Where the so-called “border crisis” is concerned – that is, the sudden influx of refugee children – the Republican Party, its Tea Party leaders, conservative pundits, and various ethnic nationalist militias, are collectively acting like they’re in a bath tub suddenly filling with cockroaches. The “eww” factor is apparent on their faces as they cringe back in fear, all the while calling for the exterminator.
As I argued yesterday, this is not the Republican Party’s finest moment and it is difficult to see how they think their reaction, which includes demonizing innocent refugee children, is going to garner them votes either from the Latino community or from sympathetic independents.
Nor, on a practical level, are their ideas – and I use that term loosely – to remedy the crisis worthy of serious consideration. You surely remember Herman Cain’s infamous alligator-filled moat and his plan to fry Mexicans on his electrified fence as they cross the border. We’ve been entertained – and horrified – by plans to invade Mexico.
Back in June Bill O’Reilly advocated militarizing our border with Mexico. Getting together with Britt Hume, he chewed on the idea that “elected Democrats” 1) don’t want to militarize the border, and 2) “don’t support tough measures to keep illegal aliens out.”
Hume responded that Democrats’ “convictions fitting nicely with their politics.” He agreed with O’Reilly that this is because it is politically advantageous for Democrats. After all, as he pointed out, the Latino vote is “growing all the time.”
O’Reilly opined that “there is a strain of thought in this country that the Democratic Party actively wants chaos on the border, actively wants millions of people to come here.” Britt Hume tried to point to the legalities involved, particularly with the immigrant children bigots are making such a fuss about, but O’Reilly insisted on seeing this as just another layer of a Democratic conspiracy.
O’Reilly: You could militarize that border and you could secure that border –
Hume: Bill, suppose you militarize the border and a bunch of kids are coming across. What are you going to do? Shoot them?
O’Reilly: They wouldn’t get in because there’s be a wall and a barrier there.
Hume: In other words, you’d have a giant wall across our entire southern border to stop the children from coming.
O’Reilly: To stop everybody from coming.
Hume: I understand that. So that’s the “O’Reilly Plan.”
O’Reilly: I’d secure that border so you couldn’t get a jet ski and drive up and get off and walk in. Yes I would. Am I a mean guy for doing it?
On July 2, Charles Krauthammer appeared on The O’Reilly Factor and advocated a fence:
O’Reilly: How do you secure the border, Charles?
Krauthammer: Alright, here’s what I’ve been on for years. You start with a fence. It’s very simple. People say, ‘Oh, fences don’t work. You make a ladder.’ Well, then you build two fences, triple strand fences. San Diego did that in the mid 90’s and within a decade, the illegal immigration rate at that point was reduced by 90% and people ended up going through other places like Arizona.
If fences don’t work, why is there one around the White House? If they don’t work, why is it that the Israeli fence which separate Israel from the West Bank has cut down terror attacks within Israel by 99%. Fences work. Yes, there are parts of the border where you can’t have a fence, fine. So you don’t have it in those areas and you do heavy patrols. But there is no reason why a rich country like us cannot put a fence across — a double fence, a triple fence and patrol it all the time. That would have a tremendous impact.
Laura Ingraham, appearing on the same episode, agreed with Krauthammer:
I think Krauthammer is right, we need a wall and/or a fence in the places along the border that that is practical. We have to absolutely have that in place.
She also had her own plan:
Ingraham: OK, first thing you do is start deporting people — not by the hundreds, not by the dozens. By the thousands. And that means entire families. Not just a father, a mother. But we keep families unified by deporting all people who are are here illegally, that’s number one.
[…]Ingraham: Number two, we have to stop visas and stop foreign aid to countries who will not repatriate the citizens of those countries that left and came to our country illegally. We’re seeing this with Guatemala, [El] Salvador, Costa Rica, Honduras, some of the South American countries. If they don’t agree to repatriate their citizens back home and stop sending signals, implicitly, explicitly, that people should come here, then they get no foreign aid, we stop all visas from those countries coming in. This is a crisis, and we have to deal with it in a serious way.
Number three, I think there has to be an end to this thing called birthright citizenship. Some people call it anchor babies. But this is not required by our Constitution, it doesn’t require a constitutional amendment. Harry Reid was for this about 15, 16 years ago. He went on the Senate floor and proclaimed that we should end birthright citizenship. So, that should go.
On the July 16 edition of The O’Reilly Factor , Bill-O entertained Karl Rove with what he styled Charles Krauthammer’s concept of the “East German border fence,” aka the Berlin Wall. O’Reilly said, “nobody could get through that fence. Nobody. It was a formidable obstacle.”
This is not true, of course. People DID get through that fence. They went over it by zip line, tightrope and hot air balloons just for a start. In fact, some 5,000 people escaped over, under and through the Berlin Wall, forcing the communist government to throw ever more money at it.
Let’s face it: Fences don’t even keep dogs in or out, let alone neighbor kids and intruders.
The Republican idea of a fortified border, a sort of Festung Amerika, certainly sounds imposing, but history has shown big walls don’t work. Hadrian’s Wall didn’t keep the Picts out of Roman Britain; the Great Wall of China did not protect China from either the Huns or the Mongols; the Maginot Line did not keep the Germans out of France, and neither the Atlantic Wall nor the Siegfried Line kept the Allies out of Germany. Heavily fortified cities throughout history have fallen with astonishing regularity.
As General George S. Patton is supposed to have said, “fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man.” And to the stupidity of the Republican Party, apparently.
Another problem is that the East German fence was not built to keep people out (East Germany not exactly being a destination of choice) but to keep people in.
Yet O’Reilly insisted, “The Israeli’s have done the same thing,” making him wrong again, since the Israeli’s are not trying to keep people in, but out. O’Reilly seems to have a problem with ingress and egress, which is not surprising given his hostility toward reality in general.
O’Reilly concluded that “We haven’t done that on the southern border. That’s mistake number one.”
What haven’t we done? Build a fence to keep people in? Or to keep people out? Or both?
O’Reilly then advocated deploying the National Guard “to stop the madness just as you stopped the madness in the Rodney King riots and Hurricane Katrina and all those other things.” Since the Obama administration hasn’t done these things, O’Reilly concluded that there is a “dereliction of leadership here.”
To say nothing of a dereliction of clear thought on the set of The O’Reilly Factor.
O’Reilly seems to entirely miss the point that walls have to be manned and patrolled – on both sides. Does he imagine the National Guard will remain on duty forever? How does he think this wall will be funded? Or like Bush’s wars, will it not be funded at all?
I’ve seen it suggested that if we are going to deport anyone that we deport the GOP. By the same token, if we are going to build a wall, we should build it around the GOP. A purely symbolic wall, of course, because we know it wouldn’t keep Republicans out. They’d just start digging tunnels under it.
But there is a bright side: At least then we could point to their cantaloupe-sized calves, and laugh.
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