*Written by Rob Rimes.

I was late watching this debate, as I had to check the replay. Unfortunately, I wasn’t home and I was unable to take serious notes on it. I was at my boss’ house due to it being the annual national sales meeting for my real job and between the alcohol and festivities, this thing was hard to watch in any serious sort of manner. I regret not being able to give it my full attention but the whiskey and wine were flowing, the girls were distracting to say the least and the copious amounts of food transplanted from several of the world’s most exotic regions somehow took precedence over watching the most recent episode of ‘Three Tyrants and a Wizard’. I do apologize as I have been trying to chronicle every damn one of these things but there are just so many, seven this month alone, and turning down a chance to literally spend the night at a party thrown at the mansion of the Indian version of Caligula is incredibly hard to pass up. Bourbon soaked tits are better to stare at than three dudes arguing over their dicks and the fourth shaking his head because America’s fallen so far that we’re literally having a debate about three dicks.

Now I did go back and read the transcripts from the debate and I did watch Ron Paul’s highlights – the only important parts, as the other three’s highlights would’ve put me to sleep in my hungover stupor. If it wasn’t for my boss’ brother handing me a Bloody Mary when I walked through the office door this morning, I’d probably be curled up in a ball under my desk hiding from the flickering power-draining headache-inducing fluorescent lights over my head. Needless to say, I am not a Bloody Mary fan by any stretch of the word, as it just conjures up the thought of drinking vodka with some ketchup spilled in it, but that fucking cocktail hit the spot today and I’m about 70 percent recovered from guest-starring in the Bollywood version of ‘Eyes Wide Shut’.

I know I’m rambling about my drunken escapades and that might disinterest you, as you came to this article to experience my certain style of critique on these things, so for that I’m sorry. I will do my best to give you the rundown of the debate, as I saw it between nude champagne showers and Chilean sea bass dodgeball.

So I’m just going to go down the line and analyze the candidates one-by-one starting with Rick Santorum. He started by talking about illegal immigration, border fences and telling the story about his immigrant family for the umpteenth time. He got into it with Ron Paul on foreign policy and failed miserably as he tried to cover up the fact that he’s a goddamned idiot on the affairs of Central and South America. I’ll write more on this when I get to Ron Paul, who owned Santorum like a twenty dollar prostitute. Santorum goes on to bitch about Fannie and Freddie and in turn blasts Newt and Mitt for playing personal politics and distracting everyone from discussing the real issues. On the subject of space, Santorum said that America is a frontier country and space is the next frontier to conquer. He calls for the private sector to be more involved with NASA but doesn’t fully support government being out of it. On health care he goes on and on about how awesome he is for trying to create health savings accounts. If you were so awesome, you would’ve got it done pal! He then gets into a health care argument with Romney that is neither interesting or worth writing about but what the hell, I’ll give you the nutshell version. Basically it went something like this:

Rick Santorum: “Fuck Romneycare”
Mitt Romney: “But it was only at the state level Ricky Baby!”
Rick Santorum: “I don’t care Mitt! You’re a bitch and you gave Obama the blueprints to evil!”
Mitt Romney: “Ricky Baby, you’re so silly!”
Rick Santorum: “Jesus Bible! No health care for the gays!”

Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich spent most of their time arguing about who was a bigger bastard while both looked like big bastards. Mittens talked about “self-deportation” again. If these guys believe in such a thing as an effective way of handling a situation, can we get them to believe in “self-governance”? If they trust those illegal immigrants to leave on their own accord after sneaking in here in an effort just to come back in a way that is much more difficult, they’ve got to believe that we’re all capable of managing every other aspect of our lives? I mean, they are putting blind faith into something so farfetched that they’ve got to be down with just saying “fuck it” and letting us run our own shit, right?

On the immigration subject, Newt says that Romney is the most anti-immigrant candidate out of the four. Romney gets all pissy and pulls his two Latino cards. The first he pulls is Marco Rubio, the Cuban American senator that came to his defense on immigration. The second card Mitt pulled was Mexico, as his father was born there. I was born in a hospital bro, that doesn’t make me a doctor!

