GRAVEL: We speak English. That doesn’t mean we can’t encourage other languages. I speak French and English. Some people Spanish and English. But the official language of the United States of America is English.
RUSH: No other candidate agreed. Because, folks, this is nothing more than a push for voters. It’s nothing more than that, which is what’s happened every time we’ve had an amnesty program in the past: the vast majority of the illegals that are made legal end up voting Democrat. The statistics are there. It’s not even arguable. After Gravel made the comment you just heard, Obama piped up.
OBAMA: This is the kind of question that is designed precisely to divide us. Uh, y-y-you know, you’re right. Everybody —
GRAVEL: (interrupting)
OBAMA: Everybody is going to learn to speak English if they live in this country. Uh, the issue is not whether or not future generations of immigrants are going to learn English. The question is, uh, how can we come up with both a legal, sensible immigration policy? And when we get distracted by those kinds of questions, I think we do a disservice to the American people.
RUSH: Well, now, hang on just a second. Everybody is not learning to speak English when they live in this country. That’s precisely the reason for the question, and then next was Hillary Clinton. After Obama piped up, then Hillary screeched in.
HILLARY: The problem is that if it becomes ‘o-fficial’ instead of recognized as national — which indeed it is; it is our national language; if it becomes official — that means in a place like New York City, you can’t print ballots in any other language. That means you can’t have government pay for translators in hospitals so when somebody comes in with some sort of emergency, there’s nobody there to help translate what their problem is for the doctors. So many of us, I did, at least, voted to say that English was our ‘national language,’ but not the ‘official language’ because of the legal consequences of that.
RUSH: Did anybody notice the real point in her answer? (interruption) That’s obvious. Well, it’s not that one; that’s obvious. Be hard for them to read a ballot if they can’t speak English and if you can’t print it in Spanish, it’d be hard to read a ballot. That’s a given. No. ‘You can’t have government pay for translators in hospitals so when somebody comes in with some sort of emergency there’s nobody there to help translate what their problem is for the doctor.’ Why does that have to be something the government does? Hospitals are private concerns. Why can’t hospitals themselves go out and hire translators? You see how sneaky this stuff is? I’ll bet most of you people didn’t even catch that, which is why I’m here. You probably didn’t even catch that. You were focused on all the ballot business and the rest of it just went skating by. Most people hear — and besides the government wouldn’t be able to do that. Oh, the government’s got to be able to do that. Now, the Washington Post today: ‘Backers of Immigration Bill More Optimistic; Lawmakers Cite Sense of Urgency.’ Get this: ‘After a week at home with their constituents, the Senate architects of a delicate immigration compromise are increasingly convinced that they will hold together this week to pass an overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws, with momentum building behind one unifying theme: Today’s immigration system is too broken to go unaddressed.
‘Congress’s week-long Memorial Day recess was expected to leave the bill in tatters. But with a week of action set to begin today, the legislation’s champions say they believe that the voices of opposition, especially from conservatives, represent a small segment of public opinion. Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), who led negotiations on the bill for [the Republicans], said the flood of angry calls and protests that greeted the deal two weeks ago has since receded every day. ‘You just have to recognize you will get 300 calls, you’ll get conflicts at town hall meetings — all of them negative,’ said Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), who consulted with Kyl and hopes to carry a similar deal through the House in July. ‘The last few days have really turned things around.” Now, what am I missing, because I don’t sense that at all. In fact, I sense the White House is in a little bit of a bugaboo over this because they’re all caught up in the fact that everybody is calling it ‘amnesty,’ which it is. But this story purports to have these senators behind the amnesty bill as feeling pretty cocky out there today. They’ve been at home with their constituents over the weekend. They think the opposition to amnesty is fading, and the Washington Post is saying that the voices of opposition, especially the voices of conservatives who don’t like the idea, are just a small part of American public opinion.
I’m going to tell you what this story is all about. This story is all the about marginalizing conservatives. It is all about telling America, the people that get their news from the Washington Post, ‘Don’t believe all this noise you’re hearing. Don’t believe all this racket from conservatives about the immigration bill. They’re just a small bunch of very loud people, but they are by no means representative of the American people.’ If you look at the internals of this poll, which I have done, you find that it’s not looking good for the people who are proposing this. I don’t know how they’ve interpreted the poll the way they have, and in fact they may not even have to. ‘Fifty-two percent of Americans said they would support a program giving illegal immigrants the right to stay and work in the US if they pay a fine and meet other requirements. Opposition to that was 44%.’ That’s a totally misleading question. There is no fine unless they seek citizenship — and once they’re legal, why seek citizenship? It isn’t necessary! So, there is no fine. Besides, the fine is not going to survive anyway. They’re already out there talking about now — and we’re talking the $5,000 fine. We’ve been through all of this. Now, something popped up on the Drudge Report today from ABC News’ Jan Crawford Greenburg, a highly creditable writer on the Supreme Court to legal issues.
