A reader writes:
I've been fascinated with your vigorous defense of Obama and your disdain for the Labour Party. Within the span of several posts you dismiss the likelihood of a GOP sweep in November because they have awakened Hispanics with all their bigoted blundering around the immigration issue. Simultaneously you seem to be relishing in Brown's demise because he's caught calling a women a bigot for saying "You can't say anything about the immigrants."
Are you sympathetic with the issues of Hispanics here in America, or are you simply pleased that they are going to help hold back the bigoted waves of white rural America? Is this woman a bigot, as Brown asserts, or is she, unlike her Tea Party counterparts, expressing legitimate political anxiety?
I have not dismissed the likelihood of a GOP sweep in November. The anti-incumbent mood and the depressed job market suggests a robust swing to the GOP. What I have said is that the long-term branding of the party with the Arizona law is a terrible development for the GOP in the future, when minorities will become a larger and larger part of American society and politics. I do believe we should have a more honest debate about illegal and legal immigration.
More, I favor tougher measures to secure the border. I also favor easier ways for talented immigrants to come here legally. As an immigrant myself, I do sympathize with legal Hispanics who have gone through the legal channels for immigration and will now have to carry around extensive documentation to prove they are not criminals. This bill will thereby punish "suspicious"-looking legal immigrants as well, because they will all feel under surveillance. A society where one minority feels under surveillance is not a truly free society. This is beneath America, in my view.
As for Mrs Duffy, she was not speaking of illegal immigrants. East Europeans have every right to work and live in other EU countries. As for Labour, I find their fiscal record as damning - almost as damning as George Bush's. They really are socialists. And I'm not one. I hope Brown destroys that party and allows a liberal response to conservatism to be the two-party system.