State of Denial – Gutknecht Style

During his October 12th campaign rally at Minnesota State Mankato, Gil Gutknecht observed that it is the best of times stating "If there was ever a time and place to be alive it would be here and now."

Looking at the political world in a positive perspective was an undercurrent of Gutknecht's speech: citing progress "in what the president calls 'the war on terrorism'”; observing during his Iraq visit “an oasis of peace and prosperity" in the Kurdish area; and in Iran, there is a new generation of young people that Gutknecht said loves America.

Wow, that’s pretty positive. As happy as he saw the world on Thursday, by Friday, things looked a little different from the Congressman's world viewpoint.

In his October 13th eline, Gutknecht addresses the North Korea situation :
“Earlier this week, North Korea announced that it had conducted a successful nuclear test. If this claim is proven true, it would be the first nuclear bomb detonated since June 1998. We are working to confirm North Korea's claim. This threat is a terror tactic that endangers our international community.
It's a very scary world we live …”

I will address Korea later, but for the purpose of this commentary, my only question is : if Gutknecht is so positive, why are all his campaign ads so negative ?

Based on his self-approved commercials currently running on TV and radio, illegal immigration is his biggest concern. In the commercials, he makes a number of assertions including the impact to Social Security funding. This claim is not unique to Gutknecht, as locally we see it in Mark Kennedy’s commercials also. In fact at least 29 GOP ads have been run nationally using these claims.

As such the Annenberg School did an analysis of these assertions … and it is to put it mildly, they found them to be “misleading”.
The analysis states : “Nobody's proposing paying benefits to illegals, not until and unless they become US citizens or are granted legal status.”
The current law already allows illegal workers to get Social Security credit for the taxes they pay while illegal, if and when they become citizens or gain legal permission to work.
There were changes offered in the Senate version of the immigration reform bill that would have addressed the Social Security issue, but those changes were not included in the final version. In May, the Senate version passed 62-36 with Norm Coleman and 22 other Republicans voting in support.

The problem that Gutknecht has with Immigration Reform is not with the Democrats, but with his own fellow Republicans. Once again, I must ask, if this is his biggest concern, why have Gutknecht and the House not conferred with the Senate to resolve these bills? If an overwhelming majority of Senators believe this is good legislation, how can he claim that anyone that doesn’t agree with him is out of the mainstream and not representing Minnesota values?

He’s in a state of denial.

Sources :
http://www.factcheck.org/article447.html
http://www.startribune.com/10113/story/742015.html
http://www.msureporter.com/media/storage/paper937/news/2006/10/17/LocalandStateNews/Elephant.Rally-2372033.shtml?norewrite200610180722&sourcedomain=www.msureporter.com