Immigration is an important issue in the United States, but is it something the GOP nomination for president should hinge on? Is there a reason that as unauthorized immigration from Mexico to the U.S. steadily declines, the rhetoric becomes ever more charged?

Is racism part of the equation?

“The immigration debate has been influenced by bigotry and fueled by nativist extremists such as former Congressman Tom Tancredo and State Senator Russell Pearce of Arizona who sponsored a law that violates the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution,” says DeeDee Garcia Blase, executive director of Somos Republicans.

The question of racism was raised recently by right-wing columnist Dennis Prager, writing in National Review.

Prager, predictably, says it is practicality–not racism–that is driving the discussion, but his column has drawn rebuttal from some. That he writes in a somewhat paternal tone may not help his cause.

Prager writes:

All it takes is common sense to understand that we simply cannot afford to take care of all of you in our medical, educational, penal, and other institutions. However much you may pay in sales tax, most illegal immigrants are a financial and social burden in those states in which most of them settle.

Yes, many of you are also a blessing. Many of you take care of our children and our homes. Others of you prepare our food and do other work that is essential to our society. We know that. As individuals, the great majority of you are hardworking, responsible, decent people.

But none of that answers the question: How many people can this country allow to come in?

The moment you answer that question is the moment you realize that Americans’ worries about illegal immigration have nothing to do with “racism” or any negative feeling toward Hispanics.

Those who tell you it is racism or xenophobia are lying about their fellow Americans for political or ideological reasons. You know from your daily interactions with Americans that the vast majority of us treat you with the dignity that every fellow human being deserves. Your daily lives are the most eloquent refutation of the charge of racism and bigotry. The charge is a terrible lie. Please don’t believe it. You know it is not true.

Daniel Cubias, writing at Being Latino Online, is having none of it, or not much of it in any event.

Cubias writes:

Now, I’m sure Prager is sincere. But he is giving his fellow conservatives way too much credit.

No doubt, plenty of Republicans have legitimate objections to illegal immigration that have nothing to do with race. But to say, as Prager does, that “the vast majority of us could not care less if your name is Gonzalez or Jones” is to deny reality.

It was not liberals who ran commercials depicting Latinos as menacing thugs, or made jokes about shooting undocumented people like vermin, or called Latinos “locusts,” or… well, you get the picture. The point is that conservatives did all that (and more) by themselves, unprompted.

Still, this is anecdotal evidence. Do we have anything a bit more concrete that ties racism to the immigration debate?

Well, Mother Jones recently reported that a majority of our favorite group, the Tea Party, believes “that newcomers from other countries threaten traditional American customs and values.” Furthermore, a whopping 72 percent think we “should deport all illegal immigrants back to their home countries,” despite the fact that this would probably lead to economic chaos.

Another study showed that “racial resentment” was second only to “conservative ideology” when it came to the motivations of Tea Party members. And yet Prager would have us believe that their views on immigration are not influenced by even a hint of bigotry.

Let’s give credit to Prager for a couple of things, however. His attempt to speak directly to Latinos is rare for a conservative. More often, they’re busy riling up their base by speaking about Latinos. And his column is free of vitriol and even makes an attempt (however awkward) to see things from the perspective of an undocumented person.

But ultimately, Prager’s column appears to be a conservative’s uncomfortable epiphany. He knows that the disappointment many Latinos feel for the Democrats is no match for the hostility they harbor for the GOP. Prager is trying to undo the damage, stating that the allegation of rampant bigotry in the GOP “is a terrible lie. Please don’t believe it. You know it is not true.”

This shameless, rather pathetic pleading is what the conservative approach to Latinos and immigration has been reduced to. Rather than attempting to clean up the racism that infects their movement, conservatives are now trying to insist that this prejudice doesn’t exist at all.

I’m sorry if I don’t quite buy it.

Garcia Blase says racism is practically institutionalized in so far as much of the information used by the GOP in justifying harsh immigration laws and rhetoric comes from what she believes to be racist organizations.

“Powerful groups like NumbersUSA and the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) are part of a strong lobbying anti-immigration ‘movement,’ where NumbersUSA has at least 600,000 due paying members,” she says.

FAIR was founded by John Tanton, a man known for his support of eugenics research. In fact, FAIR has received major funding from the Pioneer Fund, which is dedicated to racial purity through eugenics.

Garcia Blase is a fairly staunch Republican on most issues, finding fault primarily in the party’s position on immigration and immigrant rights.

“We have warned all GOP candidates that the anti-immigrant messaging must be dominated with a principle they claim to value — free market thinking. Most GOP candidates excluding Gary Johnson are afraid to truthfully debate the benefits with regard to how immigrants have contributed to American society,” Garcia Blase said. “We believe GOP candidates are afraid of the Tea Party extremists, and they simply lack the spine Ronald Reagan had when he was confronted with tough issues. It is unfortunate that Rick Perry allowed Mitt Romney to put him in a defensive corner because Romney is repeating his anti-immigrant history when he ran against John McCain in 2008. Romney’s hostility towards immigrants in wanting to send them all back is clearly unreasonable and if Romney secures the GOP nomination, Latin Republican support will continue to dwindle. The GOP will not secure a healthy Latin vote during the Presidential 2012 elections due to the hostility and the extreme rhetoric the Republican National Committee (RNC) has failed to moderate.