The White House is preparing a list of candidates for the next resignation of the US Supreme Court. I looked at that, and I said, ‘Well, now, that’s interesting because I haven’t heard anybody say they’re going to resign. I haven’t even heard any rumors. In fact, I’ve heard the exact opposite, that Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens are going to hang in there as long as they can because they don’t want Bush to get the opportunity to replace them and forever or for the far-out future, reshape the ‘precious and delicate balance that exists on the court today.’ So why all of a sudden does this story pop, that the administration’s preparing a list of candidates (by the way, female and minorities are included in the list) to fill vacancy? Even the story says the White House says (summarized), ‘We don’t think there’s going to be one. We don’t know that there’s going to be one,’ so why is this out there? (interruption) That’s exactly right. It’s to remind us conservatives that, ‘Hey, the Supreme Court, that’s what we really care about, and if there’s going to be one of these vacancies, we gotta hang tough here. We can’t abandon the president. We can’t go out on the limb here and threaten what might be a very contentious and yet successful nomination,’ that’s nonexistent yet.
‘Court watchers always look for resignations at the end of the term, which always happens in June,’ but it’s an attempt to rally conservatives. It’s an attempt also to change the subject. If we’re such a small little loud voice out here, why the need to change the subject? Why the need to change it so people start rallying around a nonexistent, as we speak today, Supreme Court vacancy? Meanwhile, in the Washington Times: ‘Opposition to Illegals Bill Aiding Grass-Roots GOP — President Bush’s immigration bill is hurting fundraising by the Republican National Committee, but fierce grass-roots opposition to the legislation is helping several state Republican parties. Tina Benkiser, chairwoman of the Republican Party in the president’s home state of Texas, says raising money has been successful ‘in large part to our principled stance against illegal immigration.” Well, I’ve always said, especially in politics, follow the money, and if people are giving money in droves to states where the Republican identity there is against this bill, and they’re abandoning the RNC in droves because the perceived identity is pro-illegal immigration or the amnesty bill, then how do we interpret this Washington Post folderol that all this is insignificant?
By the way, you people have resigned to it. You’re not calling these congressmen as much. They probably don’t think that you’re calling as much because I don’t think they’re probably even answering the phone anymore. How many of you are calling out there and they’re actually answering the phone at these various senators’ offices? ‘Similar reports from other state Republican officials in Arizona, Colorado, Iowa and Delaware suggest that opposition to any form of amnesty for illegal aliens is a fundraising winner.’ Okay, so we juxtapose this against the Washington Post story that reports just the opposite. It’s no big deal. It’s just a very, very small but loud bunch of caterwaulers out there. You and I are just a bunch of yahoos, folks! Make no mistake. Something else: the National Republican Senatorial Committee, not just the RNC, they are reporting similar distress. ‘The Senate committee, Republican senatorial committee raised 9.1 million through April. That’s less than half of the #18 million raised by the Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee during the same period.’ So you can’t fool me.
There’s something so fishy and suspicious about the Washington Post story and the idea that this is just an insignificant group of people. This is what I meant earlier, the Republicans have such a golden opportunity. These Democrats are on parade, on full display, uttering some of the most incredible nonsense last night at their debate, and meanwhile the Republicans are joining with the Drive-Bys in trying to marginalize their base. The conservative movement is the base of the Republican Party, and the Republicans — it’s understandable that the Democrats and the media would try to marginalize conservatives and make it sound like there aren’t that many of them, but for the Republicans to be doing it…? Look, I’ve always known that the Republicans have their share of country club, blue-blooders in there that have never liked conservatives. They didn’t even really like Reagan that much. It’s always been a mystery to me, because that’s when the Republican Party won, was when the conservative base was active and excited and engaged and dominant. It’s almost like these people have a wish to be second tier.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Yeah, ladies and gentlemen, you and I, we’re just a bunch of yahoos. We just don’t get it. For example, this story today in the San Francisco Chronicle: ‘Guest Workers Have a Long History in the United States; Temporary Programs Become the Source of Permanent Labor Force.’ It goes on and on and on to discuss the virtues of guest worker programs.