Romney and Gingrich argue about immigration for awhile and then they argue about Fannie and Freddie and who is the biggest crook. Newt, once he gets away from the lame feud for a minute, goes on some tangent about making a moon base. Newt later said that Jacksonville was going to get big pimpin’ because the Panama Canal was widening and would bring them more boat traffic. Shortly after that we were treated to a Santorum-Gingrich-Romney three-way which was like stumbling upon a middle-aged homosexual version of Cinemax at three in the morning. It was a bitch and rant fuck fest that no one in their right mind needed to see, unless of course you’re into middle-aged gay men. If you are, I mean absolutely no disrespect. Do ya thang homegirl!

Fuck all these queens, let’s get to Ron Paul, the only adult in the room. On immigration, he says that if we had a working healthy economy we wouldn’t be so worried about the immigration issue as we’d be looking for workers to fill jobs. He adds that the way we are handling our borders is actually harming our economy. He points out that we don’t have the right amount of resources on the border and that we should pay more attention to our border instead of the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

On the Latin America issue, Ron Paul says, “Free trade is the answer.” He throws in the fact that we’d be a lot better off if we practiced free trade with Cuba. He adds that he doesn’t like the idea that America thinks that they can go down to Central and South America and try to dictate which kind of leaders they need down there, as it is none of our business. He says that the best way to influence other nations isn’t by telling them what to do, it is by practicing friendship and free trade. Paul then references Santorum who said that we have to stand up for these nations. Paul explains that standing up for nations often times comes with us imposing ourselves on the people of these countries while picking their dictators, undermining their government and sending them a lot of money. He warns that this sort of tactic always backfires and the people we are “supporting” end up hating us. Ron Paul calls Rick Santorum’s ideas on foreign policy the “bully way”. Paul adds that he knows a better to way to work with people other than using force. Santorum shakes his head, mumbles some stupid crap and then changes his tampon while wiping his bitch tears. Checkmate Paul!

Ron Paul is asked if Mitt and Newt should return the money they’ve made off of Fannie and Freddie and he responds to thunderous applause when he says, “That subject doesn’t interest me a lot.” Paul says that Fannie and Freddie should have been auctioned off right after the crash came. He said that if it was sold, the problem would’ve been “cleansed” by now. Ron Paul says that he’s been trying to prevent this stuff which is why we need to end the Federal Reserve.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asks says that Ron Paul, if elected, would be the oldest president ever. He asks Paul if he would make his medical records public to show the people that he is healthy. Blitzer basically wants to paint Ron Paul as a geezer who could croak tomorrow and I find the question to be repugnant, just as I found it distasteful when the same issue was brought up with Ronald Reagan years ago. Paul said that he’ll prove how healthy he is by delivering an open challenge to all the other candidates to face him in a 25 mile bike ride in the heat of Texas. Ron Paul face-palmed the shit out of Wolf Blitzer and the other candidates with that answer. He also took a shot at Wolf himself when he jokingly pointed out that there are laws against age discrimination and that Blitzer should be careful. Wolf, after getting bitchslapped, tries to cover up the stupid question by asking the other candidates if they’d release theirs. What a tool.

On space spending, Ron Paul says that he would only approve funding on stuff that fits under defense. He says that going to the Moon and Mars is fantastic but that it could be done better by the private sector if their hands weren’t tied. Ron Paul then takes a shot at Newt, saying that he has stretched the truth with all his “balanced budget” claims from the days when he was Speaker of the House. Ron Paul is taking solid shots backed by facts and there is nothing that can be done about it when he brings these guys a dose of the truth. Strangely, Newt Gingrich was very polite and gracious to Ron Paul all night and gave him props for his ideas in several areas.

In the end, the debate was lightyears better than the NBC debate a few days prior. CNN does the best job, in my opinion, and I’ve watched every single one of these debates. Kudos to Wolf for rocking the house, even with a few prickish questions. Ron Paul owned the motherfucker, Santorum did decent if you are into his religio-fascist bullshit while Newt and Mitt looked like a few bickering Tinas arguing over the last pack of Lee Press-On Nails at K-Mart.

And that’s all I got because I immediately returned to my whiskey-scented orgy on the south lawn.

Grading Scale:
Grade A+: Ron Paul
Grade C-: Rick Santorum
Grade D+: Newt Gingrich
Grade D: Mitt Romney

*Best debate moment in recent memory:

*Written by Rob Rimes.

