Guess I stepped on some toes about Mitt. Let me put it this way, every meet someone you don’t like from the start. You can’t explain it, it’s just a gut-feeling.

No worries about stepping on toes here moonsbreath. I was just curious to know whats behind that ambivalence. I know what you mean by having a sincere dislike for someone from the start and I’ve been there. For what its worth, though, some of those people have surprised me and turned out to be good friends of mine once I got to know them better. On the other hand sometimes I’ve continued to dislike them. It can go either way. Not sure where to go with that.

tommylotto, you asked if I believe Giuliani cooked the books? Perhaps the NYPD doesn’t count illegal crime in their stats. I just know, that for my community and roughly around 50,000 illegals, the crime rate has tripled. It does not add-up that 400,000 illegals equals no rise in crime

Also, for what its worth, 400,000 illegal aliens = automatically 400,000 person rise in crime. If we are talking about violent crimes only then that is different. Although, as Bryan argued in an earlier thread, the difference between a legal citizen committing a violent crime and an illegal alien committing a violent crime is the illegal alien’s violent crimes were 100% preventable. Therefore, the % violent crime rate coming from the illegal alien community is irrelevent.

As far as a candidate, I want one that has never entertained the thought about a sanctuary city. I may not find such candidate, but that is what I am looking for. Period.

csdeven, I think we all understand you’re for Mitt!

tommylotto, you asked if I believe Giuliani cooked the books? Perhaps the NYPD doesn’t count illegal crime in their stats. I just know, that for my community and roughly around 50,000 illegals, the crime rate has tripled. It does not add-up that 400,000 illegals equals no rise in crime.

You and Allah needed to merge this with his post on the Seattle Times nitwit, because these WaPo ninnies clearly sit in on those meetings in Seattle with the “smart, educated, well-read and diverse” masters of the universe.

This reads like an Onion piece.

tommylotto on August 17, 2007 at 2:12 PM

tommylotto, there is an obvious agenda in that article. With all due respect I would suggest seeking out more objective voices for information. The article should be titled: “Rudy the hero, Mitt the zero”. I personally think both of them are great Americans and would make for fine presidents. I just hate the drive bye hit jobs designed to boost one and denegrate the other. Thats not where I want my info to come from.

tommylotto on August 17, 2007 at 2:12 PM

tommylotto, that artical as packed full of untruths, misrepresentations, and gotcha drive-bye hit jobs. So to answer your question, “is Peter king taking Mitt’s actions out of context?” The answer is yes, absolutely. It takes nothing into account in regards to the liberal legislature in Mass which he had to work with. Just the fact that it brought up and tossed out as fact the illegal aliens working on his front yard told might right off that it was an obvious hit piece playing loose and fast with the facts. You will find nothing specific in that artical in reference to what Romney actually did or said on the matter of illegal immigration. Everything is just a piece of drive-bye nonsense with practically zero substance.

First, let’s address the most obvious of the problems with Mr. Romney’s recent aggressiveness on this issue: the utter hypocrisy of it. The Mitt Romney seen on the national campaign trail can’t seem to talk enough about his newfound toughness on illegal immigration, which will come as a surprise to many of the residents of Massachusetts who rarely heard a word on this issue while Mr. Romney occupied the corner office. While the new Mitt Romney, campaigning for president, insists he is the candidate best credentialed to control this country’s problem of illegal immigration, many of you may remember that under Mr. Romney, the illegal-immigrant population boomed in the commonwealth, illegal immigrants performed the former governor’s yardwork and sanctuary cities in Massachusetts went unchecked.

It is, I think, a fairly modest understatement to say that before he was openly interested in the presidency, Mr. Romney was quite disinterested in illegal immigration as a whole.

Mr. Romney’s recent immigration comments and his focus on “sanctuary cities” are especially baffling. “Sanctuary cities,” Mr. Romney seems to believe, are at the very root of the illegal immigration problem.

But there is, once again, a bit of history that makes this promise more than a little unconvincing. As governor, Mr. Romney wielded control over a significant budget and oversaw three cities that were proud of their designation as “sanctuary cities”: Cambridge, Somerville and Orleans. Yet as governor, Mr. Romney did not cut their funding. He recommended millions of dollars in state funding for them, and made no attempt to force these cities to change their policies. When he had the opportunity to actually effect change on a problem he now rates as a priority, Mr. Romney’s actions were far louder than his words.