“It is unfortunate the Republican Party has been hijacked by Tea Party extremists,” she says.

For better and for worse, in our partisan politics and media culture, controversial stories draw attention to the writer and to the outlet where it was published as well as to the subject of the story. In the weeks before an election, that kind of scrutiny intensifies. The Colorado Independent and I welcome that scrutiny. We don’t welcome uninformed speculation and smears.

Some fairly well-known journalists have told their version of how the story came to be written. That they did so without talking to anyone at the Colorado Independent, including me, is no shock. That they failed as journalists to make a phone call or send an email before writing stories about what they call suspect journalism is laughable and sad.

I’ve read at the Denver Post, for example, that progressive activist group ProgressNow and the Colorado Independent are “sister organizations.” I’ve read that when ProgressNow “shopped” this story to the mainstream media and found no takers, they spoon fed it to me. I’ve read that I was part of a coordinated effort to bring down Ken Buck.

Really?

That speculation is based on the assumption that ProgressNow and the Colorado Independent share financial backers. (Both organizations are non-profits.) That may or may not be true, but this is the most relevant fact concerning funding: I don’t know who funds ProgressNow and I only have a vague idea who funds the Colorado Independent. Frankly, I don’t want to know. The last thing I want to think about when writing a story is whether it will please a funder– or piss one off.

I do know–only because claims made by others about this story have forced me to find out–that we are not funded by the Colorado Democracy Alliance and we have no legal, financial or operating connection with ProgressNow.

If columnists and bloggers at the Denver Post and the National Review, for example, had called me, this is what I would have told them because this is the fact of how the 2005 Weld County rape story found its way to the Colorado Independent.

Late the night of Tuesday, September 21, I was surfing the Internet looking for story ideas. At popular politics blogsite Colorado Pols, I found mention of an event at which rape and incest victims were going to talk about their experiences and why they thought a complete ban on abortion, even in the case of rape or incest, is a bad idea.

Next day I tracked down one of the event organizers, Ellen Dumm, executive director of the progressive activist group Campaign for a Strong Colorado. She told me I had missed the event by a day. In that conversation or a subsequent one in which I asked for more information about the featured speakers at the event, Dumm told me she knew a woman who had been raped in Greeley a few years back and that the local DA, Ken Buck, had refused to prosecute. She said Buck had dismissed the charges as mere “buyer’s remorse” and I thought the case well worth looking into.

I know there can be many reasons a case isn’t prosecuted, but I told her I would love to talk to the woman. Dumm explained that the woman had felt somewhat burned by the coverage produced by the Greeley Tribune and other Northern Colorado media at the time of the assault. She wasn’t sure if the woman would speak with me. She said she would ask.

Days later, Dumm called and gave me the rape victim’s first name and phone number.

I ended up calling the woman early last week. She was congenial and engaging. She was nervous about telling her story, but she thought it was important.

I knew ProgressNow co-sponsored the original event I had missed because its name was on the press release. I don’t know why I called Dumm instead of ProgressNow Director Kjersten Forseth. Probably, I called both and Dumm is the one who called back first. I really have no idea.

I mention that now because during the course of my conversations with the victim, she mentioned that she had taped a private meeting she had with Ken Buck and she told me ProgressNow had the tape and that I was welcome to listen to it.

When I read that ProgressNow fed me this story, I shake my head.

This story isn’t about the Colorado Independent or about ProgessNow or both. I believed as I was reporting it and I believe now that the story I reported matters. For reporters still working this story, ask whether you think the way Buck handled this rape case matters. Whether you think he handled it well or handled it poorly, it’s the answer to that question that’s most worth writing about.

I don’t agonize over who gives me a tip. The background and motivation of the tipster is simply a matter of context in the story I write. Either the rape case matters or it doesn’t. The Colorado Independent strives to be transparent in its reporting, so ProgressNow is part of the story, but it’s not the story.

I called the sources on the story. They never called me. I called Campaign for a Strong Colorado because they had something I wanted: rape victims who would talk to me about what a ban on abortion would mean to them and other rape victims.

When I called ProgressNow, it was because the victim in the Weld County case told me ProgressNow had the tape of her meeting with Buck. What reporter wouldn’t follow that lead? I don’t think I even asked her why ProgressNow had the tape. I simply made a note to call ProgressNow.

The victim didn’t tell me about the tape right away, though. It was two or three conversations in that she gave me that nugget. By that time, I had already driven from Denver to Greeley to look at the 2005 police report. I had already interviewed the Greeley chief of police. I had already called the Weld County DA’s office several times and emailed staffers there as well. A public information officer called me back and told me she had told Buck I was working on this story and had given him my contact information. He never called me. I also phoned and emailed the campaign several times and never got a response.

In fact, I didn’t find out about the tape until late last week, at which point the story was mostly written.