”The purpose of guest worker programs is to add workers to the labor force but not add settlers to the population,’ said Philip Martin, a UC Davis economist and leading immigration authority. ‘But the universal truism is that there is nothing more permanent than temporary workers, whether it’s in Europe, whether it’s in the Middle East, whether it’s in Asia or whether it’s in the United States. Guest worker programs tend to get larger, and last longer, than originally anticipated.” Now, he’s trying to sound the warning bells here. That’s the obligatory critic of the premise of the story. Let’s go on to page three. So it’s a universal truism. ‘Many analysts question whether a smaller program can succeed in moving illegal migrants to legal channels. ‘In order to do that, one would have to provide sufficient numbers of temporary visas,’ [Deborah Meyers, a senior analyst with the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.] said. ‘If you set an unreasonably low number, people will simply circumvent the program as they do now.” Well, damn! I thought I was a pretty smart guy, but I realize now that I am a yahoo. This is like saying, ‘The problem with bank robbery is the law. If we eliminate the law against robbing a bank, then the bank will never be robbed. You could go in there, take whatever you want or whatever you can get, and you’re not breaking the law.’
So it’s the same thing here! If we just expand to an unending infinite number the number of temporary visas, why, there won’t be any ‘temporary workers.’ Everybody will be a ‘worker.’ You see how this works, folks? Why, try this on rape. Let’s just ban the law on rape and that’s how we wipe out the problem. There won’t be any rape if there’s no law against it. Let’s wipe out the law on murder! Yes, ladies and gentlemen. There won’t be any murders. The murder rate will go to zero once we don’t have a law against it. ‘Moreover, the plan calls for temporary workers to come for two-year stints each followed by one year back in their home country for a maximum of six years residence.’ Like hell that’s going to happen! You may call for it, but nobody’s going to do it. There aren’t any enforcement mechanisms in this thing.
‘They would not be offered permanent residence, though they could earn points through a separate merit system. Republicans have insisted that ‘temporary means temporary.’ Yet the stricter such rules, the more likely they will be broken, experts said.’ See, folks? The stricter you make a rule, the more likelihood the rule is to be broken. ‘Unless laws against hiring illegal workers are strictly enforced, such a program could create a new population of illegal immigrants who stay instead of return.’ Bingo! That’s exactly what this is designed to do, under the covers. That’s exactly what this is designed to do. Nobody’s talking about the incoming illegals after we legalize the 12 to 20 million that are already here. They’re going to keep coming. Nobody’s going to stop them. There’s no incentive to stop it in this legislation. So see, the problem is we have too many rules, and they’re too stringent. We need to relax the rules, relax the stringency, and then we won’t have as many people breaking them. Try raising your kids this way.
‘If immigrant advocates think the Senate bill is tough on temporary workers, it has nothing on Singapore, which pampers high-skilled migrants but punishes low-skilled workers who overstay their visas with mandatory caning and up to six months in prison.’ So we’re being told here that, hey, this bill isn’t bad! I mean, look what they do in Singapore. You have a low skilled uneducated migrant that comes in, and if he overstays his welcome, he gets caned. We’re good people in the United States! We’re not going to cane these people, nor are we going to put ’em in prison for six months.
Now, some of you might be saying, ‘Where’s the common sense on this?’ Democrats are who they are, but the media? The media is supposed to be objective, curious. Folks, you have to understand they’re all liberals and you have to understand, to them this is discrimination — and they will not ‘discriminate.’ A liberal feels like he is committing sacrilege, a sin for which he will burn in hell if he discriminates, and these people? (crying) They’re just the poor and the downtrodden and the hungry and thirsty, and to not let them come here is discriminating against them.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Mary in Charlottesville, Virginia, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: 1951 baby boomer dittos, Rush.
RUSH: Well, thank you. What month were you born?
CALLER: July.
RUSH: Well, I’m six months older than you which means I’m more mature.
CALLER: And wiser.
RUSH: Thank you. You’re very kind.
CALLER: Well, I went to a Republican fundraiser this Saturday and I have not heard such vitriol in one place directed against the president since Cindy Sheehan was camped out in Crawford.
RUSH: (Laughing.) Jeez. Was there a particular candidate that the fundraiser was for, or was this the party?
CALLER: It was a candidate. Well, it was for our wonderful Rob Bell, who is our delegate to the House delegates here. He wrote our anti-Kelo law, got it through, terrific guy. Virgil Goode was there. We love him. And besides being angry at the president, we’re looking for a replacement for Senator John Warner, too. And it’s the final straw with these RINOs —
RUSH: All right, when you hear about or read the Washington Post story today that says you and I are just a bunch of yahoos and all the noise that you saw at this fundraiser, it’s just a small majority of people. In fact, most of these candidates and senators are hearing that people are turning around on this, gotta get this passed. It’s just a loud but very small bunch of yahoos out there that are making noise on immigration. How does it make you feel when you hear that?
