How do you get your political opponents to say they are in favor of violent rape?
...a short tale of clever political maneuvering.
A story from last September recently resurfaced that’s pretty interesting. Nancy Mace, a Republican Representative from South Carolina introduced a bill called “The Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act”. If enacted, it would clearly state that sexual crimes against women are grounds for deporting an illegal immigrant.
The bill passed (266-158) in the House of Representatives with all present Republicans voting for it along with 51 Democrats. The (then) Democrat-controlled US Senate elected not to bring the bill up for a vote.
Leaving aside the specifics of this legislation, this was a political masterpiece by the House Republicans right before the election in November.
Over the last 4 years (at least) the US has been suffering a mass immigration crisis. People have been pouring over the southern border at unprecedented rates, seemingly uncontrolled.
Worse, these immigrants don’t all seem to want to assimilate peacefully and pursue the American dream. Many are violent criminals. Many are part of extremely violent criminal gangs.
America prospers when peaceful and productive people come to this country to work here, pay their own way, follow our rules, and make better lives for themselves. What’s been happening recently isn’t that. It’s something else. Something much more akin to an invasion.
Also, we here in the US have been watching Western Europe (particularly the UK) suffer from this same problem — except even worse. Their version also comes with a lot of child rape committed by Muslims. I cannot even imagine this horror.
The political narrative in the US (disregarding for a moment whether or not this narrative is true) is that the Republicans are against all this mass illegal immigration and its accompanying horrors, and that the Democrats love it, possibly for noble reasons, possibly for naked political reasons.
Regardless of the truth of these various narratives, Nancy Mace’s bill was brilliant, politically. In this hot-tempered climate, on a very emotional issue, she maneuvered 158 Democrats to vote to allow rapist illegal immigrants to stay in the country — at least that will be the public perception.
Democrats have reasons for their vote. Who knows? Maybe those reasons make sense. Maybe the new legislation is redundant and could come with harmful unintended consequences. After all, most legislation does.
But the fact is, that the current laws are either toothless or simply not being enforced, and the American people are sick of it.
For the Democrats to vote as they did was terrible optics. Well played, Republicans. Now let’s see what you do about these issues now that you have not only the presidency, but control of both houses of Congress.
We’ll all be watching.
Naturally,
Adam