Buzzy on August 17, 2007 at 1:48 PM

Buzzy, point taken, and I agree with you. That issue is too important in order for wishy washy candidates to be acceptable. But its also too important to have what a candidate says about the entire issue reduced to one single soundbite that doesn’t even reflect the views of that candidate. By doing that you can make any person look wishy washy about anything. If the issue is so important we want as many voters as possible to be fully knowlegeable about the candidates true views on the issue. Shouldn’t that be the goal? Shouldn’t the goal be to get to the heart of what each candidate really thinks about the issue? Mischaracterizing these things does none of us any good. I live in Mass and I have listened to everything that Romney has said about this issue pretty much since 9/11. Reducing Romney’s views on the shamnesty bill to “Reasonable proposal” is not an accurate portrayal of his true views. Its nothing more then the type of mischaracterization that can be done unfairly and dishonestly to anyone. We are not playing “gotcha.” We just want to find out what these guys really think abou this stuff. The only way to do that is to listen to everything they said beyond just a two word soundbite taken out of context.

New York City was a sanctuary city while Giuliani was mayor. He could have repealed that status initiated by Koch. He was an enthusiastic backer of the policy.

GFB on August 17, 2007 at 1:02 PM

It is so easy to throw out that “sactuary city” meme. So what do you do? You have 400,000 illegals in your city, you are powerless to deport them, you can’t shoot them (most of the time — though he was accused of trying on ocassion), and the feds won’t even deport the felons. If you report school kids, you have roaming bands of thugs on the streets instead of in school trying to assimilate. If you report those who report crime, crimes go unreported. If you report those who seek medical attention, they get sicker and more expensive to cure when it gets critical. So, you think he should have reported them (and suffer all the negative consequences) just so the feds could have a longer list of illegals that they failed to deport?

These comments are from Rudy on the issue:

“We just happened to check the numbers and in this part of the state, there were only about 776 deportations last year of people. … Now we send thousands and thousands of names of illegal and undocumented aliens to the INS who have committed crimes. Either accused or convicted of committing crimes. So literally sitting at the INS is a pile maybe this big of names of people who have committed crimes and last year they got around to deporting seven to eight hundred of them. So before there are obligations placed on [city of New York], to turn over the names of children in school or their parents or people who use public hospitals, I’d like to see the Immigration and Naturalization Service dealing with people who commit crimes.” (Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Joint Press Conference With Governor Pete Wilson [R-CA], New York, NY, 3/29/95)

“By the mid-1990s, officials estimated that more than 500,000 undocumented aliens resided in New York State, 80 percent of them in New York City. The city’s lawyers said information on more than 4,000 undocumented aliens who pass through city jails annually is shared with INS, but that the federal agency deports only 200 to 300 of that group.” (Gaylord Shaw, “Giuliani Vs. Reno In High Court?” Newsday, 10/3/99; City of New York v. United States, 179 F.3d 29, Appellant’s Brief [2d Cir. Jan. 9, 1998])

Sometimes common sense requires you to do something you would rather not do. An executive needs common sense — a commodity in low supply these days. Common sense or unblemmished immigrration record? Humm, I’ll take common sense.

The two leading Republican presidential candidates… (WaPo)

Hrm? Since when is Romney one of the two leading Republican presidential candidates? According to RCP’s poll averages, Romney’s still running behind both Thompson and McCain. So, even if you want to say that Thompson doesn’t count until he officially declares his candidacy, you’ve still got McCain ahead of Romney in most polls. (McCain, who’s been written off by most.) And it certainly doesn’t look good for him to be consistently beaten by a guy who hasn’t declared his candidacy and hasn’t spent a dime and has barely visited anyone on the campaign trail yet.

Basically, after spending millions of dollars and running hard for months and months on end, Romney has still barely broken into double digits. This immigration flap is not some clash of the titans. This is just Romney yapping and nipping at Giuliani’s heels.

Illegal immigration is the issue for 2008 that a Republican candidate can win on and there isn’t any reason to softball the issue. The illegals are all voting Democrat and 70% of American Citizens want to hear something of substance on the issue. Mitt may actually mean something else when he calls the McCain Kennedy Amnesty Plan a “reasonable proposal” but enough voters to elect him didn’t find it reasonable at all. It makes him look weak and almost as pandering as Rudy does on the issue.

Most of the other candidates have a case of amnesty amnesia. Mitt Romney called the McCain – Kennedy shamnesty bill “a reasonable proposal” (AP 3/26/06).

GFB, Romney was strongly against that bill from the outset. He used the words “reasonable proposal” prior to ripping it apart piece by piece. He said those words in an attempt to be non-confrontational while at the same time being opposed to it. Its a common tactic in debates. Another example of this would be if Romney said, “I’d first like to thank my collegues for their hard work on this very important issue. That having been said, I must respectably take issue with some key elements of their proposal…” Just because he used the words “I’d like to thank my collegues for their hard work on this very important issue” does not mean he ever agreed with what it was they were proposing.

