Get Your Own House In Order, Ryan Call

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by: Colorado Pols

Not like we haven’t been saying it for years, but we wanted this report from FOX 31’s Eli Stokols noted for the record–a recognition by Colorado Republicans of a serious problem.

Sort of.

A Wednesday article in the New York Times uses two Colorado Republicans to underscore how tough talk on illegal immigration in GOP presidential primary debates may hurt the party’s chances with Latino voters, a key constituency in 2012 swing states…

The Times story reports the obvious: that the increasingly heated rhetoric on the subject of illegal immigration, an obvious play to the conservative base, is going to hurt the eventual nominee’s chances with the crucial Latino vote come general election time.

And Colorado GOP Chairman Ryan Call is willing to admit that.

“The discussion of creating electrified fences from sea to sea is neither prudent nor helpful,” Call told the Times. “They’re throwing red meat around in an attempt to mollify a particular aspect of the Republican base.” [Pols emphasis]

…Interestingly, the Times article also includes a quote from Colorado state Rep. Robert Ramirez, R-Westminster, who cast a decisive vote earlier this year against a proposal to grant in-state tuition to illegal immigrants in Colorado, effectively killing the bill despite his own stated ambivalence on the issue.

“We can’t pretend the Latino vote doesn’t exist,” Ramirez told the Times. “It’s time we became the party of inclusion.”

We’ll start by saying that Colorado GOP chairman Ryan Call is right. As we have warned for years, the hard-line campaign against illegal immigrants by Republican politicians has short term political benefits, rallying anti-immigrant sentiments in that segment of the conservative base–but long term peril for Republicans as they proceed to alienate the fastest-growing bloc of voters in the United States. We have consistently given this warning, even as Colorado Republicans mimicked Arizona’s reviled anti-immigrant legislation with their own bills here, and Republicans at all levels endorsed the gubernatorial campaign of Tom Tancredo in 2010.

That’s right. You want to be the “party of inclusion?” Great! Doug Lamborn, Mike Coffman, Bob Schaffer, Bob Beauprez, Cheri Gerou, Cindy Acree, Kent Lambert, Marsha Looper, Spencer Swalm, Greg Brophy, Shawn Mitchell, Ted Harvey, Josh Penry…the list goes on and on…that is, Tancredo’s endorsement list…have got some soul-searching to do first.

So while it’s neat that Ryan Call and Rep. Robert “Maybe Next Year” Ramirez feel empowered to complain about Herman Cain’s regrettable “electric fence” comments in the New York Times, we’d note right back–everything they said applies as much right here in Colorado as it does in a national news story, one that Call feels he can discuss without hurting any local feelings. What Call said above about Herman Cain, and what Rep. Ramirez says about “inclusion,” applies at least equally to fellow Colorado Republicans they work with every day.

Isn’t that where the chairman of the Colorado Republican Party should start?

13 thoughts on “Get Your Own House In Order, Ryan Call”

dukeco1 says:

October 23, 2011 at 6:30 pm

Nothing like sucking up early, I say. 🙂

seriously…

The amazing thing here is that it took something as unbelievably stupid as Cains’ comments to get them to realize the path they were on was likely to cost them in the general. I guess it’s just that fear suppresses reason.

They have been exercising the suspension of disbelief for so long, they have lost touch with reality. I guess a better way of putting it is that …when you intentionally believe a lie, it stops becoming a lie after awhile.

The republicans in our part of the world focus on believing whatever the people at the top of their party believe. They are good little soldiers and seldom get in the face of a colleague,(unless it is for personal gain), and NEVER question the party line. Democrats…not so much.

I think, with a few exceptions, that pattern is ubiquitous.

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Ellie says:

October 23, 2011 at 7:34 pm

But he’s going to get his ass chewed for that quote. Ramirez not so much.

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1. ArapaGOP says:
  
  October 23, 2011 at 9:20 pm
  
  Yes. I believe it’s been resolved, but it was not cricket to air these grievances in the nation’s leading liberal newspaper. It would be like me doing that on Daily Kos.
  
