Audio: "I am adamantly against illegal immigrants," says ... Hillary Clinton

Via Jeff Dunetz, a time capsule from 2003 rescued from the memory hole by GOP oppo researchers. We already knew she said this, but knowing it and having it available as a soundbite for attack ads are two different things. It’ll come in handy next summer when she’s busy trying to convince Latinos that our inevitably pro-amnesty Republican nominee, who may well himself be Latino or have children who are Latino and who’ll probably have a Latino running mate, hates illegals because many are Latino.

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The attack ads won’t work, though. The whole point of Tuesday’s pander-monium with DREAMers in Nevada was to assure amnesty fans that she’ll say or do virtually anything to make Latinos show up for her the way they did for O. Legal status for parents of young illegals? Consider it done, even though the Obama White House says the president lacks the authority to do that. (Seriously. Watch the second clip below.) Legal status for adult illegals who don’t even have kids? No word on that yet, but all immigration activists have to do is ask. If anything, this soundbite is useful leverage for the open-borders left to extort even bolder campaign promises from her. “How can we trust someone who once said she adamantly opposes illegal immigrants unless she promises to unilaterally legalize America’s entire illegal population as president?”

I wonder if there’s any old position of Hillary’s, in fact, that will be held against her by the left despite her furious attempts to get right with them before Warren 2016 gains real momentum. Your best bet is her opposition to gay marriage, partly because it’s achieved the status of a moral litmus test on the left that immigration reform hasn’t and partly because Hillary can always point out that Obama has also disappointed liberals on immigration. (Executive amnesty made them happy but a comprehensive immigration bill passed when he had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate would have made them happier.) The irony is, while SSM fans can tell themselves, correctly, that Hillary will do more for them as president than a Republican would, it’s actually not necessarily true that she’d do more for them on immigration than a Republican would. If you’re eager to see fragile executive action replaced with durable statutory solutions, President Jeb Bush is probably more likely to broker a compromise in Congress than President Hillary Clinton is. Republicans in Congress might oppose a Hillary White House on immigration simply to land a blow against a new Democratic president; with a Bush White House, they’d be inclined to hand him a major victory to start his term. But there’s no point trying to argue strategy on this. Hillary will pull 65 percent of the Latino vote at a minimum, “adamant” opposition to illegal immigrants or not.

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Ed Morrissey 10:00 PM | November 11, 2024
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