Dangerously Distracted by The Donald
SAN DIEGO -- As someone who has pummeled Donald Trump for what he said about Mexicans, I won't defend him over what he said about Muslims.
But I'm also not interested in piling on someone who sticks his neck out and suggests a way to deal with a crisis -- that radical Islamic terrorism has come to America. Political correctness distracts Americans and keeps them from asking questions about how this cancer got here, and how we get rid of it.
Trump has a suggestion: a temporary pause in granting visas to Muslims until U.S. officials "figure out what the hell is going on." The media, Democrats and some Republicans responded by calling him a bigot.
As a Mexican-American columnist who writes often about immigration, I have little tolerance for bigotry.
But hypocrisy is just as bad. Some of Trump's critics are better at being self-righteous than they are at being self-aware.
About Trump's proposed moratorium on Muslim visas, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said: "This sort of racism has been prevalent in Republican politics for decades. Trump is just saying out loud what other Republicans merely suggest."
This is the same Harry Reid who in 1993 proposed an end to birthright citizenship for "anchor babies" born to undocumented immigrants. In 2008, he suggested that Barack Obama appealed to voters because the Illinois senator didn't have a "Negro dialect."
Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton said of Trump's idea: "It's not only shameful, it's dangerous. We have to enlist help from American Muslims, Muslims around the world, in defeating the radical jihadists and the hateful ideology they represent."
This is the same Hillary Clinton who, as a presidential candidate in 2008, tolerated and enabled a xenophobic whisper campaign by surrogates and associates who suggested that Obama was a foreign-born Muslim. She also failed to apologize when her husband, the ex-president, implied after the South Carolina primary that Obama had limited appeal beyond African-Americans. She only expressed "regret" that some were offended.
As for all those Republicans who leapt to the defense of Muslims, it's better late than never. In the 14 years since the 9/11 attacks, Muslim Americans have been profiled, scapegoated, discriminated against, victimized by hate crimes and spied on by the U.S. government. About this, we have heard little from elected officials in general -- and practically nothing from Republicans.
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