Here we go again, another critique if you will on another primary debate for the GOP candidates who want to go head-to-head with Obama in 2012. This debate was the first to include, now front-runner, Texas Governor Rick Perry. He is a vile douchebag that I wrote about in ”American Psycho: The Ballad of Rick Perry“. This was also the first debate to not include Tim Pawlenty, as he dropped out of the race like a defeated little bitch even though he was voted third place after the last debate. As with all the other debates besides the first, Gary Johnson was nowhere to be found, which is fucking sacrilege. Thaddeus McCotter, another GOP candidate was also left out. He’s a guy I’d like to hear more from, even though his record is somewhat questionable. Then again, it’s nowhere near as bad as the records of the mainstream media’s handpicked golden boys.

The lineup this round consisted of my favorite candidate Ron Paul, the only one that matters; there were others as well however. The media’s new chosen golden boy Rick Perry was ready to duke it out with their original golden boy Mitt Romney. Awesome business man and non-politician Herman Cain was on stage, as was the lord of fire Newt Gingrich and supermom Michele Bachmann. Oh yeah, some how Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman were invited too.

This debate was the first one to air on MSNBC as it was hosted by NBC and Politico. While those two organizations try to pass of as impartial and non-partisan, they are very liberal organizations. This is not a bad thing at all however. The contrast between the philosophies of the panel of moderators and the candidates should make for some entertaining television and give us a fresh perspective in this long drawn-out election cycle or so one would think.

Now I haven’t seen the tally of who had the most time but as a viewer, it felt that Perry and Romney got about half of the total debate time allotted to them and their banter against each other. I asked several other people and they also felt that this was the Perry-Romney Supershow Variety Hour. Because of this, most of the debate was lame. However, let me sum the shit up for you.

The night of course started with Emperor Rick Perry bragging about his record and how awesome he is as Texas’ dictator. Most of what he said about himself was bullshit but nobody cares because nobody checks facts anymore (here is a link for you though). Note to self: if I ever run for president I have to tell everyone I used to be a T-Rex; they’ll never know and I’ll be a fucking shoe in! Anyway, Perry lies and Romney stares at him like he wants a lick of the Perry Tootsie Pop. There’s too much good hair on the screen at one time. Mitt’s hair looks better on this night though.

So immediately the debate swings over to Mitt Romney, as the golden boys have to get the jump on the competition. He says a bunch of unimportant unmemorable shit which causes Perry to snap back and diss Mittens. It’s a golden boy shit show right off the bat! Perry disses on Mitt for his bad public sector record compared to his “great” private sector record. Mitt throws a low blow.. ba-jing! Perry and Romney go into a zing war! Shit! It’s like watching the douches smack each other with their wangs! With the country falling apart, these guys are giving us a bad reality show style squabble instead of giving us mind-blowing solutions to our peril. Whatever, the public loves them and they’re so handsome!

After the fight between the two middle school girls, our attention is directed towards Rick Santorum. How is this shitcock maroon still in this goddamned race? I think he’s only on the stage because he got lost on his way to the racquetball courts. Santorum is synonymous for slapping around blue balls. I didn’t really hear what he had to say, I’m assuming it had something to do with Jesus, war and water sports.

Herman Cain then gets the spotlight and introduces us to his 999 Plan (read about it here). I like the overall idea of the plan and it is light-years ahead of what most of these douches on the stage are peddling. I’ll critique it in-depth at a later date. Cain, who is always ready to give us a solution, attacks taxes and outshines Santorum, Perry and Romney right out the gate.

The panelists then cut over to Jon Huntsman for the first time and he goes on to tell us that we need to fix the weak broken core. I’m not sure if he is referring to America or his campaign. He also states that Utah was the number one job creator, not Texas or Massachusetts. Huntsman makes it known that Perry and Romney are both high on their own fumes and not as effective as they and the media think they are. Then again, Huntsman is about as effective as a tampon in a gunshot wound. Well, at least Huntsman gave a big shout out to free markets, not that I believe he will fight for true capitalism, he’ll most likely take a massive dump on it. However, being the ambassador to China may have taught him how capitalism works because that country has got their shit together like Legos and Gorilla Glue.

Michele gets the mic and instead of spitting a dope freestyle, she just rambles off her Tea Party talking points about Obamacare eating children and killing jobs or something like that. I’m not sure why this Canadian lady is up there. She then proceeds to remind us, for the umpteenth time in only her third debate, that she has had more children in her home than all the primary schools in Saskatchewan. She came off as bat-shit crazy in her first debate, came off really well in her second debate where she battled it out with Tim Pawlenty, but in this debate she is already back to living up to that creepy image of her from that infamous Newsweek cover. I don’t want to be a dickhole and call her a dingbat but she makes it really fucking hard.

