Notes on Cantormageddon

Only last week in a local Richmond television interview, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor addressed immigration reform as follows: “I have told the president, there are some things we can work on together. We can work on the border security bill together, we can work on something like the kids.” This while the southwest United States is under invasion by an overwhelming wave of “kids” who have gotten the message.

In Cantor’s big “Make life work” last year, Cantor expanded on what he had in mind. Regarding immigration reform, Cantor asserted:

A good place to start is with the kids. One of the great founding principles of our country was that children would not be punished for the mistakes of their parents. It is time to provide an opportunity for legal residence and citizenship for those who were brought to this country as children and who know no other home.

Citing this speech and other items, Mickey Kaus offers his “Notes on Cantormageddon.” Kaus writes:

[T]he main issue in the race was immigration. It’s what [GOP challenger Dave] Brat emphasized, and what his supporters in the right wing media (Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter, Mark Levin) emphasized. It’s the charge Cantor defended against—by conceding the issue and posing as a staunch amnesty opponent.*** But Cantor had signed onto the GOP’s pro-amnesty “principles” and endorsed a poll-tested but irresponsibly sweeping amnesty for children (a “founding principle” of the country, he said). Brat opposed all this, even as illegal immigrant children were surging across the border in search of a Cantor-style deal.

Kaus drops this hilarious footnote to his triple asterisk:

***–In fact, thanks to Cantor’s anti-amnesty mailings, it’s plausible to argue that a vote for Brat was a vote against amnesty — and a vote for Cantor was a vote against amnesty too.

Obama may want to destroy the United States as we know it, but that is not the case with Cantor and his colleagues on this issue. They see the havoc staring us in the face, but they do not see their contribution to it. As to “the kids,” we want to know what will be done to stop them.

Kaus has more in his notes and they are worth reading in their entirety in the aftermath of Cantor’s stunning defeat in the GOP primary yesterday. They are posted here.

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