On Monday, Janet Murguia, President and CEO of the National Council of La Raza, published a post regarding the controversy surrounding Heritage Foundation’s former policy analyst, Jason Richwine. Although Richwine promptly resigned from his position on Friday, Murguia claims that is not enough.
In the post on her organization’s website, Murguia described the married father of two’s resignation as “welcome news,” adding “but we expect more.” While claiming the Heritage study on the immigration bill is considered a “deeply flawed report” by “most everyone,” she fails to cite any individuals or groups that consider it such.
The study’s findings and methodology, in fact, have yet to be disproven. David Frum, a long-standing moderate conservative and Daily Beast editor, partly defended the study in an article entitled, “You Still Can’t Wish Away the Facts on Immigration Amnesty”:
The study found that the plan would add $6.3 trillion to the nation’s budget deficits over the next 50 years. That conclusion ignited a huge controversy. Still, even the fiercest critics had to concede the basic validity of Heritage’s claim… But it’s a basic rule of politics: If you can’t disprove the message, you try to discredit the messenger.
While wondering how Richwine was hired in the first place, and despite acknowledging his paper was a doctoral dissertation at Harvard University, Murguia glosses over that fact and ignores the logical question – how a doctoral thesis, if in fact racist, would have been approved at the largely liberal institution.
La Raza has a long history of attempting to censor views and speech critical of immigration reform or amnesty, with targets including Patrick Buchanan and Lou Dobbs. Heritage seems to be latest on that list.
Murguia demands that Heritage’s president, former senator Jim DeMint, “denounce Richwine’s work for what it is – outrageous and wrong – and to recognize Latinos as ‘makers,’ not ‘takers’.” She also adds that DeMint “must not permit his organization to resort to ad hominem attacks.”
Murguia did not seem to have a problem with ad hominem attacks in a 2008 debate with CNN’s Lou Dobbs, in which she uses the word “hate,” primarily in describing certain groups as hate groups, over one dozen times. At the 6:50 mark, Dobbs corrects Murguia’s description of La Raza as a “civil rights and advocacy organization,” noting it is a “socio-ethno-centric organization with a specific interest in driving illegal immigration and amnesty… [that is] racial-focused by definition.”
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