The Decline of WaPo: "Conservative" Journalist Celebrates Eric Garcetti, Sanctuary Cities

Los Angeles’s mayor deserves a presidential hearing (No, He doesn't!)

It was dicey being Jewish in a Russia that was tolerant of pogroms, and
then came the threat of conscription into the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War, so
one of Mayor Eric Garcetti’s great-grandfathers headed west to America. 

George Will is part of the open-borders lobby in the left-wing press. I don't recall him having such a demented determination to undermine the national sovereignty of this country in years past. I think this conservative intelligentsia establishmentarian can't handle the fact that someone he doesn't like is doing more for conservatism than he ever could have done.

Another
Garcetti great-grandfather married a Mexican woman who, fleeing revolutionary
ferment there, headed north to America. Which is why Garcetti, a
fourth-generation resident of one of the world’s most polyglot cities, is as
American as a kosher burrito, a delicacy available at Mexikosher on Pico
Boulevard.

UGH. Really, George?! Multiculturalism or multi-ethnocentrism?

Trim, natty — colorful socks are, alas, fashionable — and with the
polish of one born to public attention (his father, Gil Garcetti , was Los
Angeles’s district attorney who prosecuted O.J. Simpson), Garcetti, like dozens
of Democrats who have noticed recent presidential history, is asking: Why not
me?

Notice that Will won't mention that Republican Steve Cooley blew "Silly Gil" out of the water in 2000. Part of it I imagine stemmed from his massive failures to prosecute high profile crimes like OJ.

Good question. Although presidents Andrew Johnson , Grover Cleveland
and Calvin Coolidge had been mayors of Greeneville, Tenn., Buffalo and
Northampton, Mass., respectively, no mayor has gone directly from a city hall
to the White House. But the 44th president came from eight years in the
nation’s most docile and least admirable state legislature (Barack Obama
effectively began running for president as soon as he escaped to Washington
from Springfield, Ill.). The 45th came from six bankruptcies and an
excruciating television show. 

Feel the love. George Will probably wishes Barack Obama were back in the White House instead of Donald Trump. I am really disgusted with this columnist. What is he thinking? 

So, it is not eccentric to think that a two-term
mayor of one of the world’s most complicated cities might be as qualified to be
president as was, say, the governor of one of the 23 states (Arkansas) with a
population smaller than this city’s . And less challenging: Los Angeles’s
schools teach children whose parents speak Tagalog and 91 other languages other
than English.

How is this a good thing? Or is it even anything?!

Recent history does not suggest that America has such a surplus of
presidential talent that it can afford to spurn an audition by a mayor who
governs where more than 40 percent of waterborne imports enter the country —
through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Where more than 50 percent of
residents are either immigrants or the children of immigrants. Where immigrants
from more than 30 nations form those nations’ largest overseas communities.

Immigrants, immigrants, immigrants: what about American citizens? I have to ask this question because it's become more difficult and suspect to wonder if writers and reporters are talking about men and women in this country legally … or illegally.

"Immigrant" should only refer to people who came into this country the right way, legally, through the front door after proper vetting, paying all the fees, passing all the tests, and playing by the rules.

Garcetti’s immersion in immigration realities gives him standing to
warn his party, which is addicted to identity politics, that “people do want a
national identity.” We are “not an ethnic nation but a civic nation,” and
Democrats must speak to “identity” rather than “identities.” 

When did Garcetti say any of the above? Let's be frank: the only reason he is taking a more middle ground on the immigration and sovereignty issues is that he wants to compete and reach out to the remaining reaches of Middle America which some Democrats might be able to win.

Also, he brings
practicality to the ideological argument about so-called sanctuary cities: When
a Korean immigrant, who became a citizen and later a Los Angeles police
officer, was shot — not fatally — witnesses and others in the neighborhood,
many of them likely illegal immigrants, came forward with information that
enabled the police to capture her assailant within hours. Such police-community
cooperation is, Garcetti says, jeopardized when local police are viewed as
closely allied with federal immigration enforcement.

It makes some sense for Will to tag the phrase "so called" after sanctuary cities. They are not sanctuaries in any sense. In fact, they invite more drugs, corruption, human trafficking, sexual assault and abuse, and ultimately murder.

Just ask Kate Steinle.

