On Thursday, Bill O’Reilly announced his support for immigration reform – and, as Alan Colmes put it, conservative heads exploded. Colmes noted, "Hard to tell what’s worse to these people, liberals like me with whom they always disagree, or someone they generally admire who thinks for himself and doesn’t always tow the party line."
“Is Immigration Reform The Right Thing To Do For America?” was the title as well as the opening question of O’Reilly’s Talking Points commentary on June 20. The answer, O’Reilly said, is yes. “Talking Points supports immigration reform even though I well understand the new law will be somewhat chaotic.” He also acknowledged, “This is a difficult issue for conservative Americans.”
“Difficult issue” is quite an understatement judging from the reaction of the Breitbart crowd, as captured by Pat Cunningham (h/t Colmes). There seems to be a sizable chunk of them that are accusing O’Reilly and Fox of being fake conservatives. Seriously. A few excerpts below:
- Foxnews is RINO , establishment GOP , party line . It only goes conservative when the GOP establishment wants them. We need an real conservative cable news network.
- O’Reilly is a naive moderate, the kind that “give the benefit of doubt” to “good intentions” of socialists and communists obsessed with “fundamentally transforming” the America they hate, including by encouraging foreign invasion and otherwise ignoring provisions of the Constitution and the best interests of Americans.
- O’Reilly is a traitor and amnesty stooge.He takes his orders from his boss at FOX, Roger Ailes(a big amnesty peddler) and his big corporate advertisers.O’Reilly is no conservative.BOYCOTT the traitor.Remember when he called traditional Christians “bible thumpers.” Turn off Fox News for a while. Get off your Fox addiction.O’Reilly is a pompous POS.
I'll say one thing the crowd got right. That Fox News is more devoted to being the Communications arm of the GOP more than it is to promoting news from a conservative point of view.
I wish these baggers had the cojones and stick to their principles and form a third party to battle the “RINO’s” they so detest. True they would never win another national election, but at least they would be true to their own principles. The baggers are never going to take over the Republican Party. so form your own, and if your ideas are so wonderful and nation-changing, then the people will vote for you. Simple as that.
It’s possible that the Joint Senate/House Committee may be able to reconcile the two bills in a form acceptable to the Senate. It won’t matter as the House Teabaggers will vote it down with their usual hateful bellowing about illegal aliens and amnesty.
The USA desperately needs a Democrat-controlled House. Let’s hope that the 2014 elections deliver that.
If this bill passes, Billy’s audience will shrink, and so will the Fox “News” frauds’ ratings.
Coming down the pipe:
1. Billy faces criticism from within.
2. The Fox “News” mouthpieces are at war with each other.
3. Nixon trainee Ailes faces disgruntled staffers.
4. A Fox “News” mouthpiece has personal troubles.
NOTE TO BILLY
Did you hear what Levin and Limbaugh said about you? Send your producer to their residence and confront them on video, but you won’t. You are afraid of them.
The show’s token conservative, an in-universe pundit, Stan Smith, etc. begins a drive for support regarding gays, women, immigrants, whatever.
Everyone else in the show’s universe that’s a Republican prepares to lynch them for supporting something other than the “power structure.”
The person doing the drive tells them off the record, or in the most backhanded way possible that this is just to get the ______ vote, and that they’ll go 50 times harder on them if they get it, just to make it up to the poor conservatives who had to bite their tongue.
Now knowing the real reason they’re doing this, the torches and pitchforks go down, and they go with the joke, obsessing over when they get to hurt what they’re supporting again.
No one falls for it, and the Republicans don’t get their vote- Even if they do win.
Republicans have become the TV joke version of themselves.
The GOP leadership is painfully aware that the “send em all home!” crowd has been causing them a lot of trouble in elections. As the Chicano/Latino population in this country grows, the GOP’s chances of winning many votes from that ethnic group continue to be low. Continuing to bang the drum of absolute obstinance only tells that group that the GOP doesn’t want them here and really doesn’t want their votes.
O’Reilly’s latest gentle note to the far right just said that the GOP knows it needs to help pass SOMETHING and cannot just fold its arms and yell “NO!” like they’ve been doing for the past 15 years on this issue. There wasn’t anything harsher than that in O’Reilly’s statement, but the far right seems to want to blow it up just as they did when O’Reilly agreed with them about abortion and contraception but told them they needed to have a better debate tactic than thumping the bible.
In this case, O’Reilly took a fairly right wing line by saying that he wanted to see the Border secured first (a usual right wing meme) and that it was the GOP who would need to see to this since the Dems would just vote for “amnesty” (which is the other usual right wing meme for this issue). I believe that both O’Reilly and Hannity have given the right wing warning that they think that after the Senate and House Bills go to a joint committee, the result will be a watered down version of the Senate bill. This may actually be true, but it points out the political game the right wingers are playing here.
The difference between O’Reilly making a fairly polite comment about how “difficult” this issue will be for the GOP and Hannity’s behavior is that O’Reilly wasn’t trying to throw the whole thing out. Hannity actually advocated for the House to pass NOTHING, which would thus allow the GOP to stop this bill from going anywhere. In other words, Hannity and the far right congressmen he had laughing and agreeing with him were saying that they’d rather see the Senate pass its measure and then stonewall the matter by refusing to let anything come up for a vote in the House. No House bill means no joint committee and thus no immigration reform law. (And I’m sure the right wing will see this as revenge for the dozens of times the House has sent political bomb bills to the Senate but never saw them get to the floor, such as their regular attempts to repeal the ACA or gut the budget of programs they don’t like.)
I agree that this latest silliness will allow O’Reilly to refer to himself as an independent and give him another fake scar to wave about how the right wing doesn’t like him any more than the left wing does.
BTW the most interesting part of O’Reilly’s discussion was his attempt to deny that he’s been having serious policy discussions about this issue with various GOP Senators. But as he put it, “I NEVER collude”…