Dan Patrick attacks DREAMers even as RNC crows about Latino outreach

These is no discernible irony -- and no such thing as hypocrisy -- in the conservative hive mind.

The four leading GOP candidates for lieutenant governor want to overturn the state’s 2001 version of the DREAM Act, the Dallas Morning News reports. The position is sure to draw criticism from Latino politicians responsible for passing the law, even as the Republican party launches a seven-state outreach effort to boost its popularity among Latinos after Mitt Romney’s poor performance among Hispanics in the 2012 election.

Dan Patrick, a Republican state senator representing Houston, got the ball rolling this week with an ad trumpeting his opposition to illegal immigration.

“If Sam Houston, Travis, Bowie and Austin were here today, they would be proud of Texas, but they would be ashamed of Washington,” Patrick says in the ad. “Illegal immigration is Washington’s responsibility, but it’s our problem.”

You need to see it to believe it.



Patrick, campaigning like so many other Texas Republicans against Barack Obama in the GOP primary, is wrong again on the facts (or he is lying again, which is more likely).

Sam Houston, William Travis, James Bowie and Stephen Austin were part of a wave of Anglo-American immigrants to what was then northern Mexico in the early 19th century. Travis immigrated illegally, according to the Texas State Historical Association’s “Handbook of Texas.” Migrants from the United States wound up outnumbering Mexican nationals and wrested the territory from Mexican control, along with the support of several Tejano leaders, in the Texas Revolution in 1836.

The ad goes on to incorrectly say that he’s the “only candidate for lieutenant governor to oppose in-state tuition for illegal immigrants.” In fact, three of his Republican rivals -- Lt. Gov. David Dewhurt, Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson and Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples – also oppose the measure.

“It’s unfortunate seeing everybody clamor to see who can be the most extreme on that,” Art Martinez de Vara, a co-founder of the Texas Federal of Hispanic Republicans, told the Dallas Morning News. 

Todd Staples has the most to lose in this strategy, since he has an actual voting record that goes against Tea Party orthodoxy.  But really, who cares what any of these lunatics say or believe?  They're all as crazy as a quartet of shithouse rats.

Texas cannot stand to have even one of them anywhere near elective office in 2015.  The good news is that three of them won't.  And the last gaffe standing needs to be taken out by Leticia Van de Putte.