GOP Debate: Rick Perry Booed Over Texas Immigration Law

[pampango]

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/09/gop-debate-rick-perry-booed-over-texas-immigration-law/

After starting off the GOP presidential candidate debate Monday night will big rounds of applause from the audience, GOP front-runner Rick Perry was booed by debate-watchers over a Texas law that gives in-state college tuition to children of illegal immigrants.

The Texas governor, who signed the bill during his first term in 2001, sparred with fellow candidates Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann and Mitt Romney over the issue.

“The American way is not to give taxpayer-subsidized benefits to people who have broken our laws and are here in the United States illegally,” Bachmann said at the CNN/Tea Party Express debate.

In the fall of 2010, about 12,000 undocumented-immigrant students, about 1 percent of all Texas college students, qualified for the lower, in-state tuition rates because of the law, according to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.

Nice to see Perry get booed by the teabaggers in the audience since they seem to love everything else about him. Also nice to see Romney side with Bachmann on the teabagger side of the immigration debate.

[HereSince1628]

1. The roots pushing the extreme right toward greater extremism?

That's a phenomenon that probably should cause concern rather than schadenfreude.

While it may seem like the tea-party candidates are racing to make themselves unelectable by people with socially progressives values, the problem is not enough people have socially progressive values. Too much of the nation supports extreme socially repressive sentiments.

This has already leveraged the position of 'the political center' of America to well right of center.

Worse, the application of the unprincipled technique of 'triangulation' by democratic candidates over the past 15 years has resulted in the rightward shift of the democratic party.

[KharmaTrain]

2. The Fun Is Just Starting...

Right now Parry's the Flavor of the moment...the "front-runner" who has a big target on his head by the other wannabes. The Obama campaign is quietly taking notes here. The rub is that Parry's shtick plays well with the fundies in Western Iowa and South Carolina...the ones who will thin this field down. So if you're a single digiter you're gonna do all you can to knock this sucker down from the right...and his responses are sure to make him more unelectable in the general.

To me, the best situation is Parry only wins in South Carolina, Mittens in New Hampshire and O'Bachmann in Iowa that prolongs this game long into the primary season. We saw how divisive a long, bitterly contested primary can be in '08...and whomever ends up with the rushpublican nomination will be wounded inside and out of that corrupt party.