This information is no surprise, go here and check it out.
What interested me most was this discussion of how Grover Norquist (Americans for Tax Reform) took pride in delivering the Muslim vote for George Bush in 2000. Then, as we know, Muslims had buyer’s remorse.
According to many, the Muslim American electorate’s “official” coming out party was in 2000 when they emerged as a small but powerful voting bloc. This new group consisted mostly of first- and second-generation South Asian and Arab immigrants, who favored George W. Bush. (In the 2000 election, George W. Bush garnered 42% of the Muslim vote versus 31% for Democrat Al Gore according to Zogby International and Project MAPS, which conducted the first American Muslim Poll in November 2001.)
Upon the advice and counsel of Republican lobbyist extraordinaire Grover Norquist, President Bush actively sought these votes by pledging to repeal the use of “secret evidence” in detaining immigrants, personally reaching out to mosques, imams and Muslim community leaders for their support. A delighted Norquist boasted, “George W. Bush was elected President of the United States of America because of the Muslim vote.”
In hindsight, many Muslim Americans liken that myopic decision to a naïve, well-intentioned prisoner personally polishing and loading a rifle and handing it to his own executioner.
Acting as if they were betrayed by Bush, Muslim Americans seem to forget there was a little event called 9/11 that changed the entire dynamic of Muslim/American relations. And, despite 9/11 the Bush Administration has bent over backwards (beyond what many of us think is reasonable) to carry out the apparent Norquist strategy of salting the federal government with Islamists whose allegiance is not first and foremost to the United States of America.
How does all this fit into Refugee Resettlement? What does the Muslim electorate need to move forward?Numbers, of course, and our US State Department and the do-gooder “church” groups are happy to oblige.
Grover Norquist too has been advocating for larger numbers of Iraqis to be allowed to resettle in the US. How does that fit with tax reform? It doesn’t! Immigrants of all sorts require more government benefits than they return in taxes.