Ron Paul finally gets the attention of Brian Williams and his cronies on the panel. Unlike Huntsman, Dr. Paul drops some knowledge on free markets and truly means what he says. He defends his stance on deregulation and doesn’t falter when Brian Williams presses him on his stance regarding the privatization of everything. Ron Paul with elegance and prose educates the panelists and other presidential candidates but of course his expertise and insight fall on deaf ears.

The moderators then point out that Newt Gingrich wrote the introduction to Rick Perry’s book. Of course the MSNBC stooges are trying to start fires and stir the pot for some Republican Party infighting. Newt takes a shot at Perry but doesn’t jab too hard as he uses his time to point out Obama’s blatant use of class warfare.

They return to Golden Boy 2 and ask Romney a question. Luckily for us viewers, there are technical difficulties. The gist of this exchange is an attempt by the moderators on the panel to drag the Romneycare skeletons out of the closet. To dodge this bullet and divert the attention off of himself, Romney promises to offer waivers for any state that wants to opt out of Obamacare. Um.. dude.. why don’t you just murder that bill instead? Repeal the fuck out of it, that’s what you said you would do before. Is he flip-flopping or stumbling through his thoughts?

The health care debate rolls over towards Golden Boy 1 Rick Perry but he dodges bullets like the Ghost Twins from the second ‘Matrix’ movie. Question: Why are so many people in Texas without health care. A: I had to buy some suits and hair gel. Huntsman jumps in the mix, says some unimportant shit and is obviously wearing John Boehner’s skin as he is orange as fuck under those hot stage lights. Bachmann jumps in to pat herself on the back and surprisingly doesn’t mention one of her 1,274 kids.

The debate continues and continues and not a lot of important shit happens or is said. Overall, this is the least memorable of all the debates thus far, even with it being Perry’s debut. So what’s that say about Perry? Also, being in the den of liberals isn’t as exciting as it should be. Ah well, we’re only halfway here.

The most memorable part of the night besides Ron Paul being the only real people’s candidate up there was Newt Gingrich going off on the moderators for their attempts to divide the candidates and create drama. Everything else is really just filler and redundant rhetoric used to trigger cheap pops from the crowd.

Rick Perry did attack Ron Paul at a point and talked of how Paul was pro-Reagan and then anti-Republican back in the 1980′s. Ron Paul defending himself well and pointed out that he supported Reagan in ’76 and ’80 but by ’88 had grown tired of the “politics as usual” of the spend-crazy Reagan Administration and so he left the party to run for president under the banner of the Libertarian Party. This issue is about the only “dirt” anyone can dig up on Ron Paul and it isn’t even dirt. It certainly isn’t as fucking bad as Rick Perry working on Al Gore’s political campaign in ’88!

After Perry’s pot-stirring bullshit with Ron Paul, he was confronted with the fact that George W. Bush’s minions Karl Rove and Dick Cheney have been bashing him to the media. Perry just looks uncomfortable and can’t really formulate a real defense. Between the long pauses and lack of real answers on most issues, Perry looks incredibly weak in this debate. I severely dislike the guy but if he’s such a great candidate why can’t he present himself better? I was disappointed in his performance but at the same time grateful because he did horrible. Then again, after the debate, the media is still pimping him out!

One of the big subjects of the debate was Social Security. The best solution to the problem was brought up by Herman Cain who said that we should adopt the Chilean model. Essentially, that would involve privatizing it. Read more on the Chilean model here.

Rick Perry is finally confronted with the fact that he tried to force vaccinations on girls going into the sixth grade. Ron Paul throws some shit in Perry’s lap, which was refreshing. Attacking other candidates is not Ron Paul’s style but when Rick Perry is a dirty evil son of a bitch, Dr. Paul did the right thing. Bachmann also jumped on Perry and said that what he did was a violation of parental rights. Then she spun that into education reform and I got confused.

Back on topic, Rick Perry tried to defend his Hitler-esque program. His explanation was lame, pointless and did nothing to assure people that he wasn’t a douchebag.. well, except for the mainstream media who still sip his semen cider. One thing Perry forgot to mention however is that the drug company Merck was a huge contributor to his campaigns.

The next big topic to come up is Homeland Security and the TSA. Newt Gingrich informs us that people want to kill us and that we have to have DHS and the TSA. Ron Paul makes a case for privatizing the TSA, he also used his time to rightfully bash FEMA. Jon Huntsman wants a more efficient Department of Homeland Security.

