Well. That was quite a show, don’t you think?
Some thoughts, in no particular order.
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Carly Fiorina has a titanium backbone, and knows how to behave in public. I like her.
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Planned Parenthood did not deserve the trashing it received (including, disappointingly, from Fiorina). Multiple state investigations have established that the organization does business ethically, and that the videos released by the so-called Center for Medical Progress were heavily edited to create a false impression.
Watching those videos, I found myself taken aback by the sometimes cavalier attitude of the Planned Parenthood representatives. Then I remembered that every profession has its sarcasms, its gallows humor based on public misimpressions of who they are and what they do for a living. Civil engineers give themselves ulcers fighting with developers in order to maintain environmental and construction standards — and then make jokes about their project to pave the Garden of Eden. Lawyers are overwhelmingly an ethical group of people who work hard for their clients; anybody who can’t point to at least one lawyer with real gratitude for their services has lived a boring, disengaged life — and then they make jokes about how they’re going to the courthouse to fleece Ma and Pa Kettle out of their last pig. So, too, doctors and, probably, medical researchers. I don’t know that’s what informed the remarks about hot cars, but I suspect so; and let’s not forget — every investigation has found Planned Parenthood blameless of wrongdoing.
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Jeb Bush is w-a-a-a-y too gentlemanly to ever successfully mix it up with slime like The Donald; he needs to ignore Trump, noticing him only over a downcast nose.
Incidentally, I think Bush is right to support Common Core, and I think he has a realistic attitude toward immigration. His just-released tax plan is too-heavy with tired and disproved cliches, however, and his shabby conduct during the Schiavo grotesquerie remains problematic to me.
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It was embarrassing to watch the candidates mournfully agree that the Democrats just don’t want to solve the immigration problem, because neither do Republicans or the great bulk of the American people.
Do we really not know that, since before the founding, America has fed itself on slave and near-slave labor? Have we forgotten Edward R. Murrow’s Harvest of Shame broadcast?
Watch it now, then.
What America wants is cheap invisible labor that makes no demands on its social safety net, and that doesn’t slow-down the checkout line at Wal*Mart while the clerk scurries to find a translator.
Those days are over, folks. Over.
I incline toward a generous immigration policy and stringently applied expectations. We should be happy to welcome anybody with gumption enough to pick-up the family and travel to a remote part of the world to create a new life — those are the kind of people who enrich both our culture and our wallets. But we should be no-nonsense about demanding that immigrants learn about their new home, uphold its ideals, and obey its laws.
We ought to face the reality that we’re not going to round-up and evict all those who are here illegally. And let’s be clear — it isn’t just because it’s hard and expensive to do. The American people simply won’t stand for it when they learn it means the sweet old lady down the street that you can always touch for emergency babysitting, the guy who was the first neighbor to show-up with a chainsaw when that tree hit the house, that well-mannered kid in your son’s cub scout troop, that handsome young couple at church, that always helpful clerk at the bank. It isn’t going to happen, and the candidates ought to stop their blustery howling and get serious.
Community and military service in lieu of unpaid public obligations and taxes? Yeah, something like that.
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The only competitive ticket the Republicans have is Fiorina/Bush. Even a boring, insincere hack like Hilary Clinton will trounce any other combo.