Letters: Taking responsibility for Biden’s immigration policies; Tips to win from Lincoln

Taking responsibility for Biden’s immigration policies

Some 41,000 Centre Countians voted for the current White House occupant, Joe Biden. That means the 41,000 are responsible for all of Biden’s policies. This letter focuses on one of these policies, illegal immigration along the southern border.

In the midst of a pandemic, with jobs, vaccine and PPE in short supply, Biden stupidly eliminated most of the immigration controls implemented along our southern border by former President Donald Trump. To make matters worse, Biden also announced the cessation of all deportations for 100 days.

As a consequence, the border is being overrun by illegal immigrants. The number of illegal immigrants crossing the border has increased by 100% over the same period a year ago. The numbers are so overwhelming, that about a 1,000/day are being released into the country, most without background checks or COVID testing.

As an aside, it’s ironic that, while the border is being overrun, Biden supports a wall around the capitol but not along our southern border.

The 41,000 voted for this policy. So, the 41,000 must show their support.

The best way to show support is for the 41,000 to charter buses and have a few thousand illegal immigrants delivered to Centre County. Of course, the 41,000 must then assume full responsibility for the new arrivals by opening their own homes and wallets.

The 41,000 have the opportunity to show their moral superiority. Prove you’re not hypocrites by taking action today.

Tips to win from Lincoln

One of the qualities I admire in Abraham Lincoln is the pragmatic, skilled politician working in a good cause. He had recently lost an election for the Senate, but he figured a way to win the presidency in 1860.

James Oakes explains how in his new “The Crooked Path to Abolition — Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution.” The new Republican Party could put together a winning coalition by focusing on the only issue anti-slavery people could agree on: a ban on extension of slavery to the territories west of the Mississippi River.

Bring in northern Democrats who opposed extension but did not favor abolition; nativists who hated Catholic immigrants as much as slavery; members of his own disintegrated Whig Party put off by radicals who campaigned for immediate abolition; even racists who opposed emancipation but would fight to preserve the Union.

Lincoln wrote to a fellow Illinois politician that the Republicans must achieve common ground with “strange, discordant, and even hostile elements.”

For my friends who organized so well to turn back Donald Trump last November, those are tips to win from Lincoln — in 2022, when Congress could easily return to Trumpism, and 2024, when Trump will likely be the GOP candidate again.

So Americans who fear authoritarian Trumpist rule need to stay organized, and seek common ground wherever it can be found “....even hostile elements.”

Corman’s committee a waste of time, money

In Jake Corman’s recent newsletter he announces the launching of a bipartisan special committee on Election Integrity & Reform. This announcement gives oxygen to the “big lie” that there were problems with election integrity that cost Trump the election in 2020.

This matter should have ended when Christopher Krebs, a lifelong Republican, who oversaw the election, said “it was the most secure” in U.S. history.

On the bipartisan nature of this special committee, it is important to note that there are four Republican senators and four Democrats. Corman also serves on the committee in an “ex officio” fashion. A quick glance of his duties as president pro tempore shows there is no justification for him serving on this committee. It is clearly a way to stack the committee in GOP favor: five to four.

There are many important things our elected officials could be working on rather than perpetuating the “big lie” that election fraud cost Trump the election.

Trump fired Krebs for his honesty. Voters should fire Corman for this shameful waste of time and taxpayer money.

This story was originally published March 17, 2021 at 7:00 AM.