The Huffington Post went ballistic on Ken Cuccinelli over an out of context reading of his remarks on a radio program regarding immigration. Makes for great copy, and probably brings in all kinds of interesting search engine traffic. To boost the click count even more, the HuffPo went further and decided to wed those remarks to Cuccinelli’s expressed affinity for Rep. Steve King, who recently said some incredibly stupid things about immigration.
That was all the hook Terry McAuliffe’s fundraising operation needed to craft an appeal:
You might not know who Representative Steve King is, but you’ve probably heard what he said about immigrant children this week:
“For every one who’s a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there that weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.”
King’s remarks were so extreme, even John Boehner was quick to condemn them as “deeply offensive and wrong.”
Ken Cuccinelli has said that “Steve King is one of my very favorite Congressmen.”
I think Virginians deserve better than this kind of divisive rhetoric.
Nice intro. But as blisteringly stupid as King’s remarks were, one other thing Virginia deserves is a little self-awareness from Terry McAuliffe. Via Politico, we learn that the 2007 vintage McAuliffe had this to say about immigration:
“I don’t care if you’re a Democrat or a Republican, we all agree you’ve gotta shut the borders down,” the former Democratic National Committee chair said in 2007, speaking on California public radio. “People who are coming into this nation, taking our jobs.”
He added at the time that the “business community” supports “some type of process”, but “the first and foremost [priority], which I couldn’t agree more, is we gotta shut these borders down and we gotta spend more money on the enforcement of this and we gotta start today.”
In the 2007 interview, McAuliffe also said there should be “something for the people who have been here for years and have paid taxes — you know, we’re for the people who have been in this nation who have been paying taxes and raising their family.”
“But for the people who have not been here, who have been here illegally and have taken advantage of the situation, we need to have a plan to get them back to the countries they came from, and more importantly … we have gotta shut these borders down,” he continued.
These remarks landed Terry in hot water with then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, who felt the need to issue a statement distancing herself from McAuliffe. And the crowd at the DailyKos had a great deal of fun with The Macker, too. They said he had just done “his best Tom Tancredo impersonation.”
That was then, when McAuliffe was free to sound like a South Park character. But we do have to wonder which version of Terry McAuliffe to believe. The guy from 2007 or the guy running for office today.