Notice that Will writes "Many of them likely illegal immigrants." There is no assurance that their status was questionable or in question. What a shameless attempt to defend an indefensible urban policy positions. This passage was the most stunning and the most offensive and obtuse in the entire article.

Sanctuary cities are not practical and unwise. They are counterproductive, inviting more illegal aliens and their lawless presence and activities to our cities and our country. The routine argument from Establishment Republicans and accomodationist RINOs is that since the illegal aliens are already here, we might as well make the most of their presence in our country.

That is a terrible response, enabling criminal behavior and putting American citizens in danger while eroding our national sovereignty and fiscal stability.

Garcetti, 47, is a generation younger than some progressives’ pinups
(Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and former vice
president Joe Biden). And, living far from Washington, he is positioned to
deplore the Beltway, within which his party has been concentrating power for a
century. 


That is a nonsensical argument. Los Angeles has become very much a federalized city, in that the overreach of government, plus the massive collusion with public sector unions and private sector cronies has made the city all the more attached to Washington DC at the hip (and the teat). Let's cut through the crap here. Los Angeles wants to be very much a federal region, a federal area on par with the federal capital.

Garcetti is another big government statist, and there is no panache about this guy which suggests that he could be any kind of progressive darling. He is the male version of Hillary Clinton (not that Hillary Clinton is any less of a man, anyway).


He suggests a rule for those who are perpetually enraged about the
president: “You only get five minutes a day to yell at your TV.”


The truth is that every foray he makes into the public square involves castigating President Trump. Of course, he begs for federal dollars as often as possible. One has to wonder how much longer he can kick down the President in public, but kiss up to him in private.


 Democrats, he
says, sometimes are “the smarty-pants party” that does not “speak plain
English.” He seems, however, to be tiptoeing on eggshells when trying to avoid
offending his party’s easily offended keepers of litmus tests. When, last
September, an interviewer asked him whether gun manufacturers should be liable
for the misuse of their products, he said, “I think you have to be open to
that.” Such mush (Should we be “open to” distillers’ liability for drunken
driving?) does not move nominating electorates.


If Will finds him unmoving and unimpressive, why write an article glorying over him? Eric Garcetti won re-election by a wide margin because so few people voted (how many residents in Los Angeles are illegal aliens? Of course, legal status has never prevented illegal aliens from voting in the City of (Fallen) Angels before.

New York’s mayor from 1933 to 1945, Fiorello La Guardia, a Republican
in a Democratic city, famously said, “There is no Republican or Democratic way
to pick up the garbage.”


All of that has changed now that Democrats are more committed to communism and cronyism than country. The politicization of the justice system has worsened, too, especially where Democrats have won supposedly non-partisan offices.


And mayors have what Garcetti considers “the luxury of
doing.” But Los Angeles mayors are not powerful — the schools are run by others
— and he must get along with the mayors of 87 other cities in Los Angeles
County. This is, however, training for the presidency, which is less powerful
than those who seek it think it is, until, in office, they must deal with
Washington’s rival power centers.


Will should talk about the backstage Deep State takedown which the Beltway bureaucracies are waging against President Trump. He won't, however, because he would love to see Trump dumped, even though he was elected by the lawful process outlined in the Electoral College.

In 2020, California’s presidential primary, which usually has been a
June irrelevancy, will occur in March. This might also benefit Kamala D. Harris
(D), the state’s freshman U.S. senator. Anyway, Garcetti deserves a hearing.
America could do worse. It usually does and, in 33 months, it probably will.


Shame on George Will. That's what I must write first.

Second, shame on him for defending outlaw sanctuary cities. Notice that he didn't write about the horrific murder of Tierra Stansberry and four other Americans in the Westlake Section of Los Angeles. Their killed? A 22-year old illegal alien from Honduras, Johnny Josue Sanchez, who had set fire to an abandoned warehouse.

One of the homeless, Deadre Mitchell, rushed into the building to save the four other lives, native Iowans trying to reconnect after two of them had fled the country. Sanctuary cities hurt American lives, and they protect no one but the corrupt, undocumented politicians covering for themselves and their future careers.

We just cannot allow "conservative" arguments like the ones proffered by George Will to go unchallenged. No wonder he's not making the lecture and TV circuits the way he used to. Does he work for MSNBC now, too?