Rick Perry is then challenged on his ability to manage education in this country, as his state has the worst graduation rates in the country. As with everything he is challenged with, Perry doesn’t have a good solid answer. I’m beginning to wonder if his long dramatic pauses are an attempt to collect his thoughts, an attempt to fashion a lie or a way to waste time in order to not really answer the questions. I bet it’s a combination of the three. Everyone else up there is pretty much in favor of school choice.

MSNBC then dusts off their latino reporter for the segment on immigration. Rick Perry, a guy whose record proves he couldn’t care less about border security, calls for more border agents. He also calls for Predator drones. Dude, their are already fucking Predator drones on YOUR state’s border! Are you that fucking dense? Or do you really not pay that much attention? Why did no one call him out on this blatant fucking oversight?!

Mitt Romney wants a super fence on the border and promises no amnesty whatsoever. Newt educates the audience and the moderators on why Reagan went with amnesty and immigration reform. Rick Santorum wants to lock the border down and after that he’d be willing to have discussions about immigration. So, no discussions until we close off those we would have the discussions with. Michele Bachmann believes this magic fence would save us from drug cartels. Is it tall enough to stop helicopters and catapults? All these people need to watch the immigration episode of ‘Penn & Teller’s Bullshit’. At least Herman Cain believes that immigration issues should be handled at the state level and that the federal government should have no control over state’s decisions to combat the problem.

Ron Paul is the only candidate to drop any real knowledge when he goes on to explain how the fence is stupid and that it could potentially be used to keep us in as opposed to keeping people out. He also breaks down the real problems which are the drug war and the welfare system. I wrote about these issues and how they relate to immigration in “Conservatives & Aliens“.

Hey, where’s the latino guy?! Oh, the immigration segment is over. Well played MSNBC.

Romney goes on to explain how he will prevent us from going into a recession. Apparently he is unaware that we are already in a recession. That’s understandable I guess, we’ve only been in it for 3 years. He then attacks Obama for his lack of leadership in an effort to run out time and avoid answering the Tea Party themed question. Mittens is no constitutional conservative.

When Rick Perry is asked if he thinks that Bush II was too quick to launch military intervention. He then dodges the Bush question to give Obama props on his military prowess! He also gives props to the Navy SEALs. Perry actually says “propes” instead of “props” because he is a backwoods fuck that is trying to be cool and fit in with the kids. Stop trying douche-sandwich! You’re whack as fuck and no one likes your DJ!

Tea Party darling Michele Bachmann claims that the U.S. military has been responsible for maintaining global order. WTF?! Is this dingbat rubbing angeldust on her gums again? She does not represent the Tea Party if she believes this and if the majority of the Tea Party also believes this, then the Tea Party is a bunch of frauds. Bachmann wants to reign in a global police state apparently. “Yay!” for military interventionism! She is against Libya but still cool with being the global police. It’s all interventionism and none of it is any of our business. Well, except what was made our business because of previous interventionism and military meddling.

Oh yeah, more Rick Santorum! Why is he still in this damn race? Once again, where the hell is Gary Johnson?! And why isn’t McCotter here as well?

These conservatives are now on the subject of science, something most of them don’t understand. They just look at it as another “religion” in competition with Christianity. Huntsman says we can’t run from science, we need to embrace it. Um.. no duh! He says we must do what must be done to win voters. Okay, so is he asking to abandon religion? Perry believes that the science on climate change isn’t “settled”. Bachmann points out that an agenda is being put out in front of real science, which is true but it is also not a reason to completely disregard it. It is still based more in facts and reality than any faith-based belief system.

Newt Gingrich then wins a few points from me when he says that if he were president he would immediately fire Ben Bernanke and audit the Federal Reserve. Man, Ron Paul is starting to rub off on some people. As I’ve stated many times over, I have never liked Newt Gingrich and still don’t support most of his policies but he is winning me over (especially over Perry, Romney, Bachmann, Hunstsman and Santorum). Paul and Cain are the only two I put ahead of him right now.. well, and Gary Johnson too but where the fuck is he again? Romney then jumps on the bandwagon and says he’d fire Bernanke too. Whatever dude, stop pandering.

