Monday, January 29, 2018

IMAGINE WHO'D BE THE GOP GUESTS AT PRESIDENT HILLARY CLINTON'S STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS

Fox's Todd Starnes is getting some attention for this thoughtful, closely reasoned opinion piece:
If Pelosi brings 'Dreamers' to the State of the Union, Trump should bring ICE agents

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and a number of other Democrats plan to fill the House gallery with illegal aliens when President Trump delivers his first State of the Union address on Tuesday.

ABC News reports at least 24 House Democrats plan to bring illegals -- the so-called "Dreamers" -- to watch the Tuesday night speech from the House gallery.

... Pelosi has decided to turn the U.S. Capitol into a sanctuary - a safe haven - for people who are living in our nation illegally.

In response, President Trump should fill the remainder of the House gallery with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

Imagine the message he could send to the world if he directed ICE agents to arrest every illegal alien in the House chamber - live on national television.
Yes, imagine the reaction if there were arrests of young people whose desire to stay in America legally is endorsed by at least 70% of Americans.

But here's a line in the Starnes piece that makes me think:
The illegal aliens will be sitting in seats that in previous years were meant for brave military heroes, law-abiding taxpayers and America's best and brightest.
"America's best and brightest"? Let me remind you that in the Obama years, seats have also been reserved by Republicans for anti-gay Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis (in 2016) and, three years earlier, for gun absolutist Ted Nugent, who attended the speech sixty days after the Sandy Hook massacre.

Which leads me to wonder: Who would get Republican invitations to a Hillary Clinton State of the Union address? I'm imagining a GOP in which the narrowly defeated Donald Trump (who probably still would not have conceded) is still the most popular figure among Republican voters, most of whom want him to avenge his loss in 2020. I'm imagining that he would have the spent the last year arguing on Twitter that the GOP Congress's many investigations of Hillary Clinton vindicate his attacks on her throughout 2016.

So who? Paula Jones? Juanita Broaddrick? Oh definitely. Who else? In honor of the #MeToo movement, probably a Harvey Weinstein victim or two, because that scandal would have been deemed a Clinton scandal first and foremost by Trump and congressional Republicans.

I'm sure there'd be a relative of a Benghazi victim (oh, wait, there already was one in 2014), and perhaps a relative of someone killed by an undocumented immigrant (whoops -- the mother of a teenager killed by MS-13 members on Long Island will attend at the president's invitation this year).

Or maybe no Republican would attend the speech. Susan Collins might have spent days publicly mulling it over, but in the end, yes, she'd join the boycott. Never mind -- I think that's what would have happened this year if Hillary were president.

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