This week, President Obama punk’d the GOP on immigration, leaving them caught between Latino voters and their wingnut base. And there’s not much they can do about it.
Thursday night, President Obama executed one of the most brilliant moves ever ignored by television networks.
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With the wingnuts already outraged that the president didn’t immediately resign and mail Mitt Romney the keys to the White House after the midterm elections, President obviously decided to have some fun. He spent almost a week teasing that he would take some kind of executive action on immigration; an issue on which the wingnut base left the GOP exposed and vulnerable, with their worst rhetoric on immigration.
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It’s actually a modest plan, but the beauty part is that Republicans can’t shut it down. Even better, conservatives worried that the president’s move was aimed making them look even crazier by driving their wingnut brethren to go new extremes.
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Republicans can’t bow to tea party rage without alienating Latinos. The president’s move left the GOP stuck between the voters it still needs now, and the voters it will need in the future — in order to have a future. Ya gotta admit, it’s a pretty slick move.
Republicans fell right into the trap. President Obama’s move riled up the tea party base that Republicans have spent the last six years whipping into a state of permanent outrage.
Wingnuts ratcheted up the rhetoric.
- The hosts of Fox & Friends were outraged that President Obama quoted scripture in his primetime speech detailing his executive action on immigration.
- Classiest of all was Sarah Palin, who accused the president of “giving the middle finger” to Americans.
- Rush Limbaugh compared the president’s immigration action to shooting a gun at the constitution.
- Eagle Forum president Phyllis Schlafly told WorldNetDaily’s Paul Bremmer that the president’s executive action “represents a Fort Sumter-type moment,” that could lead to civil war.
- Wingnut media personality Laura Ingraham likened the president’s executive action to the “home grown tyranny” of a “king.”
- Former presidential candidate Ben Carson warned Newsmax’s J.D. Hayworth, that President Obama has a “nefarious agenda” to bring in “a new class of voters dependent on government.”
- Anti-immigrant activists William Gheen and James Neighbors released a press release saying that the president was inciting civil war by making the announcement on Mexico’s Revolution Day.
- Gheen also suggested that the county sheriffs coming to Washington next month to protest the executive action should arrest President Obama while they’re in town.
- Cliff Kincaid of the right-wing group Accuracy In Media stopped by “Trunews” host Rick Wiles dreamed of the military arresting President Obama.
- Twitter was ablaze with wingnuts calling the president’s address his “most racist speech ever.”
Naturally, the president’s action on one “I word” led wingnuts to invoke their favorite “I word.”
- Former Florida congressman Allen West told Newsmax’s Steve Malzberg that Americans would respond with an “incredible cry” for President Obama’s impeachment.
- Fox News host Andrea Tantaros said President Obama is “double daring” Congress to impeach him.
- Conservative activist Richard Viguerie told WorldNetDaily that “a lot of Democrats” would vote to impeach President Obama, or at least shut down the government over an executive action on immigration.
The president’s move made it impossible for Republicans to stay silent. Sure enough, Republicans obliged.
- Sen. Tom Coburn (R, Oklahoma) warned that “you could see instances of anarchy. … You could see violence,” if President Obama deferred deportation for 5 million undocumented immigrants.
- Kansas Secretary Kris Kobach told a caller on his radio program that a Hispanic majority might conduced “ethnic cleansing” against American whites.
- In an interview with WorldNetDaily, Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, compared the GOP’s standoff with President Obama over immigration reform to the fight against ISIS.
- Rep. Michele Bachmann (R, Minnesota) warned that the president’s executive order will lead to “millions of unskilled, illiterate, foreign nationals” who “can’t speak the English language,” coming to America and voting.
- Rep. Mike Kelly (R, Pennsylvania) told Newmax’s Ed Berliner that Republicans shouldn’t take impeachment off the table.
- Rep. Lamar Smith (R, Texas) accused the president of “declaring war on the American people.”
- Rep. Louie Gohmert (R, Texas) recommended Congress strike back by going after the president’s golf game.
With the obligatory freak-out over, Congress left early for Thanksgiving vacation. After all, there wasn’t much else they could do.
Here’s the rest of the best of the worst in wingnuttery this week:
- Glenn Beck sets out to ruin Santa for kids with his new movie “The Immortal,” which depicts the jolly old elf as a ninja bodyguard for a young Jesus Christ. No, seriously. Ninja. Bodyguard.
- Beck also lamented that the Associated Press “raped Bill Cosby,” releasing interview footage of a reporter asking Cosby about rape allegations.
- Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones warned his listeners that “the real false flag could be an assassination of Obama,” in order “lionize” him, attack his critics, and promote gun safety and health care.
- Rev. Donnie Swaggart, son of disgraced televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, said that LGBT activists would behead Christians if they could, just like ISIS.
- Nevada Republican assemblyman and the chamber’s next speaker Ira Hansen came under fire a column in which he wrote: “[t]he relationship of Negroes and Democrats is truly a master-slave relationship, with the benevolent master knowing what’s best for his simple minded darkies.”
- After calling President Obama a “snake” who is “pulling for the other side,” right-wing radio host Michael Savage chastised Jewish victims of an attack on a Jerusalem synagogue. “A lot of good the prayers did them, huh?” Savage said.
