‘His positions (at least on immigration) are well outside the mainstream…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) While left-wing operatives try to brand former Vice President Joe Biden as a center–right Democrat, hoping their highly-flawed 2020 front-runner might poach GOP votes if he advances past the nominating contest, Biden’s claim on the political middle has long been met with skepticism.
A recent analysis by a conservative think-tank, the Center for Immigration Studies, is helping conclusively to resolve the matter with a resounding NO.
“Biden is not the ‘moderate’ that he and the press purport him to be, because his positions (at least on immigration) are well outside the mainstream,” wrote CIS scholar Andrew R. Arthur in a piece published Monday titled “The Myth of Moderate Joe Biden.”
A notorious flip–flopper, Biden has been caught contradicting his own statements several times while campaigning in Iowa. Among the latest examples is his 180-degree reversal on whether he would comply with a Senate subpoena in President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial—the answer to which still remains unclear.
Biden also backpedaled on his previously released shortlist of potential running mates. Although the list contained four far-left Democratic women (including failed Georgia candidate Stacey Abrams and disgraced ex-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates), Biden responded to a recent town-hall question by indicating that he would, in fact, consider a Republican.
Biden’s strategists went so far as to issue talking points in December, widely repeated by the liberal-media echo chamber, that he credibly hoped to court what his campaign labeled “reasonable Republican dads.”
Meanwhile, radicals on the party’s fringe, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez, D-NY, have played along. Seeking to push the party leftward by attempting to normalize Biden’s positions, the freshman congresswoman and self-avowed socialist said this week that she and Biden did not even belong in the same party.
But despite Ocasio–Cortez’s claims, one area where the two leftists share a similar vision is their extreme agenda when it comes to immigration.
Like “AOC,” who has openly attacked border authorities, Biden has endorsed policies that would hamstring federal immigration agents from performing their sworn duties, Arthur said in his article.
“… From his rejection of Trump diplomatic initiatives that have slowed the massive influx of migrants from Central America, to his promises to effectively end immigration enforcement in the United States, and to his vow to push for amnesty ‘for nearly 11 million undocumented immigrants’, Biden has staked out positions that are … not even ‘open borders,’ Arthur said. “They are ‘open America.'”
Such was the case under the Obama administration, Arthur noted, when the president issued executive orders refusing to enforce immigration law for certain types of illegal aliens—including unaccompanied minors.
The resulting flood at the border caused detention centers to be overrun with migrant children and teenagers—to which activist judges responded by declaring “catch and release” policies to be the law of the land.
Those loopholes, which originally prevented children from being detained more than 20 days if a guardian was there to claim them, have since been extended to entire families of illegal immigrants.
Trump’s efforts to undo his predecessor’s actions, restore law and order, and re-assert American sovereignty over its own borders have—unsurprisingly—been resisted tooth-and-nail by those same radical leftist judges, who have hindered his reforms at every turn by issuing injuctions.
But Arthur cautioned that electing Biden would assure a quick restoration of the prior lawlessness, reigniting the border crisis just as it has begun to show signs of abating.
“His proposals are essentially just a return to the ‘Obama–Biden Administration’ policies that created the mess that Donald Trump rode to the White House,” Arthur said.
In light of Biden’s history of making disingenuous statements, Arthur said some so-called ‘reasonable Republican dads’ might think Biden’s open-border-plus advocacy is just his way of pandering to progressives in the crowded Democratic primary.
In this case, however, there is no reason to doubt his sincerity.
“It would be easy to view ‘Uncle Joe’s’ immigration proposals as a sop to Democratic primary voters,” Arthur concluded, “but his history in the Obama administration would suggest that he means every word.”