A Reader Remembers What Bob Dole Said Better Than Hillary Did

09/12/2016

From: Stephen Funk

So Trump’s opponents are now trying to claim an aged Bob Dole as their ally. What his speech accepting the nomination in '96 really said, if I remember correctly, was that a legal immigrant who has been in this country a week has as much right to be here as someone whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower. But his campaign was strongly against illegal immigration, and was not afraid to use the term "illegal alien."

Nearly 300,000 Illegal Immigrants Drain America’s Resources
Dole Will Strengthen Border Patrol and Streamline the Deportations Process
Bob Dole Has Been a Leader in Fighting Illegal Immigration

Where Bob Dole Stands on Immigration Dole/Kemp 96

And Dole endorsed Trump in May.

By James Fulford writes: Hillary Clinton said in her anti-Alt Right rant that “Twenty years ago, when Bob Dole accepted the Republican nomination, he pointed to the exits and told any racists in the Party to get out.”

Of course, Dole lost, but we have the transcript of his 1996 speech, and here’s what Dole actually said:

The Republican Party is broad and inclusive. It represents many streams of opinion and many points of view.
But if there’s anyone who has mistakenly attached themselves to our party in the belief that we are not open to citizens of every race and religion, then let me remind you, tonight this hall belongs to the Party of Lincoln. And the exits which are clearly marked are for you to walk out of as I stand this ground without compromise.

So Dole was definitely attacking anyone who thought it was wrong for blacks to join the GOP and vote for Dole. I don’t know any white people who were saying that, but a lot of blacks felt that way, enough to give the Democrats somewhere between 90 and 99 percent of their vote.

In the speech Dole also said “A family from Mexico [which] arrives this morning legally has as much right to the American Dream as the direct descendants of the Founding Fathers. But what he said before that was

“The right and obligation of a sovereign nation to control its borders is beyond debate. We should not have here a single illegal immigrant.”

That’s now a racist and hateful thing to say, and if construed literally, goes further than Trump has proposed. But nobody believed him, and he lost.

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