Republicans are doing their best these days to channel front-runner Donald Trump, in last-ditch attempts to salvage their respective flailing presidential runs.
This week it’s been all immigration, all the time, with Trump — and subsequently others — calling for an end to “birthright citizenship,” which is, of course, guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.
This xenophobic talk is getting Republicans of all stripes riled up, including, interestingly, a senior policy fellow at the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity Foundation. Here’s her grand contribution to the debate, made via Twitter:
@pvenable
Birthright citizenship = “anchor babies”. Changing that policy would be an immigration game-changer.
How apropos that the GOP field will be taking a trip to Koch Country this Friday and Saturday, after spending the last week fueling up on anti-immigrant rhetoric. We have no doubt they’ll all have much to discuss in terms of strategies for ending birthright citizenship — and repealing the 14th Amendment, one would have to imagine.
It’s revealing that the Kochs are seemingly readying to pick up the anti-immigrant cause. They’ve put together quite a Latino-outreach front group in the LIBRE Initiative, but LIBRE’s efforts aren’t aimed at helping Latinos — they’re designed to help Charles and David Koch make more money, and right now, throwing Latinos under the bus has a higher return on investment in their mind. On the topic of the Trump-driven, hate-ridden immigration dialogue that’s shaping the GOP presidential primary, Daniel Garza, LIBRE’s fearless leader, was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying, “It’s making our effort to advance free-market, conservative principles to Latinos more difficult.”That hardly classify as a denouncement, or even as pointed criticism. Garza’s just frustrated that the Republican Party’s fear-mongering is making his Koch Latino outreach propaganda more difficult to execute with a straight face.