At the Democratic debate on Tuesday night, Sen. Bernie Sanders bragged about getting a "D-minus" from the National Rifle Association (which was also Lincoln Chafee's GPA in high school).
Nonetheless, Hillary Clinton attacked Sanders for having voted against an insane bill that would have held gun manufacturers and sellers legally liable for the behavior of anyone who uses one of their guns in a crime.
I would be open to such a law -- but only after we pass a law holding psychiatrists liable for crimes committed by their patients; lawyers for crimes committed by their clients; and sanctuary cities for crimes committed by the illegal immigrants they released in violation of federal law.
Gun dealers are a lot more careful about whom they sell guns to than psychiatrists, lawyers and sanctuary cities are about the criminals they loose on the public.
In several recent mass shootings, the psycho was at least temporarily delayed when gun shops refused to sell him guns -- such as the Colorado gun range owner who put his whole staff on red alert in case James Holmes ever wandered in, simply on the basis of having heard Holmes' strange voicemail message.
As Sanders himself once said, holding gun sellers liable for the crimes of their customers would be like holding "a hammer company responsible if somebody beats somebody over the head with a hammer." (As happened to Lincoln Chafee.)
To cheers from the Democratic audience, Hillary denounced Sanders for his vote against imposing unprecedented liability on gun makers, saying, "It's time the entire country stood up against the NRA."
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Sanders bowed and scraped, finally saying he'd "take another look" at the gun bill.
Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley bragged about passing the strictest gun-control laws in the country (which explains why Baltimore is such a safe city). Asked which "enemy" he was proudest of, O'Malley said: "The NRA." (Loud applause -- especially from the radical Muslims in the audience!)
I gather Democrats have written off the gun vote.
Plenty of Democrats own firearms -- or at least have armed bodyguards, such as Rosie O'Donnell, Jim Carrey, Michael Moore and Michael Bloomberg.
But Democrats have made a calculated decision that they are not going to win a majority of gun owners, so they denounce them with abandon, making no concessions at all.
Why don't Republicans do that with the Hispanic vote? Somehow, the left has convinced the GOP to obsess over winning people who will never give us a majority of their votes, which is the exact opposite of the Democrats' strategy for themselves.
I would wager that Democrats get more votes from NRA members than Republicans do from La Raza members (0). But try to imagine a Republican answering the "enemies" question: "La Raza."
Republicans don't need to treat Hispanics with the contempt that Democrats treat gun-owners. We do not dislike Hispanics. We do not dislike any group.
We just have to protect Americans first -- American jobs, American taxes and American social programs being bankrupted by immigrants. Most voters don't think it's an outrageous imposition to ask people to obey our laws.
Donald Trump opened his campaign talking about Mexican rapists, pledged to build a wall and deport illegals -- and has soared to the top of the polls.
The massive Hispanic blowback consists of this: Trump is getting about the same percentage of the Hispanic vote as Romney did.
I have no doubt that the 73 percent of Hispanics who will be voting against Trump are prepared to be much angrier about it than the 73 percent who voted against Romney. But the result won't look any different on election night. Voting machines don't register angry glints in people's eyes.
On the other hand, by driving up the white vote -- to say nothing of the black vote -- we will see a difference in the Republicans' box score on election night.
The Holy Grail year for Republicans is supposed to be 2004, when President Bush won a record-breaking 40 percent of the Hispanic vote. He had to turn his entire White House into a Hispandering operation to do that -- and he still lost the Hispanic vote.
It's crazy to deform our whole platform in pursuit of some group that won't give us at least 51 percent of its vote, anyway. The Democrats ignore white voters and they were 73.7 percent of the electorate in 2012. Hispanics were only 8.4 percent that year.
I haven't seen an estimate of the electoral percentage of gun-owners, but with one-third to half of all Americans owning guns, it's a lot more than 8.4 percent.
Democrats know not to expend any effort on constituencies they can't win, but have buffaloed Republicans into wasting resources on a quixotic bid to win a slightly larger -- but still losing -- percentage of the 8.4 percent of the electorate that is the Hispanic vote.
You've been conned, GOP. You are never going to beat the Democrats at sucking up to foreigners. And your conservative base will flee.
The GOP should expend precisely as much effort fawning over the Hispanic vote as Democrats do over the gun vote, the pro-life vote and the white vote.
Republicans have got to stop believing The New York Times line that the only honorable votes are from minorities. It's honorable to get votes from taxpayers, too.
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