It's almost a certainty that a six-year-old boy cost Al Gore the presidency in 2000.
I speak, of course, of Elian Gonzales, the then-six-year-old refugee whose mother gave up her life so that he could live in the United States. Almost certainly, it cost Al Gore enough votes in Florida's Cuban community to swing the state --- and the election--- to George W. Bush.
Of course, the Clintonistas --- including at least one attorney who had represented Clinton in the impeachment proceedings --- made sure that Elian was returned to the tender loving care of Fidel Castro, to become little more than an instrument of Castro's agitprop.
I turned past the story when I saw it on 60 Minutes on Sunday, but apparently, Duncan Currie had the stomach to watch the entirety of Bob Simon's report on Elian's life in Cuba since his return, and writes a brilliant article on it for The Weekly Standard.
Of the many crimes of the Clinton Administration, this was perhaps the most despicable.
2 comments:
Elian was agitprop alright, hypocritical GOP agitprop. If the child's name had been Enrique, and his mother had died in the Arizona desert trying to bring him to America, Republican's wouldn't have shed a tear when returning him to a surviving parent, or to anyone, back in Mexico.
Clinton's dispicable crime is returning a boy to his father? That his father lives in a country unfriendly to ours does not justify the United States keeping a child from his parent. Thankfully he was returned to his father by an administration that understood that.
What's the Bush program for rescuing children from their unfit parents whose only failing is being born in the wrong country?
The difference, quite obviously, is that this country makes a distinction in the law between economic refugees and refugees from totalitarian states. I'll just presume that the smarmy tone of your comment was rendered in ignorance of that legal fact. Of course, the reason Walter Polovchak today lives free (and was permitted to remain in 1982), was the distinction between an administration which understood the nature of totalitarianism, and one in early 2000 that -- at best -- did not, and -- at worst -- was filled with individuals who had a history of giving aid and comfort to such totalitarian regimes.
And Clinton's despicable crime was not "returning a boy to his father," since that's not what happened. Clinton's despicable crime was returning a boy to a totalitarian regime in which a father has virtually no rights, and the very concept of "fatherhood" is servile to the State.
And you apparently have forgotten that the father's interest in getting his son back was manifested only after the story hit the media, and Castro and his goons had a chance to work on him. When Elian's American relatives called and reported to him that his son was here, his first response was indifference. So claiming that the United States was "keeping a child from his parent" doesn't wash. In fact, Castro was keeping a child from his parent, too; Elian's father was not permitted to bring his new wife and their infant to the United States while trying to recover Elian. They were hostages.
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