Leadership: On Immigration Obama leads, Rombot dodges while GOP works to suppress minority voting rights

Today the SCoUS handed down a decision on Arizona's "papers, please" law," striking down most of the law. Barack Obama issued a statement immediately:

"I am pleased that the Supreme Court has struck down key provisions of Arizona's immigration law. What this decision makes unmistakably clear is that Congress must act on comprehensive immigration reform. A patchwork of state laws is not a solution to our broken immigration system – it’s part of the problem."

 Meanwhile Rombot made no public appearances, issued no statement and took no questions. Pressed repeatedly by reporters for a statement on the ruling, a Rombot spokesdroid spent seven full minutes refusing to say if Rombot agreed or disagreed with the ruling or what, if anything, Rombot would do about immigration. Here's the hilarious video:



Later, in remarks to donors at a private event where he refused to take any questions, Romdroid not only yet again refused to make any specific comments or proposals on immigration or say whether he agreed or disagreed with the much awaited SCoUS ruling, he addressed ruling only indirectly and with exactly one sentence:

 I believe that each state has the duty–and the right–to secure our borders and preserve the rule of law, particularly when the federal government has failed to meet its responsibilities.

Why are Rombot and the GOP determined to demolish any chance they had at garnering votes from Hispanics? Here's a little background...

A few weeks back Obama ordered federal agencies to stop prosecuting and deporting young people brought to this country illegally by their parents, one of the key provisions of The Dream Act. This action became necessary because of solid GOP opposition to the modest, common sense, originally bipartisan immigration reform, including a filibuster of The Dream Act in the Senate. From TPM...

Republicans killed the DREAM Act via Senate filibuster late in 2010, and to date neither elected members nor Romney have backed legislation to address the issue.
...
Romney has refused to say whether he would keep the new policy if elected. Meanwhile, a growing chorus of Republicans is calling on their nominee to pledge to reverse it.

 It's not that GOP lawmakers had a problem with the obviously fair idea of not visiting the sins of the father on innocent children. They didn't. There are two reasons the GOP blocked the bill. First, they know their wingnut, tea bagging, know nothing, ignorant bigoted base has a BIG problem not just with fairness, but with any skin not fair. Second, Obama was for it, so the GOP was against it, even if it was their idea to begin with.

August 1, 2001 the "Student Adjustment Act of 2001" was introduced in the Senate by Republican Orrin Hatch. This legislation, S.1291 was the first bill given the short title of "Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act" or "DREAM Act."

Rombot and the GOP have made a calculation that they can't win Hispanic votes, so they're going all in with their weak hand of nothing but old, white, bigoted fundie moran stupid people and hoping to get enough of the squishy, low information "middle of the road" voters to put them over the top.

Rombot and the GOP know this strategy won't work. There just aren't enough stupid old people or uninformed squishy MOR voters to make the math work. So they're employing a second, far more sinister strategy: suppress the votes of demographic groups that tend to vote for Democrats.

All over the country wingnut tea bagging GOP morans in state leges have enacted draconian voter ID laws to "solve" a problem that simply doesn't exist: in person voter fraud at the polls. Despite being completely and utterly unable to document more than a handful of instances of fraud out of hundreds of millions of votes cast, the GOP insists on attacking the voting rights of women and minorities in a cynical effort to suppress their votes and take away the most basic, cherished right of a democracy.

Why would the party of Lincoln, the party that helped push civil rights and voting rights laws through Congress, lead efforts to disenfranchise millions of eligible voters? One word: Desperation. The GOP knows they're doomed by demographics. They've become exclusively the party of old white people, and the old white people ar3e dying off and being replaced by young brown people who support voter rights, civil rights, women's rights, LGBT rights and abhor basically everything the tea baggers of today's wingnut GOP stand for.

They know this is a war they can't win. But they're hoping to win one last big battle. If they do, they will set in stone backwards, stupid policies that will take decades to undo. Sounds like a lot of work to me. I say we just vote the bigoted old fucks out right now and get back to the work of the people and not the billionaire corporate masters of the GOP.