Opinion

Texas GOP burning bridges not yet built

Texas GOP hopefuls for the office of lieutenant governor (from left) Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, state Sen. Dan Patrick, Agricultural Commissioner Todd Staples and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst debate in late January. All seem interested in enforcing federal immigration law. less Texas GOP hopefuls for the office of lieutenant governor (from left) Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, state Sen. Dan Patrick, Agricultural Commissioner Todd Staples and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst debate in late ... more Photo: LM Otero / Pool Photo Via Associated Press Photo: LM Otero / Pool Photo Via Associated Press Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Texas GOP burning bridges not yet built 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

SAN ANTONIO — To say that some candidates running statewide in Texas have gone off the rails on border security and immigration, does a disservice to epic derailments everywhere.

Seal the border. No in-state tuition for the children of undocumented immigrants. State boots on the ground. No “amnesty” (though what's proposed is not precisely that). Boodles of state money at the border.

Close your eyes and it might as well be one of those 2012 GOP presidential debates in which enough candidates to buckle the stage painted Texas Gov. Rick Perry as the Mr. Rogers of immigration.

All this discussion of what is a federal issue had mostly been the province of GOP lieutenant governor candidates.

But the candidate likely to be the GOP nominee for governor has lately weighed in. Attorney General Greg Abbott proposes up to 500 more state troopers at the border and more than $300 million in state money, much of which he believes will come from all those asset forfeitures occurring in this surge.

Hey, Rio Grande Valley: You thought those temporary, stepped-up Department of Public Safety checkpoints were a pain? Try an extra 500 troopers running around. ALL. THE. TIME. Oh, and they'll be looking for assets to be forfeited.

Mr. Attorney General: Your notion that enough boots exist to “secure” Texas' 1,254 mile border with Mexico is so quaint — and pure fantasy.

I'd say there's something in the water, but more likely there's something in the polling telling these guys that being “tough” on border security is how you differentiate yourself in an election in which slivers of support will count.

But any nuance separating the GOP candidates on this issue amounts to whether they are Muhammad Ali tough or Joe Frazier tough — as smart collectively, however, on the issue as Leon Spinks, who possessed no MENSA membership.

There's a new survey out that says that Texas Latinos are more likely to be Republicans than Latinos elsewhere — 27 percent here and 21 percent in other parts of the country.

No surprise, really. It's Texas. And, still, 27 percent is not 73 percent.

The “debate” is absurd. I hesitate to single him out because the other lite governor candidates sound different on immigration only at the margins. But, to a lot of fanfare, Jerry Patterson, our current land commissioner, launched a drive to get Latinos to vote for him.

A few weeks later, he was with this newspaper's editorial board and this is what he said about that part of the constitution that says I'm a citizen because I was born here, though my undocumented parents weren't.

He says he's for the Texas Solution, which wants to “clarify” the 14th Amendment.

“It really wasn't something that was thought of to be an immigration issue, and I agree with that,” he said. “I think we are one of the few countries with unconditional birthright citizenship. There ought to be some condition. One of your parents is a citizen, or one of your parents is a legal resident.”

(Hmm. Doubting the citizenship of Sen. Ted Cruz, whose mother was a U.S. citizen but whose father wasn't?)

I wonder how many of those 73 percent of Democratic Latinos have undocumented immigrant forebears.

In the primary, the audience for this rhetoric is not really Latinos. And this also likely indicates that GOP candidates believe they can win without them even in the general election. Why would they think Latinos won't remember in November what was said in February and March?

In the event this wooing of Latinos is genuine, however, a word to the wise. If virtually every word out of your mouth on an issue near and dear is like fingernails on the chalkboard, you really are talking about getting teeny slivers of the Latino vote, even those of Republican Latinos.

Screeeeech.

Good luck with that.