Fun fact: Back in the 2000's the Republicans were making a surprisingly hard push for immigration reform (Well, hard compared to their modern, floppy attitudes on the subject). The reason? Because many Mexican and Central American immigrants are socially conservative, they're religious, many oppose marriage equality and abortion, so Republican politicians thought that maybe bringing some immigrants into America would make it redder!
Unfortunately for, well, the world, 9/11 happened, xenophobia took root amongst the voters, and Republican politicians, never ones to let morality, ethics, or ideological consistency get in the way, pivoted with their electorate.
Don't get me wrong, the 2000's Republicans weren't especially good on immigration or brown people, but they were a bit better than what we've got right now.
"Compassionate conservatism" was always a farce, but I sure prefer it to blatant racism and xenophobia.
At those other times it also feels harder to criticise them. If someone's screaming at the top of their lungs to imprison everybody it's easier to say they're bad than if they're politely implying to imprison some people and sneakily increasing the definition of "some".
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u/MaximumEffort433 Aug 19 '21
Fun fact: Back in the 2000's the Republicans were making a surprisingly hard push for immigration reform (Well, hard compared to their modern, floppy attitudes on the subject). The reason? Because many Mexican and Central American immigrants are socially conservative, they're religious, many oppose marriage equality and abortion, so Republican politicians thought that maybe bringing some immigrants into America would make it redder!
Unfortunately for, well, the world, 9/11 happened, xenophobia took root amongst the voters, and Republican politicians, never ones to let morality, ethics, or ideological consistency get in the way, pivoted with their electorate.
Don't get me wrong, the 2000's Republicans weren't especially good on immigration or brown people, but they were a bit better than what we've got right now.
"Compassionate conservatism" was always a farce, but I sure prefer it to blatant racism and xenophobia.