Bill O'Reilly did his best to blame the very ugly protest in Murrieta, California on the federal government and President Obama earlier during his show this Wednesday evening, rather than the right and guest who've been whipping the nativists into a frenzy like the one he had on later in the show, but even he has enough sense to realize that if the Republicans listen to hate talker Laura Ingraham and her ilk, they're never going to win another national election any time in the near future.
O’Reilly Challenges Ingraham: Your ‘Draconian’ Immigration Plan Would Tank GOP:
Laura Ingraham told Bill O’Reilly her immigration plan tonight, which includes deportation of every illegal immigrant in the country by the thousands, not only sounds “draconian,” but would have significant negative consequences for the Republican party in the near political future. He said, “I do believe that if you do have mass deportations and, you know, the rental agreement stuff, that the Republican party would become obsolete, that you would ensure Hillary Clinton‘s election in 2016 because the demographics don’t add up.”
Ingraham told O’Reilly he’s “adopting the argument of the left,” but O’Reilly insisted that “mass deportations would be draconian” whichever way you spin it. He said the optics of immigrants by the score being forced out of the United States would be terrible, and “if your vision were put in there, Republican party––done.”
Transcript of Ingraham's remarks via Media Matters: Watch Fox's Laura Ingraham Push Nativist Policies In Response To Humanitarian Crisis At The Border:
INGRAHAM: OK, first thing you do is start deporting people -- not by the hundreds, not by the dozens. By the thousands. And that means entire families. Not just a father, a mother. But we keep families unified by deporting all people who are are here illegally, that's number one. [...]
INGRAHAM: Number two, we have to stop visas and stop foreign aid to countries who will not repatriate the citizens of those countries that left and came to our country illegally. We're seeing this with Guatemala, [El] Salvador, Costa Rica, Honduras, some of the South American countries. If they don't agree to repatriate their citizens back home and stop sending signals, implicitly, explicitly, that people should come here, then they get no foreign aid, we stop all visas from those countries coming in. This is a crisis, and we have to deal with it in a serious way.
Number three, I think there has to be an end to this thing called birthright citizenship. Some people call it anchor babies. But this is not required by our Constitution, it doesn't require a constitutional amendment. Harry Reid was for this about 15, 16 years ago. He went on the Senate floor and proclaimed that we should end birthright citizenship. So, that should go.
We should also have severe penalties in place that are enforced, Bill, against employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants and undercut the American worker and the legal immigrants who want to earn a decent wage. Severe civil penalties. If they have to be criminal penalties for successive violations, we have to do that.
I think Krauthammer is right, we need a wall and/or a fence in the places along the border that that is practical. We have to absolutely have that in place.
I think no welfare for households that house illegal aliens. That's a big magnet. Food stamps, disability, obviously the concern about Obamacare, that's critical.
We also have to make sure that bank accounts, housing, people who can rent houses -- if you're in the country illegally, why are you allowed to enter into a rental agreement -- to live in this country? That should not be allowed.
So, there are a lot of common sense steps that we can take that both take the magnet away, we enforce the border, as you said, with the National Guard, we work with border states at a federal level. And we don't file lawsuits against the border states when they actually want to enforce the border.
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