Jerry Kilgore's flip-flops on immigration make my head spin.
Y'all remember Jerry's "nativist" attack on the Day Laborer center in Herndon?
Y'all remember how the Herndon City Council, stood up and showed some integrity by approving the center, despite Jerry's grandstanding?
Well, I guess Jerry's gotta fix the message to the audience. When he addressed the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Chantilly, he was givin' up the love:
"We should honor those who have played by the rules and become legal residents of our nation... It is government's solemn duty to help law-abiding citizens make their way, find employment and achieve the American and Virginia dream."
The Hampton Roads Daily Press, rightly lays some smackdown on Jerry's hypocrisy:
But just a week earlier, Kilgore was bad cop, consorting with talk-radio rabble-rousers and assorted other defenders of the southern border (the northern one never seems to enter the conversation) and denouncing plans made by the town of Herndon to get day-workers to assemble, not on the streets, but in a publicly financed facility.
You can't talk about this story without mentioning Jerry's outright lie (discredited by multiple law enforcement officials, including the FBI) that Al-Qaeda is connected with hispanic streetgangs.
Where's your leadership, Jerry? Which side of this story are you on?
I guess you have to fix the message to the audience. I wonder what kind of immigration speech he would have given if this were just another day stumpin' through southside instead of a speech in front of a group of well-connected hispanics.
The Daily Press concludes well:
Political rhetoric rarely tends to the connections and distinctions between legal and illegal immigration. The issue, in short, is easy to demagogue and hard to fix.So, what's it going to be? The low road or the high road for Kilgore? Trying to split the difference may yield little political profit and no points for leadership.
"...no points for leadership." That says it all.