Santorum Slip Reveals GOP Bias
A big stink was raised recently about a comment made by Senator Rick Santorum during the Tea Party presidential debate broadcast on CNN. The senator was on the offensive, joining the dog-pile on Texas Governor Rick Perry. Every candidate, to a person, was taking their turn, taking pot-shots at Perry for signing a bill that mandated in-state tuition for undocumented students in state universities.
It was easy pickings for that crowd – line up, take your shot, move on. Perry is the overwhelming front runner, so he’s the obvious target of his opponents barbs and criticisms. They hit him on his social-security-is-a-ponzi-scheme idea, and they hit him on immigration, trying to peg him as a moderate (I’m amazed at how that crowd mangles language so that being moderate sounds like a decrepit disease).
Santorum took his turn, aimed, and flubbed. Listen for yourself.
The stink came when some people thought they heard him say “illegal” vote.
There’s a vast open space left to fill with everything that’s wrong with that statement. The implication is that if the Latino vote is an illegal vote, then by association Latinos are illegal. And that’s just the start.
For some reason though, I can’t seem to get upset over this. And I think it has to do with the fact that I don’t hear what others do. I don’t think he said “illegal.” I hear “the legal.” And that changes the argument. Either way, it’s not the legal/illegal argument that caught my attention, it was something completely different that got me to raise an eyebrow.
Lets look at the specific excerpt:
“What what Gov. Perry has done is he provided in-state tuition for illegal immigrants, maybe that was an attempt to attract illegal vote — I mean Latino — voters,”
Here’s what bothers me about that statement: in the Tea Party led GOP universe in-state tuition for undocumented students isn’t a policy idea, it’s a vote-getting ploy. It’s not gaged for it’s merits, it’s seen as an underhanded means to a dishonest end.
It speaks directly to the way language and ideas are distorted and twisted when they enter the Tea Party bubble. The problem isn’t that Perry approved in-state tuition, it’s that he did it to gain the favor of Latino voters. In-state tuition goes from being policy to being a scheme. It’s the same bubble in which human beings can be illegal and babies can be anchors.
It wouldn’t have bothered me if Santorum had said “illegal vote.” That would almost be expected. The problem with the statement is that it lies at the foundation of the extreme right wing double-speak. The idea of a legal or illegal vote would not stand if not for the idea that in-state tuition is nothing more than political sleight of hand, designed to sucker-in Latinos and their votes.
That’s how these candidates and their followers see the world around them. Latinos are the “other,” so their issues matter only as bait on a line. Governor Perry couldn’t possibly be serious about it, he was just using the policy for his own political gain.
That makes him (God forbid!) a moderate. And that’ll stink up the GOP barn any day.
[Image Courtesy GOP]