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  1. Ellie says:
    
    October 23, 2011 at 10:19 pm
    
    I respect Call and the New York Times reporting. If you won’t be quoted on Daily Kos, then why are you on CPols?
    
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The realist says:

October 23, 2011 at 7:53 pm

the myth of being an inclusionary party for long — they just can’t fake it for the long haul. Periodically, a few of them wake up and realize that they could help themselves if they made efforts to reach out to the Latino community, but it never lasts long because it’s not genuine. They truly are the party of WASPs, and as the proportion of WASPs declines over time in the U.S. the GOP will become a permanent minority party.

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BlueCat says:

October 23, 2011 at 8:19 pm

demonize non-Cuban Hispanics, with the fig leaf of “just the illegals” attached in the face of the growing legal citizen voter Hispanic demographic, especially here in the west, home of Hispanic communities that predate the US with families that lived here before the US existed, without paying a price in the not very distant future.

Tancredo has never made any secret of the fact that he opposes legal Mexican immigration as well and openly plays on culture based hysteria ( We’re being over-run by Mexican who will change our fantasy Leave it to Beaver world, oh my) so getting on his band wagon will prove extremely short sighted.

Laws they push will increasingly lead to the harassment of citizens of non-Cuban Hispanic origin or heritage who will be stopped on suspicion, asked to produce papers, possibly detained while their children come home to an empty house, maybe after being taunted at school by bullies telling American born kids who don’t even speak Spanish to go back to Mexico, all because of appearance, surname or accent.

The old tactic of trying to spread their appeal to Hispanics via social conservative wedge issues will fall far short in the face of the hostility engendered by the constant attacks meant to appeal to a shrinking, dying base. Those issues may have moved many Hispanics to vote for a Hispanic friendly GW and other Republican candidates of his day but non-Cuban Hispanic friendly GO(T)P candidates are no longer welcome and it’s hard to see how they turn that around in the near future.

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1. Muhammad Ali Hasan says:
  
  October 24, 2011 at 11:29 am
  
  He did push for the Guest Worker Program, something that would be grounds for excommunication with the current GOP and Tea Party
  
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  1. BlueCat says:
    
    October 24, 2011 at 6:21 pm
    
    he’s pretty much dead to today’s GO(T)P.
    
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    1. Muhammad Ali Hasan says:
      
      October 24, 2011 at 6:44 pm
      
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Muhammad Ali Hasan says:

October 24, 2011 at 3:02 am

(in reference to Ramirez voting against allowing undocumented immigrants to receive in-state tuition)

Ramirez is just as guilty in participating in the witchhunt against immigrants, as any other anti-immigrant politician is

Let us not forget that the Founding Fathers never wrote a Constitution that was anti-immigrant, rather, they always left the laws to be in the hands of the modern leaders – the first political leader who truly introduced caps against immigration (and immigrants) was Republican Congressman Albert Johnson in the 1920s, a man who headed a Eugenics group that would eventually be footnoted by Adolph Hitler, in his argument for why certain people needed to be killed in order for society to advance

It is upsetting to see Ramirez walk the path of Albert Johnson, rather than the path of a Republican hero like Ronald Reagan, who supported amnesty for all immigrants

There is nothing MORE DAMAGING for minorities (and immigrants) than minorities who are against immigrants – and no matter how much Ramirez supports legislation that keeps America white, he will NEVER be able to become white, himself

I regret that I gave $200 to Robert Ramirez in 2010 and to all the immigrants in Colorado – I AM SORRY

If there is anything that can redeem me though, I gave Ramirez $200 in the hope that he could be someone that could turn the Colorado GOP into a group that fashioned itself more after Ronald Reagan, not Albert Johnson

I was wrong

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1. BlueCat says:
  
  October 24, 2011 at 4:16 am
  
  if they had shut down immigration 200 years ago? Split between Canada and Mexico perhaps? Maybe France would have a piece?
  
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  1. Muhammad Ali Hasan says:
    
    October 24, 2011 at 11:28 am
    
    Too true!
    
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chirstbn says:

October 24, 2011 at 10:13 am

Very useful for me Thanks.

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