CALLER: Well, I’m hoping the JFK incident will get the non-yahoos in the country turned around, including the president. I mean, these were immigrants and Muslim immigrants. The one thing on everybody’s mind, first of all, is to enforce the border. And nobody’s fooled around here about guest workers et cetera, et cetera. Virgil Goode thinks that it’s conservative to say that the number of immigrants will go up 20,000, it’s going to be like 30 or 40,000. It’s really a scary thing. We’re a very patriotic group. We’ve been behind the president with the war on terror, and because of that we put up with his arm around Ted Kennedy with the educational bill —
RUSH: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear you.
CALLER: — all that stuff, but the immigration bill is too important, it’s security, it’s our children’s future. It’s really got us up in arms. I think it’s pretty widespread.
RUSH: Well, that’s the impression I got, too. But the story is out there that it’s not widespread, that in fact whatever passion there was on it, it’s cooling down now, and people like you are even changing their minds. That’s what these Senators told the Washington Post. Yeah, you’re changing your mind. They expected to get holy hell out there during the Memorial Day recess, and it didn’t happen. That’s what the Post says. They founded out that people are cooling down on this, a more reasoned view is taking hold, and they need to be smooth sailing for this bill this week, that’s what the post story says. I’ve got polling data out there that if you look deep in the internals, the polling data doesn’t support the contentions. But nothing new in that. Mary thanks much, moving on to Cookeville, Tennessee, this is Jerry. Great to have you with us, sir, hello.
CALLER: Hey, how you doing, Rush?
RUSH: Fine.
CALLER: This weekend, Senator Lamar came into town.
RUSH: Lamar Alexander, you mean?
CALLER: Yeah, Senator Lamar Alexander. And I guess he kind of thought it was just going to be a little chitchat deal, and he talked a little bit, and there was kind of a self-promotion deal like most of them do. And one woman, she told him, she said, senator, she said, ‘Senator, we have no faith in the leadership. If you guys aren’t going to enforce the laws we have now, why should we believe you with the new laws?’ Another gentleman wanted to know why they allowed La Raza to help write the bill. Another man wanted to know why we could not speak as a group, answer as a group, afterwards, instead of just going up one on one where you couldn’t hear him after. And then I asked the crowd, ‘Could I see a show of hands who supports this immigration bill.’ No hands went up.
RUSH: How many people were there?
CALLER: Oh, I figure about 150. And I asked him, can I see a show of hands of people who oppose it? And everybody in the room raised their hand.
RUSH: What did Senator Alexander do when he saw all this?
CALLER: Well, he kind of looked shocked, to be truthful. When I did get a chance to speak with him I told him if he votes for this I will not vote him ever again. I told him I’ve supported him in the past. ‘I think you’re a good man, but you’re wrong on this.’ And he told me that this bill will help strengthen the border to get new Border Patrol agents. I said, ‘Well, the agents who do their job like agent Compean and Ramos, they do their job, they go to prison. The drug dealer is walking free.’
RUSH: About this border secure business, I wish I could remember where this was. Do you know that even as we speak they are cutting the number of agents on the border? Not just agents, but all kinds of security people? The Guard’s being pulled out of there, something like that. It might have been National Review Online where I read this. Everybody was perplexed. Here you’re trying to sell a bill, and you’re telling people, ‘You’re wrong about security and you’re wrong about amnesty. We’re going to really beef up the border, and this isn’t amnesty.’ Then they just start pulling people off the border. It was perplexing to many people, thought it was a lousy sales technique. Well, it will be interesting to see. I think it’s indicative here of the Washington Post story, I think they’re going to ram this bill through the Senate and get it out of there and take it to the House and see what happens there. This is one of those instances where he listened to you and he heard what you had to say, but I think people are committed to it. I don’t think they’ll be able to talk him out of it. We’ll have to wait and see. But this Post story is going to give these people all kinds of cover here, folks. You have to understand it’s going to give ’em cover. ‘Oh, look at this, the opposition is dying down, even coming around to seeing it our way. It’s just a bunch of people out there, really mild voices, not very many of them.’
So the message is going up, ‘Don’t be intimidated by these yahoos that are screaming bloody murder because there aren’t that many of them. They’re just a budge of wacko conservatives anyway.’ There are people asking me, ‘Why do you think Hillary Clinton’s got 80% chance?’ Well, because of what’s happening to the Republican Party right now. I hate to use the word war, but I mean there’s going to be a battle within the Republican Party for who controls it, who defines it and who shapes it. The country club blue-blood types or the conservatives. Make no mistake about it, the country club blue-blooders have resented the conservative dominance of their party for as long as Ronald Reagan brought it about.