Wall Street Journal Slimes California Assemblyman Tim Donnelly

The Wall Street Journal did a hatchet job on our friend and fellow ally, California State Assemblyman Tim Donnelly. Since elected in 2010, Tim has valiantly fought against his Democratic adversaries to promote some semblance of sanity in immigration policy. Among Tim’s battles (and ours) include Governor Brown’s idiotic insistence to give driver’s licenses and instate tuition rates to illegal aliens even though the cost of higher education to citizens has soared through the roof.

Earlier this week, Donnelly announced that he was forming a committee to explore the possibility of challenging Brown in 2014. The Journal’s Allysia Finley, whose complete title is Assistant Editor, OpinionJournal.com takes a dim view of Donnelly’s idea. An opinion page writer is entitled to her own judgment. But what Finley doesn’t have licence to do is sling mud and make outrageous misrepresentations. [California’s GOP Suicide Mission, by Allysia Finley, Wall Street Journal, November 29, 2012]

Finley writes in language unworthy of an underground newspaper that Donnelly is a “nativist” who is “a leader of the anti-immigrant Minuteman brigade that charges itself with patrolling the border and stomping out illegal immigrants.” (Emphasis added) For Finley’s edification, I’ll define nativist: one who demands a favored status for certain established inhabitants (natives) of a nation as compared to claims of newcomers or immigrants (legal). I’ve spoken to and met with Donnelly several times and have never heard nativist leanings. Findley should pick up her phone and talk to Tim one-to-one, a practice most serious journalists follow.

The Journal column is way over the top. More important, it doesn’t accurately describe Donnelly’s feelings about immigration. Like millions of other Californians and patriotic citizens nationwide, Donnelly promotes a common sense approach to immigration. Laws exist that govern who should get into the United States and who should be deported if here unlawfully. Donnelly supports enforcing those laws and opposes alien entitlements like the Dream Act and licenses because they circumvent those laws and thereby encourage more illegal immigration.

According to Finley’s misguided thinking, if Donnelly were to head the GOP ticket as the gubernatorial candidate, he would drag the other Republicans down with him. That’s idle speculation that I don’t agree with. And looking at the grim fates other nominal Republicans experienced in recent elections, namely Carly Fiorina, Meg Whitman, Elizabeth Emken, why shouldn’t a more conservative candidate like Donnelly give it a go? Brown is, according to Finley, a lock for re-election and that Donnelly’s “inflammatory rhetoric on immigration” would turn off voters.  Who really knows?

What sounds “inflammatory” to Finley is music to my ears and certainly to millions of other Californians also, many of whom have been turned off by the Republicans tame, immigration posturing.

Donnelly may or may not go for the nomination. But in  the process of seeking it—if indeed Donnelly decides to run—then at the very least he will have a statewide forum to express the immigration enforcement views so many of us hold. That’s a very good thing.