Tea Party fake patriots to help Marco Rubio push amnesty (immigration, Tea Party Express, TheTeaParty.Net, Norquist)

From this:

Several conservative activists and tea party group leaders are meeting with Sen. Marco Rubio Tuesday afternoon to discuss immigration reform, including a list of what they support – and don’t.

In a draft of their seven principles, obtained by POLITICO, the groups make no calls for a ban on “amnesty” – a longtime rallying cry of conservatives grassroots groups.

Instead, there’s a tacit acknowledgement that the law will create a new path to citizenship for undocumented workers.

That path, the draft says, shouldn’t be a means to grow social programs, like Obamacare. The one-page draft also calls for “assimilation” programs and tougher border enforcement.

Tea Party Express, TheTeaParty.Net and Revive America leaders as well as Americans For Tax Reform’s Grover Norquist are expected to be among the more than two dozen grassroots conservative leaders huddling with the Florida Republican. The groups in the meeting support immigration reform.

I've been warning about Tea Party leaders being bad on amnesty for over four years. While many in the Teaparty base may oppose amnesty, they haven't been very keen on turning on their leaders. When I've pointed out to those Teapartiers just how bad their leaders are, that's almost always resulted in vile smears against me rather than them finding leaders that oppose amnesty.

The way to blunt the impact of those leaders' actions is to force the Teaparty base to turn on their leaders as part of an attempt to reclaim the Teaparty label. If the Teaparty base doesn't turn on their leaders, then most Americans will naturally assume that supporting amnesty is a Teaparty thing.

For more on these issues, see the dozens of posts on Tea Parties. See also Marco Rubio, Grover Norquist, and comprehensive immigration reform. Regarding the questionable financial past of a group that appears to be connected to TheTeaParty.Net, see that link.

This post will be updated when the full list of groups and the draft is available.

UPDATE: TheTeaParty.Net has released an explanation ( peekURL.com/zPUksF8 ):

"We were invited by Sen. Rubio's office to discuss the current legislation on immigration, and importantly, to offer our views on how we think it can be fixed. We are going to hear him out, rather than rely on the mainstream media interpretation of his legislation. Reports that we have agreed to support the Gang of Eight bill are utter make-believe."

"We have heard from the hundreds of thousands of activists and supporters affiliated with TheTeaParty.net. Overwhelmingly and resoundingly, they oppose this bill. We are there to tell Sen. Rubio what the conservative base is saying. And that is no to amnesty and yes to securing the border now. Unless this bill can be proven not to be another ill-fated attempt at amnesty and not a way of adding hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to the already considerable burdens of the welfare state, we cannot and will not support the Gang of Eight bill. We believe that Sen. Rubio is an honorable man and is trying to do the right thing, but this bill is currently more Schumer than Rubio."

I left the following comment at the last link:

I wasn't born yesterday, so I'm not sold on their explanation.

While dialog with Rubio is a good idea, they don't seem to outright oppose mass legalization. They might oppose "amnesty", but no one who supports amnesty calls it "amnesty" so that's pretty meaningless. What matters is whether they support mass legalization or not.

They say they have ideas on how the bill could be fixed, but I just want to scrap the bill entirely and enforce the current laws (with perhaps a few minor changes here and there).

Likewise with the "unless this bill can be proven" part. I want to prevent mass legalization completely; they're open to negotiating a bill.

Until they say no to legalizing hundreds of thousands or more illegal aliens, don't trust them.