RUSH: Try this on for size. The old guard blue-blood country club Republicans are scared to death that if they oppose Sonia Sotomayor, that they will forever be casting aside the chance to get the women and Hispanic vote. Now, I know I’ve said this countless times today, but I want to understand why it is — I need somebody to tell me why it is that the Democrats can be literally mean, extremist, try to destroy people and that never hurts ’em. They can criticize any of us in any way; they can literally try to destroy lives, reputations. They never suffer from it.
Nobody ever gets mad at them. In fact, that’s the party we are told that moderates will run to if there is the slightest bit of criticism of Democrats by Republicans. It’s absolutely absurd, but our side believes it. So, we acquiesce to the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor because in doing so this is somehow going to show the Hispanic community that we love them and they’re going to somehow vote for us even though two Hispanic high profile appointments in the Bush administration didn’t get anything, and more importantly, leading the move for amnesty. If anything was going to get the Hispanic vote — ’cause that’s the number-one issue, wouldn’t you say? The Hispanic community in America — I could be wrong about this but seems to me we had a bunch of protests with millions of people. I know the unions were involved and so forth, but still, seems to me that the Hispanic vote’s number-one issue is immigration, is it not? Now, once again, Barry Sotero, now, Barack Obama, is getting the Hispanic vote. The Democrats get it. Why? The Hispanics think that Obama, the Democrats are doing their bidding for them.
So let me ask you a question here. Has Obama had the obligatory White House meeting on immigration with the study groups that then report to him two hours later and problem solved? Hasn’t done that. What’s on the agenda here after Sotomayor? Cap and trade and health care. Those are the two big things Obama is going for, well, plus taking over car companies, but he’s got that done. The two biggies this year are cap and trade and health care, nationalization. Where’s immigration in that? Now, next year is 2010, and next year happens to be an election year. I don’t think even the Democrats are foolish enough to go for amnesty programs for illegal immigrants in an election year. And so, no illegal immigration amnesty bill is going to move this year, certainly not next year in 2010. But that doesn’t matter because President Obama has nominated a Latina, a female Hispanic, Sonia Sotomayor, to the Supreme Court. So he gets a threefer here. He gets a political hack like himself on the court. He gets an anti-constitutionalist, one who believes in empathy, like himself, on the court. Plus, he has appeased the Hispanic community on immigration for a couple years.
If anybody is using, if anybody is toying with, if anybody is being cynical toward Hispanics it’s Obama. He’s ignoring their number-one issue. On the other hand, the Republican Party in George W. Bush, the sitting president, and in John Sidney McCain, the presidential candidate, led the way for immigration and amnesty. And we know the esteem President Bush is held in today. We know where McCain is. He’s in Sedona, plotting his reelection strategery to the Senate. Somebody much smarter than I am is going to have to explain all of this to me. ‘Cause the way I look at it, everything that the Republicans think they need to do to get people to love ’em and like ’em and vote for ’em is backfiring. They’re doing what they’re told needs to be done; it just isn’t working. There’s the real cynicism. The real cynicism is Obama using the Sotomayor pick as a way of appeasing his Hispanic voters and buying them off on the whole notion of immigration, their number-one issue coming down the pike.
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RUSH: One quick note here. There was a story in the New York Times on April 9th of this year: ‘Obama to Push Immigration Bill as One Priority’ — While acknowledging that the recession makes the political battle more difficult, President Obama plans to begin addressing the country’s immigration system this year, including looking for a path for illegal immigrants to become legal, a senior administration official said on Wednesday.’ Okay, every statement he makes has an expiration date, and since April 9th we haven’t heard anything about this. We’re hearing cap and trade, we’re hearing health care. If he wants to throw illegal immigration in the mix, amnesty in the mix, he can go ahead, but the other two things we know are priorities.