Condi's Comments

I really don’t like political convention speeches.  They are filled with crowd-pleasing comments calculated to get applause and obfuscate the hard truths of reality.  Where oratory is concerned, everyone wants to deliver the speech of the century…but in order to do that they typically paint the other party as all wrong and their own without sin.

In other words…pure spin.

For example, Condoleezza Rice gave a rousing speech about the need for a strong defense and a clear message to the world about our foreign policy.  It was a good speech calculated to show Obama’s weaknesses and highlight the vast differences between the GOP and the Dems on these critical issues.

She was short on details but spoke from her expertise as a former Secretary of State.

But then she wandered into the immigration debate with code words calculated to woo Latinos.  (Hers were the words of Bush-Rove, delivered by a black woman to make them more palatable.)

Here’s what she said:

    “More than at any other time in history, greatness is built

on mobilizing human potential and ambition.  We have always done

that better than any country in the world.  People have come

here from all over because they have believed our creed of

opportunity and limitless horizons.

    “They have come here from the world's most impoverished

nations just to make a decent wage.  And they have come here

from advanced societies as engineers and scientists that fuel

the knowledge-based revolution in the Silicon Valley of

California, in the Research Triangle of North Carolina, along

Route 128 in Massachusetts, in Austin, Texas, and across this

great land.

     “We must continue to welcome the world's most ambitious

people to be a part of us.  In that way, we stay young and

optimistic and determined.  We need immigration laws that

protect our borders, meet our economic needs, and yet show that

we are a compassionate nation of immigrants.”

Source link: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/08/29/transcript-condoleezza-rice-speech-at-rnc/#ixzz252WD1NXV

Such flowery words.  Might those “impoverished” ones be the people we call illegal aliens?  Is she suggesting we legalize them?  Is she suggesting that one million green cards a year isn’t enough?

The last line of the quote gives us the GWB slant: “…show that we are a compassionate nation of immigrants.”  One is surprised that the podium didn’t collapse from the weight of all that baggage.

It is an interesting irony that Rice talks about our need to import engineers and scientists and later in the speech talks about poor domestic education in certain zip codes.  Why not address the defects in college curricula and get some jobs for the hundreds of thousands of college grads who are unemployed?  (Short answer: She’d rather pander to illegals and get cheap labor for her Chamber pals than dis her fellow professors.)

While we’re on the subject of minorities, surely Rice is an intelligent woman.  It seems unlikely that she fails to make the connection between illegal aliens coming here “just to make a decent wage,” and our own citizens who have few skills competing with them for the same jobs.