A Kurdish Syrian refugee plays with his 3-year-old son, Ivan, at a temporary shelter constructed from shipping containers in Berlin.
Refugee backlash brewing across the United States
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THE BIG IDEA:
–The likelihood that at least one of the suicide bombers in Paris came to France as a refugee via Greece will make it much harder for President Obama to accept more than 10,000 Syrian refugees in the coming year.
— On the Republican side of the presidential race, there has been a race to the right since Friday night to see who can take the hardest lineon accepting new refugees.
Several GOP candidates have called for accepting Christian refugees but not Muslims. Ted Cruz said in South Carolina last night: “There is no meaningful risk of Christians committing acts of terror. If there were a group of radical Christians pledging to murder anyone who had a different religious view than they we would have a different national security situation.” Jeb Bush said on CNN that the government should focus on helping “Christians that are being slaughtered.”
Other are going farther: Marco Rubio said on ABC that we should not absorb anyone from Syria because “there’s no way to background check” them. Ben Carson said Sunday that accepting any refugees is a “suspension of intellect.” Donald Trump promised to not just stop any more from coming in but to kick Syrian refugees who have already arrived out of the United States.
Martin O’Malley and Hillary Rodham Clinton both said during Saturday’s debate that they still want the U.S. to take 65,000 refugees, but they went out of their way to talk about the need for safeguards.
— A showdown is brewing on the Hill: Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has been trying to include a rider in the year-end spending bill that would prohibit the Obama administration from spending any money to admit Syrian refugees until the intelligence community approves the process. “The White House indicatedon Sunday that it intended to move ahead with the refugee program, and top Democrats in the Senate had been pushing back against Mr. Grassley’s proposal before the Paris attacks,” reports the New York Times’ Carl Hulse. “But the new developments are likely to make many Democrats more cautious about lending strong support to the refugee plan and perhaps provide momentum for Mr. Grassley’s proposal.”
— The strongest opposition might
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder said yesterday that his state will not accept any Syrian refugees until the U.S. Department of Homeland Security fully reviews its procedures. “Michigan is a welcoming state and we are proud of our rich history of immigration,” the Republican said in a statement. “But our first priority is protecting the safety of our residents.”
Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley tweeted at 10:25 p.m. last night: “I will not stand complicit to a policy that places the citizens of Alabama in harm’s way. We refuse Syrian refugees.”
— With the Louisiana governor’s race coming upthis Saturday, underdog David Vitter is pivoting to the issue. It’s a welcome distraction from talking around his liaisons with prostitutes (aka “redemption”). Senate Republican leadership is also looking to give Vitter another show vote this week on punishing sanctuary cities to try helping his flailing campaign–just like Democrats did with the Keystone XL Pipeline for Mary Landrieu last year.
(@DavidVitter)
Vitter is also sending out robocalls from Ted Cruz and Rick Santorum in a last-ditch effort to gin up an unenthused conservative base. A spokesman told National Journal that a call from Marco Rubio is also in the works. Santorum, who won the Louisiana primary in 2012, accuses Democratic candidate John Bel Edwards in his robocall of skipping a gubernatorial forum sponsored by an anti-abortion group “in favor of attending a voter drive held at a risqué adult hip-hop nightclub in New Orleans.”
— Watch for lots more talk about national security this week, especially from the guys who think they can benefit from a more serious tone in the Republican race. John Kasich’s campaign announced at 10:15 p.m. last night that he’ll “present his strategy for keeping America safe” in a noonspeech on Tuesday at the National Press Club. The Bush campaign advised at 6 p.m. last night that Jeb “will speak about rebuilding our country’s military” at The Citadel in Charleston on Wednesday at noon. Bush spokeswoman Allie Brandenburger said the speech was previously scheduled, but that originally they planned to use it as a peg for rolling out a plan on rebuilding the military. Now, she says, Bush will “address the attacks in Paris, the path forward in our war against ISIS and radical Islamic terrorism, and how we need to rebuild our military to address these threats.”
Alan: The following post reveals the complexity of a socio-political situation that "the aggressively ignorant" are incapable of analyzing or believing because their minds lack intellectual rigor and are, by virtue of their ignorance, unable to fathom the significance of peer-reviewed science - not a flawless mechanism but the best tool we have for refuting the presumed superiority of witless "common sense."
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