Cruz Speech Thread

We need a new thread, I figure, plus, hey, I'm biased.

Jeb Bush dropped out, as I'm sure everyone knows.

Bush, I'm sure, is a good man, but he really had not kept tabs at all on conservative sentiment since he left office in 2006.

His "act of love" statement was controversial, but that wasn't the problem. A candidate can say controversial things -- indeed, he probably ought to. He ought to challenge public opinion, and not just try to reflect it back to them.

But the problem was he didn't seem to realize this was controversial, and that he would need to offer a more substantive, persuasive defense of his amnesty proposals than just saying that Hispanics were good people (of course they are!) or that they came here to offer their kids a better life (of course they do!).

I would point out, however, that just as today's illegal immigrants come here illegally to seek a better life, for themselves and their families, so too will all of tomorrow's illegal immigrants do the same.

One problem I keep having with these pro-amnesty guy is how they set up the moral framework of this: If an illegal immigrant comes here for some understandable reason, then it would be morally outrageous -- indeed, morally inconceivable -- to deny him the legal status he'd prefer.

This theory is simply an Open Borders one. At some point, one has to be able to say "No," even to people who are, on the whole, a rather good and likable lot, unless the plan is to simply open the borders to anyone similarly seeking to perform an "Act of Love" for his family.

At the end of the day, all I hear from these guys -- Bush, Rubio, several of the others who've dropped out -- is that it would be morally repellent to deport any immigrants who've already gotten to America illegally.

Okay.

Then I'm having trouble comprehending from whence you summon the pure vicious evil to deport the next people to come illegally.

If it's a palpable moral evil to exclude the current illegal population, how could it possibly be morally acceptable to exclude the next to come?

Is it just some arbitrary date? Is the claim being made that, say, on January 17, 2017, what was previously a moral outrage becomes, for reasons unexplained, permissible?

Or is it just the idea, which doesn't get talked about very much, that part of these guy's plans is to increase legal immigration by such as level as to make illegal immigration unnecessary?

I'm sure he's a good man, but he doesn't seem to have thought very much about a very important issue. He didn't even seem aware it was an issue at all.

Now Cruz is speaking. I'm listening.

posted by Ace at 09:38 PM

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