Look Who’s Nativist Now

GOP candidates should remind voters of all the shady foreign and mystery cash Democratic donors have pumped into the political system.

By Michelle Malkin
NationalReview.com

Oh, this is side-splitting: After exporting U.S. jobs, importing foreign debt, and kowtowing to global thugs shamelessly over the past two years, the Obama administration is now playing the “America First” card. Democrats deserve a Guinness World Record award for their election-season cognitive dissonance.

Pres. Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, White House senior adviser David Axelrod, and their mynah bird operatives across the country accused Republicans last week of benefiting from “money from foreign corporations” — which liberals claim the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is funneling into domestic political ads.

Democratic clown prince Al Franken is leading a Senate inquisition against the Chamber. A Democratic National Committee ad lambasted the GOP for “stealing democracy,” complete with piles of Asian currency. Endangered Democratic candidates across the country are dutifully parroting the line of attack, which originated with the Center for American Progress, funded by far-left billionaire George Soros.

It’s beyond comical to watch the party that cries “RAAAACISM” whenever conservatives question their shady foreign funny money suddenly sounding the alarm over non-U.S. campaign cash. And it’s beyond galling to hear Democrats fret about foreign intrigue while the foreign-agent-in-chief has inextricably tied America’s fate to the Chinese holders of our T-bills. Guess we’re all “nativists” now, eh, President Obama?

The Chamber-bashing claims are so baseless that the New York Times concluded that “there is little evidence that what the chamber does in collecting overseas dues is improper or even unusual, according to both liberal and conservative election-law lawyers and campaign finance documents.”

Liberal CBS journalist Bob Schieffer scoffed at Axelrod: “If the only charge three weeks into the election that the Democrats can make is that somehow this may or may not be foreign money coming into the campaign — is that the best you can do?”

The Associated Press and the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s Factcheck.org also shredded the White House smear, and Democrats told the Los Angeles Times they were uneasy with the McCarthyite tactics.

GOP candidates should remind voters of all the shady foreign and mystery cash the Democrats and their deep-pocketed donors have pumped into the political system.

Convicted fraudster and former top Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu — who ran several Hong Kong companies into the ground and built a massive Ponzi scheme with still-unidentified sources of income — raised millions for the Democratic party and its candidates, including Hillary Clinton and Obama.

Obama commerce secretary Gary Locke, a soft-on-China corporate lawyer, collected thousands of dollars from “monks” and “nuns” at a Buddhist temple while running for governor of Washington.

The Federal Election Commission imposed a record-setting $719,000 in fines against Democrats for the 1996 Chinagate campaign-finance scandal.

And the Obama campaign itself solicited foreign donations on its website — even cashing in a contribution from one Canadian donor who warned, “I am not a [sic] American citizen!”

Acknowledging the hypocrisy of the Team Obama assault on the Chamber of Commerce, one top Democratic staffer warned this week: “The White House may reap the whirlwind.”

As well they should. While they gin up anti-GOP fear and hostility among blue-collar Americans worried about the economy, Team Obama has presided over job-killing policies that are driving companies overseas. The Obama drilling moratorium forced several American oil rigs to abandon the Gulf of Mexico. Radical environmental rules are strangling coal workers in West Virginia, where Democratic Senate candidate and current governor Joe Manchin has filed suit against the Obama Environmental Protection Agency.

Sen. John Barrasso (R., Wyo.) and Rep. Rob Bishop (R., Utah) pointed out in a new report on the Democrats’ “War on Western Jobs” that the White House green agenda is driving mining jobs overseas and increasing our reliance on foreign nations for metals and minerals that power our economy and are integral to defense technology.

In another high dose of cognitive dissonance, Obama has been pushing solar panels and other green-technology pet projects as a way to create jobs and promote energy independence — while ignoring the fact that the rare-earth-metal market needed for such green technology is dominated by . . . China. After years of environmental obstruction of the industry, Democrats are now rushing to reopen rare-earth-metal mines in the face of this national-security threat. The last one shut down in 2002. It could take up to 15 years to get it back up and running again.

The inconvenient truth: American workers are reaping what the newly nativist Left has sown.

— Michelle Malkin is the author of Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies (Regnery, 2010). © 2010 Creators Syndicate, Inc.