in the U.S. House (if not every staffer) has now heard about the SAVE Act from NumbersUSA constituents.
You have achieved your first task of moving this into the radar of nearly every office.
I’m sure your calls helped create more receptivity among Republicans who discussed the bill at their big meeting today.
…
REPUBLICAN VOTERS ARE WEEDING OUT THE OPEN-BORDERS TYPES IN THE PARTY
Pro-amnesty and open-borders views are taking a heavy toll on major Republican leaders this year.
Last spring, Sen. McCain (R-Ariz.) lost his front-runner status for the Republican Presidential nomination – and plummeted almost to single-digit polling – largely because of his highly public leadership pushing amnesties for illegal aliens. His staff admitted then and again recently that his small-donor contributions just dried up once the Senate amnesty battle began earlier this year.
Now, I am so proud of all you Republicans who have knocked Sen. Brownback (R-Kan.) out of the Presidential race. He had staked his hopes for the last two year on having a large core base of evangelical and conservative Catholic voters. He criss-crossed the country speaking to large religious conventions of these voters. Two years ago, I was hearing from many of these voters that they were enthralled with Sen. Brownback. When I would tell them about his aggressively pro-amnesty work, people reacted in disbelief.
But eventually the truth got out about Sen. Brownback’s immigration positions.
Most of his other positions were almost perfectly in line with the religious base he was seeking. But, like McCain, he totally blew it with an immigration position at odds with that base. Polls show that evangelicals, for example, oppose amnesties and rewards for illegal aliens by a higher margin than almost any demographic group.
NumbersUSA participated in advertising throughout Kansas starting years ago in efforts to make sure that voters there understood the leadership role Sen. Brownback was taking for open borders positions. We have looked for opportunities wherever we could to expose him during his Presidential run.
Along with defeated Sen. Spencer Abraham (R-Mich.) and defeated Rep. Dick Chrysler (R-Mich.) and firmly ensconced Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), Brownback played the key role in working with Sen. Kennedy (D-Mass.) in 1996 in killing the immigration-reduction recommendations of the bi-partisan U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, chaired by the late Barbara Jordan.
We are most pleased to see Sen. Brownback give up the race – and plan to leave the Senate after this term.
We are ecstatic to see Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) announce that he will soon be resigning as the head of the national Republican Party.
All news reports about his departure have noted that his constant leadership for amnesty this year has seriously hurt Republicans’ ability to raise money from small donors.
I am so thankful to the thousands of you who began faxing and phoning campaigns of protest as soon as Sen. Martinez was nominated for the Party leadership. This is a reminder that even when you don’t think you are having an effect at first, your pressure can eventually have results.
Thanks to all of you who have told us of returning every Republican solicitation for funds with a note that you won’t give another dollar until the Party has leaders who support immigration enforcement. You are having a real effect in gradually purging the Party of supporters of illegal immigration.
I hope all of you who are Democrats are paying attention. Many of you have been doing the same thing with Democratic fund-raising letters. Let’s put a lot more pressure on Howard Dean and the pro-amnesty leaders of the Party. It is not an impossible dream that these leaders will start to feel the heat and see the light, as national Republican leaders are starting to do.
THANKS FOR ALL THE MANY WAYS THAT YOU ARE SHIFTING THE POLITICAL BALANCE IN THIS COUNTRY."
