The
Convenient Compassion of Renee Ellmers:
From Tea Party Darling to Big
Business Stooge
by
Jim Gillespie
In
2010, Renee Ellmers was elected to the North Carolina second congressional
district seat with the help of tea party activists. She seemed okay at the time,
certainly better than the seven-term relic she replaced: Bob Etheridge. Since
then, however, things have gone nowhere but downhill.
After
about a term and a half, Ellmers—who had come to NC by way of Detroit—revealed
her true colors. She became suddenly filled with compassion for all immigrants
who managed to sneak into the U.S. Writing in the
Fayetteville
Observer, in January of 2014, Ellmers
declared:
The
local leaders I met with covered a variety of industries, including housing,
construction, hospitality, restaurant, research and development, high tech and
agriculture. I was impressed with their candor and sense of urgency. Their views
were echoed by immigrants, faith leaders and reform-minded groups in the
district. They told me that their greatest fears include the threat of their
families being broken apart and the inability to provide for their loved
ones.
It’s
funny how the aspirations of the cheap labor advocates in the first sentence so
neatly and conveniently dovetail with those of the do-gooders in the third. Life
can be awfully convenient at times.
Ms.
Ellmers’ fit of convenient compassion did not go unrewarded. Running for what
would be her third term in Congress, she was aided in the Republican primary by
a group that calls itself “Americans for a Conservative Direction.” True
conservatives in her district might be surprised to learn that the ACD is a
subsidiary of
FWD.us, which features
among its billionaire backers Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates. (In the
support-both-sides tradition of big money politics, FWD.us also sponsors another
organization—
the Council for American Job Growth—which gives
its money to the candidates Zuck and Bill really want to win: the liberals.)
Joining
in the compassion chorus supporting Ellmers—because they just love doing good
for poor folks from other lands—is the Partnership for a New American Economy,
which features such worthies as Michael Bloomberg, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer,
Rupert Murdoch, and Bill Marriott. The Partnership’s director, Jeremy Robbins,
has pointed to North Carolina and in particular Ellmers’ district as a key
battleground. “You have a hugely powerful agriculture voice [there]. You have
the Research Triangle.” He adds, as anyone who lives there can tell you, “You
have a pretty decent sized undocumented immigrant population” as well. (In 2010,
there were estimated to be fully 325,000 illegals in the state as a whole.)
Ms.
Ellmers has mastered, in near-record time, the art of speaking out of both sides
of her mouth. No, she’s not for amnesty, she insists. Yes, she is in favor of
letting anyone come here who wants to and letting anyone who is already here
stay. After all, it’s the compassionate thing to do and, besides, the big money
boys think it’s the right thing to do, too. So what’s the problem?
When
confronted with the problem—namely, that her policies will destroy the social
fabric of her district, state, and country and at the same time reduce wages to
third-world levels—Ellmers has on occasion
made something of a jerk of herself. On Laura
Ingraham’s radio program in the spring, she declared herself free of the
“ignorance” of her host. Then, at a town hall meeting with her own constituents,
she flatly told one he had “
no damn facts.”
Where
the damn facts are missing would seem to be in the attractive head of Ms.
Ellmers herself. Ron Woodard of NC LISTEN, who has had the dubious pleasure of
attempting to make sense of the congresswoman’s babble in a
one-on-one meeting, described her as “the most
misinformed and uninformed member of Congress I have ever spoken with” on the
subject. “And that is saying something,” he added.
The
citizens of North Carolina’s second district will most likely be stuck with
their crypto-conservative rep for another couple of years. A grassroots-funded
(i.e., under-funded) challenge in this spring’s primary failed, and Ms.
Ellmers’ Democratic opponent is American Idol runner-up Clay Aiken, a
single-issue candidate whose views—in the words of an Ellmers staffer—“more
closely resemble those of San Francisco” than the second district. Mr. Aiken is
likely to find himself in the also-ran category once again, and the big business
stooge will get another round.
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