March 06, 2024 10:39 AM UTC

Republicans Recycle World's Dumbest Political Argument

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• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: Fields responds to this post by effectively saying, In order to prove my original argument, here is more of the same argument!

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Republicans in Colorado and across the country are using immigration reform as one of their top issues as they campaign for public office in 2024. These Republicans know that fear-mongering and fist-shaking about immigrants crossing America’s southern border is one of their best opportunities to gain votes…which is exactly why a comprehensive, bipartisan immigration reform bill crafted by Senate leaders died before it had a chance to be debated in Congress.

As William A. Galston writes for the Brookings Institute:

Last October, Senate Republicans made it clear that they would not back additional aid for Ukraine without a bill that would help secure the southern border of the United States. With the blessing of both Senator Chuck Schumer, the Majority Leader, and Senator Mitch McConnell, the Minority Leader, a bipartisan team of senators began negotiations to produce a bill that enough members of both parties could accept to overwhelm objections from progressive Democrats and America First Republicans.

The team negotiated for four months to produce this bill. It took less than four days for its support among Republicans to collapse. Why?

The easiest explanation is that Republicans in both the House and Senate yielded to objections from their all-but-certain presidential nominee, former president Donald Trump. [Pols emphasis] Once the House Speaker stated publicly that he would not allow the Senate bill to reach the House floor for a vote, Republican senators were unwilling to run the political risk of supporting a measure that would not become law.

During a border appearance last week, President Biden called on Donald Trump to encourage his Republican minions in Congress to get off of their collective asses and work on passing this legislation:

 

Post by @acynig

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But Trump won’t do this, because comprehensive immigration reform would look good for Biden. Trump has bragged publicly in recent weeks that he “killed” the bill by issuing a fatwa against it’s passage. None of this has anything to do with “policy” disagreements. It’s all about 2024 politics.

Now that Trump has ensured that immigration reform is dead for the foreseeable future, Republicans are scrambling to come up with new reasons for the bill’s failure that deflect away from The Big Orange Guy.

Local Republican talking point muppet Michael Fields recently appeared on Fox 31’s political show to make this dumbass argument:

FIELDS: I think the American people want a one-page bill that says, ‘Here’s more money to shut down the border crossings to stop illegal immigration.’

Yeah, THAT’S the problem. We’d have immigration reform now if only someone could fit all of the words onto one single sheet of paper. How much money are we talking about? Where would it come from? Meh, who cares as long as the bill is only one page!

Republicans have used this idiotic argument before, most notably around healthcare reform efforts during the Obama administration. But this isn’t as straightforward an argument as right-wingers would have you believe.

For example:

• How large is the piece of paper?
  • The United States Constitution was written on a page that is 23″ by 29″ — much larger than today’s standard “letter” size of 8.5″ by 11.” Would that count?
  • What about one really long scroll?
• How small can the typeface be?
  • If you decrease the type size to “8,” you can fit 1,140 words on one page
• What about the margins?
  • If we reduce the margins from the standard 1″ to 0.5,” then we can get 1,563 words on one page!
• Could you write it out by hand?
  • What if somebody uses impossibly-small letters? You know, kinda like a cheat sheet for a college exam? Is that cool so long as it is just one page?

This entire argument should be insulting to Republicans, frankly. What Fields is saying, in effect, is that Republicans are too dumb or don’t have the attention span to follow anything longer than one page. He might be correct in that regard, but that’s not the sort of thing you should say out loud.

In fact, if Fields had his way, we’d only have 12 Constitutional Amendments — that’s all that the Founding Fathers could fit onto one piece of paper for the original Bill of Rights.

This “one page rule” would also be problematic for a number of Republican-sponsored bills. The “personhood” bill discussed (and axed) in a Colorado House committee on Monday was — GASP! — eight pages long. Perhaps Republican Rep. Scott “There is No” Bottoms could have written his bill to say: “Eggs are people. The end.” Would it have then had a real chance at passage in the Colorado legislature? [SPOILER ALERT: Nope]

This entire argument is stupid and should not be used by any serious person for any reason. Why not demand that all legislation be converted to the ASCII format so that our future AI overlords can read it faster?

Serious issues require serious discussions from serious people. Unfortunately, this pretty much rules out a vast majority of Congressional Republicans from getting anything done. Let’s worry more about solving the immigration problem than discussing font sizes, shall we?