If you thought the era of bad feelings within the GOP was over with the defeat of White House supported bipartisan immigration bill by opponents that included a good chunk of the Republican party’s base, you may be wrong:
The Chairman of the Republican Party on Friday lambasted Democrats and Republicans who helped kill an immigration bill in the Senate and challenged them to come up with a solution beyond “just build a fence along the border.”
“The voices of negativity now have a responsibility to come up with an answer,” RNC Chairman and U.S. Senator Mel Martinez, R-Fla. said.
So you now have the RNC Chair blasting other Repuublicans — which should make for a day or two of fiery rhetoric on conservative talk shows Monday and should raise some eyebrows and generate some posts among conservative blogggers. MORE:
“How will you fix the situation to make peoples’ lives better? How will you continue to grow the economy? How will we bring people out of the shadows for our national security and for the sake of being a country that is just?” he demanded.
Martinez spoke during a gathering of more than 1,000 Hispanic officials from across the country at Disney World, a day after the immigration bill’s Senate supporters fell short of the 60 votes needed to limit debate and clear the way for its final passage.
Martinez promised to work with members of the U.S. House of Representatives to try to revive the legislation, a measure the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials supports.
Bottom line: all the fireworks that go off may not be on the 4th of July. It’s likely that there will be a clamor among some for Martinez to step down.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.