After the 2007 amnesty failed in the Senate, the open borders crowd decided to forego policy debates and turn up to 11 their efforts to demonize their opponents. As part of that strategy, the Southern Poverty Law Center was assigned to designate FAIR a "hate group," La Raza started a "We Can Stop the Hate" campaign, and the new radical-left group America's Voice posted an online election for the "Top Anti-Immigrant Wolf" (vote for me!).
But the chief target of this two-year hate has been Lou Dobbs. The "Drop Dobbs" campaign, to get CNN to fire the only anchor on their network whose show anyone watches, is sponsored by - surprise! - La Raza, the SPLC, Media Matters, LULAC, et al. Last Wednesday, October 21, saw a series of coordinated protests by open-borders groups in cities around the country. The following day, Geraldo Rivera said in a speech that the opponents of amnesty have been "reckless beyond imagining" and that Dobbs in particular "is almost singlehandedly responsible for creating, for being the architect of the young-Latino-as-scapegoat for everything that ails this country."
Well, their efforts are starting to pay off. No, CNN hasn't decided to fire Dobbs (which would cause them to drop behind the Hallmark Channel in viewership). Instead, someone fired a shot at Dobbs' house. As reported today by Fox News (!), a shot was fired on October 5 at Dobbs' home while he and his (Mexican-American) wife were out front; New Jersey State Police took the bullet for analysis.
Whatever you think of Dobbs' schtick, he's always clear that his fulminating is about illegal immigration. He's not even a restrictionist, for heaven's sake, having said a number of times that he favors increased legal immigration. But the open borders crowd believes - sincerely believes - that there can be no legitimate arguments against amnesty and for enforcement, so anyone taking those positions must, by definition, be evil. This is not a prescription for a healthy policy debate.
In a classic example of bad timing, this very evening America's Voice is set to air an ad on MSNBC (where else?) calling for Dobbs' firing because "Every weekday CNN airs 60 minutes of anti-immigrant hate." Will they have the decency to pull the ad, in light of the physical threat to Dobbs and his wife engendered by their hate campaign? Don't hold your breath.
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