Feel free to argue this point around here, but I’m afraid you won’t get too far. Giuliani’s argument is rational, but a lot of people here just don’t want to hear it, likely because they worry that people might buy it. They’d rather just shout “flip flopper!” (even though his position has remained remarkably consistent on this issue) and “sanctuary city!” and hope those who don’t do the research believe it.

The United States is a Federal Republic. This measn that local jurisdictions cannot override Federal law. Giuliani should have been prosecuted for the act of sedition of Fedral immigration law while he was mayor.

Most of the other candidates have a case of amnesty amnesia. Mitt Romney called the McCain – Kennedy shamnesty bill “a reasonable proposal” (AP 3/26/06).

Mike Huckabee supported the Bush backed amnesty plan. As governor of Arkansas, Huckabee offered a proposal to give state funded scholarships and state benefits to illegal aliens.

The only candidate that has been rock solid on the immigration issue is Tom Tancredo.

JiangxiDad on August 17, 2007 at 12:25 PM

Yeah, I do the same. They have to have the right policy positions and then not be a phony. If I had the choice between phonies and a candidate that was less than what I want, but is honest, I’ll vote for the honest guy.

But you can be sure that I’m looking for the authentic amongst the vast sea of phonies that make-up our political class.

JiangxiDad on August 17, 2007 at 12:20 PM

JiangxiDad, that is a very respectable and free thinking position to take. You havn’t eliminated nor have you jumped on board. You are waiting to get more info before making a decision. Its the people who eliminate prior to gaining that information I have a hard time respecting.

I lived in NYC during Giuliani’s time. He’s not a phony at all. What you see is what you get. That doesn’t mean I like him or will vote for him, but if I don’t, it will be because I don’t agree with his positions.

Well, we know what your issue is and you are eliminated from reasoned debate when it comes to Mitt!.

csdeven on August 17, 2007 at 12:15 PM

I don’t agree. Mitt may be great; haven’t decided yet.
But you can be sure that I’m looking for the authentic amongst the vast sea of phonies that make-up our political class.

I’m with moonsbreath regarding Flip Romney. He’s too clever by far. *Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.* I’d be happy to buy a used car from him but that’s it.
We amature pundits know phoney and he’s phoney. He’s into whatever you’re into.

Mojave Mark on August 17, 2007 at 11:48 AM

Well, we know what your issue is and you are eliminated from reasoned debate when it comes to Mitt!.

Jeeze! I was thinking of Austin Powers and really meant to get it right. I need a nap!

As for Romney, I just have a gut-feeling about him and I wouldn’t even consider voting for him. Best I can come-up with is that he’s “too perfect,” and there’s always something wrong with “too perfect” people.
moonsbreath on August 17, 2007 at 11:08 AM

Well, how to address this without offending you….

So what you want is a flawed candidate? This is nonsensical to me. No one is perfect. We all have flaws. You know what the difference is? Some of us have flaws that are completely visible from the outset (overweight etc) or are evident very quickly (bad temper etc). Mitts! flaws are not evident. Perhaps he is overly concerned with physical appearance etc? One thing is clear…Mitts! positives are very evident after a few times listening to him. He is articulate and educated. he knows the issues and has a plan. Delving deeper into his history we find both good and bad events etc. On the hole, Mitt! has many more positives than negatives and that makes him the best candidate (or non-candidate) on either side.

So, don’t worry that he is too perfect. He is not and he’ll be the first one to tell you so.

The conclusion I drew after reading it, though, was that most people, regardless of party affiliation, were against the bill for the same reasons, though a minority of Dems were claiming the bill was too harsh. At the same time, though, there were a minority of Republicans also against the bill for fear of losing de-facto slave labor.

Zetterson on August 17, 2007 at 11:25 AM

Rasmussen apparently had a better read on the public, than our legislature. Agendas could be seen on both sides, but the Republicans came through for us. I for one am grateful. Now to filter through the noise of politics and be convinced and not duped into voting for the candidate, that truly has the best interest of this nation and its’ people, at heart, will be more than challenging. I fall sway to emotions too often, but not anymore. Unless there is true substance there.

I’m with moonsbreath regarding Flip Romney. He’s too clever by far. *Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.* I’d be happy to buy a used car from him but that’s it.
We amature pundits know phoney and he’s phoney. He’s into whatever you’re into.

Zetterson on August 17, 2007 at 11:41 AM

Articulate. Well Reasoned. Thoughtful.

Must be something wrong with you.