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- iHaveNet.com: Politics
by Jules Witcover
There's a certain irony in the latest squabble in Republican ranks over immigration.
Two of the 2012 presidential candidates regarded as among the most conservative -- Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich -- and the one most mistrusted as not truly conservative -- Mitt Romney -- appear to have switched hats in the matter.
Perry and Gingrich in separate instances have demonstrated uncommon
Romney, along with Michele Bachmann, criticizes Perry and Gingrich for their unconservative lapses into humanity, calling the Texas concession a "magnet" that draws more undocumented immigrants. And both of them decry Gingrich's sensible response as "amnesty" for law-breaking border crossers -- a complaint in which they are joined, curiously, by Perry.
Perry defends his support of the Texas college tuition policy on grounds that the state legislature approved it. Gingrich says his plan would not provide any road to American citizenship, as others have suggested, but would merely give some legal status to the longtime resident aliens in order to keep their families together.
Bachmann claims, and Romney implies, that Gingrich would block the deportation of up to 11 million illegal immigrants, conjuring up a ludicrous image of the ousted hordes streaming back across the Mexican border. Gingrich, in a brief encounter with reality, calls that prospect a pipedream, impossible to accomplish.
In a gesture toward compassion rare for him and his party, the former House speaker observed in the recent
Gingrich, in that one answer, handed the Scrooge cap he's worn for years in the eyes of many voters over to Romney, whose relentless effort to endear himself to the unyielding conservatives controlling today's
There was a time in the
Just as significant was the breed of moderate Republicans, such as Howard Baker of Tennessee, John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky, Mark Hatfield of Oregon, Charles Percy and Bob Michel of Illinois, and Gov. George Romney of Michigan, father of Mitt. Even that dynamic duo of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew were individually considered moderates for a time in the pre-Goldwater, pre-Reagan days.
One is hard-pressed now to name an heir to Rockefeller in the party's ranks, or even any who will own up to being a moderate. Beyond Richard Lugar of Indiana, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine and Scott Brown of Massachusetts, few in the
So when it comes to what George W. Bush used to call compassionate conservatism, Rick Perry and Newt Gringich find themselves on the griddle in their own party for offering even the slightest imitation of a liberal or moderate Democrat on this one issue. On the other hand, neither Romney nor Bachmann is likely to accrue many brownie points by harping on this minor bit of
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The Price of GOP Orthodoxy | Politics
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