Ed Brayton nails it, so I’ll just steal his stuff:
What’s Spanish for Hypocrisy?
Posted on: June 18, 2010 12:09 PM, by Ed Brayton
ThinkProgress highlights an amusing bit of hypocrisy from the Texas GOP, which put in their platform planks calling for the adoption of Arizona-style immigration legislation and for “American English” to be declared the official language of both Texas and the United States — if it’s good enough for Jesus, remember, it’s good enough for us — and then put out a video to attract Latinos to the GOP. In Spanish.
Reminds me of the luncheon for Republican candidates in Michigan a few months ago. When asked if we could make English the official language of the state, one of them began his reply by saying, “Clearly English is the lingua franca of America.”
What are the odds that the people in the ad are real Republicans and not hired actors? If they are real Republican, Texas voters, what are the odds they don’t stand out in a Republican crowd? (See an English version of a similar production here.)
Brayton gets a lot more traffic than I do — so the comments will be more numerous over there.
Texas Democrats convene this coming week, in Corpus Christi. At the Demo convention, it’s a real advantage to be able to speak Spanish. The Demo convention will be a gathering of many races, colors and creeds. The veterans honored will be, mostly, Democratic veterans. The Spanish-speaking people will be delegates and candidates. We’ll have fewer Obama-organized people this year than in 2008, but there will be a few thousand relatively newly-active delegates brought in by the Obama organization, which only increases Democratic diversity.
If there is a proposal to the platform committee to make English the official language of Texas, it will be voted down by, among others, Spanish-speaking delegates whose ancestors stood with Travis at the Alamo, and fought with Houston at San Jacinto, as grandchildren and great grandchildren of the original Spanish land grant recipients and descendants of the displaced-but-still-resident Aztecs.
The Democrats will look on people who speak Spanish as having an advantage in education over those of us who don’t speak it fluently, in the American tradition of education for advancement. Being able to speak Spanish is a mark of education, proof of the gathering of knowledge. Laws to prevent Spanish from being spoken are regressive anti-development, anti-commerce, racist, and anti-American.
Education and knowledge are good things. Being able to speak more than one language is a mark of an educated person. What in the world happened to the Republican Party in Texas?
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 