I had never met anyone at ProgressNow or at the Campaign for a Strong Colorado prior to writing this story. I had never talked to anyone at those organizations prior to writing this story. I was not on their email lists. If I had been, I probably would have made it to the event I missed that started me working the story.

Nobody fed me anything. I called Dumm and said I was interested in rape victims’ experiences. It’s probable Dumm and Forseth’s familiarity with the Colorado Independent made them receptive to me. It is possible they Googled me or otherwise determined I might be sympathetic to the victim. I have no idea. I do know that if I had not thought the rape victim’s story was compelling, I would not have written about it.

I also know that I asked a lot of people in my life about the story before I published it. I asked, “Is it fair to go back five years to write this story? Is it fair to draw conclusions from one case?” I agonized over that question. At the end of the day, I thought Buck’s decision not to prosecute may have been reasonable—though I am not saying I think it was reasonable. I also thought, however, that he displayed a remarkably demeaning attitude toward this woman. I hate to call her a victim. To me, she’s a survivor, a fighter. She’s someone who was put in a position no woman wants to be put in, whether it was rape or not.

You can ask her if she was raped, or you can ask Ken Buck, but only one of those two people returned my calls.

When I read that I’m in bed with ProgressNow and that staffers there fed me the rape story, I wonder who is being fed a story now–or sold one–and why reporters buy it. I wonder if they have an agenda.

To the “longtime journalists” regurgitating that I wrote a “coordinated” story “hand and hand” with ProgressNow, if you’re going to write in the future about my reporting, call me first, because that’s what journalists do.

Got a tip? Freelance story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.

Gallagher posted statements at the National Review’s “the corner” blog, but she never says whether or not NOM scrubbed Prejean material from the NOM website, as gay rights group Californians Against Hate has alleged. Even though Prejean has worked to become one of the most identifiable figures with the Christian-right values voting bloc in the country, Gallagher writes that she is baffled at the “newsworthiness” of Prejean’s past, which this week is being filled out by allegations that she made a series of sex tapes for man she met for a hotel fling in 2007.

Gallagher’s blog directly responds to questions posed by Christian news website LifeSite News. At the blog, Gallagher repeats Prejean’s dissembling description of her sex tape(s) as “sexting,” a distinction Prejean is certainly aware of, even if Gallagher isn’t.

Carrie has never worked for the National Organization for Marriage. Out of the goodness of her heart, when we cut an ad “No Offense” featuring the vicious attacks on Carrie — and by extension every California voter who supported Prop 8 — she agreed to appear at our press conference to call attention to our message. I remain grateful to her for that.

I have no personal knowledge of the allegations. Carrie has told the media she participated in some instances of ‘sexting” to her then-boyfriend. I cannot believe that reputable media are featuring said boyfriends as they anonymously dump intimate details about Carrie.

Admittedly, I am getting kind of old. But in my old-fashioned view boyfriends who release such information on ex-girlfriends are scummy. I don’t understand the newsworthiness of these allegations.

Seven million Californians voted for Prop 8. I have no doubt that quite a few of them are people who committed sexual sins of various kinds. Why is this one 22 year old girl carrying the whole weight of that on her young shoulders?

The whole episode is weird, sad and ugly. No-one should face this kind of invasion of their privacy simply because they believe marriage is the union of husband and wife. Period. I hope the people gleeful about this attack are enjoying their phyrric victory. What they have done says far more about them than about Carrie, who is a not-unusual California 22 year old.

Prejean’s “No Offense” ad for NOM:

Prejean became a darling of the values-voter bloc when she told gay blogger Perez Hilton during this year’s Miss USA pageant that marriage should be restricted to straight couples. The episode sparked controversy and Prejean soon began to appear at outlets across the media spectrum and accepted speaking gigs for conservative organizations and causes.

Soon after the pageant, however, topless photos of her appeared, their existence never reported by Prejean in violation of pageant rules. Pageant boss Donald Trump defended her but Prejean proved increasingly difficult for pageant officials to work with and Trump eventually dumped her. NOM championed Prejean throughout the ordeal, saying she had become the target of a national Hollywood culture for articulating her Christian values in defiance of the gay agenda.

In an interview with TMZ, the man who Prejean sent the surfacing sex tapes to said Prejean’s Christian identity seemed a moneymaking pose.

“She’s just using religion to get to where she’s at right now,” he said. “Really, I mean if she was just herself and she’d just take the route of ‘Hey I just like to party and I like to have a great time and I’m hot,’ hey, that sells too. She’s just trying to sell to a different crowd right now, and I’m not buying it, and a lot of people that know her, I mean, they don’t buy it either.”

Got a tip? Freelance story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.

The Washington Independent’s Dave Weigel reports that National Review is riding the Palin memoir phenomenon by posting a blog all about the book but that Newsmax.com is setting the standard by offering copies of the book for free with a paid subscription. With deals like this, it’s a given that the former governor’s insta-memoir is gonna follow in the tradition of conservative America titles and become another bestseller with a dagger, you betcha!

Ad copy after the jump.

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