The panel then basically gives the rest of the time to the two golden boys. Perry goes on a tangent about the evils of killing children and how the greatest crime against humanity is “heinous crimes against our citizens”. Yeah dude, what exactly were your attempts at forced inoculation? Are you absolved of the crime because you only had intent and didn’t do the crime? So the Texas legislators that prevented you from implementing your Nazi health program also washed your hands of any wrongdoing? What if they didn’t stop you, would you still be a stand up guy?

Ron Paul gets one more brief moment to speak and he uses his last minute or so to explain that there is nowhere in the Constitution that gives the federal government the power to force us all into a welfare state. He vows to fight it and end the tyranny of the welfare system. Let’s do this! The debate then officially ends at 9:49 PM EST, eleven minutes early.

Overall, this debate pretty much sucked. It was better than that horrible CNN one where John King assaulted us with his throat noises but it was a lot weaker than what I had hoped for. Perry just isn’t a good speaker and I can’t put a finger on why everyone loves him. Well, Hitler got into power somehow so I guess it isn’t too farfetched to believe that this needle stabbing Nazi doesn’t have a real chance. Romney did nothing but he out-shined Perry, Santorum and Huntsman were piss breaks and Bachmann was frantically whittling little race cars for her 2,549 kids between questions. Ron Paul is the only one that had me fist-pumping although Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich also had some very high points.

Without further ado, here’s my letter grade ranking system.

Grading Scale:
Grade A-: Ron Paul
Grade B+: Herman Cain
Grade B: Newt Gingrich
Grade C: Mitt Romney
Grade D: Michele Bachmann
Grade D-: John Hunstsman
Grade D-: Rick Perry
Grade F: Rick Santorum
Grade I: Gary Johnson
Grade I: Thaddeus McCotter

*Taken from Breitbart.

The Obama administration said Thursday it would postpone the deportation of illegal immigrants without criminal records and allow them to apply for work permits as it reviews over 300,000 cases.

The case review would only affect those undocumented immigrants already in line for deportation proceedings, and not the vast majority of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States.

The move comes amid criticism from rights activists of President Barack Obama’s administration for deporting a record number of illegal immigrants and failing to get Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform.

CONTINUED..

My Two Cents: Go support KingShamus. This is an order. Besides, it’s a pretty awesome blog. End Two Cents.

Mickey Kaus has a theory.  Well, a few of them to be specific. Why is Obama’s Support Slipping Among Blacks and Latinos? Gallup seems dumbfounded. Fernandez says inflation is beginning to bite. Malcolm suspects a general case of scales-falling-from-eyes. I nominate … [unions?-ed] … comprehensive immigration reform. When Obama pushes for it he alienates blacks. When he fails to achieve it he alienates Latinos. He’s done both. … The timing of the d … Read More

via Blog de KingShamus

My Two Cents: As I’ve said time and time again, immigration isn’t the issue. The welfare state is the issue. End Two Cents.

*Taken from ABC News.

Undocumented nannies, housekeepers or lawn caretakers in the state of Texas can perhaps breathe easier about deportation. While new legislation in the Texas House of Representatives would make it a state crime to hire undocumented workers, it excludes those employed in single-family households — in other words, them.

The bill, introduced by state GOP Rep. Debbie Riddle, is the first of its kind in the country. It’s unique in that while it appeases those who want more stringent immigration laws, it doesn’t subject Texas households to the rule that would mainly apply to businesses and large employers.

Critics of the bill say it’s hypocritical. Supporters charge it’s needed in a state where the Hispanic population continues to climb swiftly.

Though it remains stuck in political limbo, the bill reflects a wider push toward implementing tougher anti-immigration laws at the state level. More than 100 immigration-related bills are pending in the Texas legislature alone, including those that would give state and local police officers the authority to enforce federal immigration laws, make English the official language and prevent undocumented students from getting in-state tuition and scholarships.

States across the country, including Georgia and Oklahoma, where the legislatures debated immigration bills this week, have been mulling controversial Arizona-style immigration laws.Thirty-seven states are considering tougher immigration bills, with multiple bills pending in some states.

“The mere fact that Arizona law has sprung up in over 24 other states within a few months of passage, I believe, is historic,” said William Gheen, president and spokesman of Americans for Legal Immigration, a group that supports stricter immigration laws.

“We are going to pass more immigration enforcement legislation in the states in 2011 than any year prior. And what we don’t get done in 2011 we will get done in 2012,” he vowed.

States enacted a record number of bills and resolutions on immigration issues during the 2010 sessions, and every state that met in regular session in 2010 considered laws related to immigrants, according to a National Conference of State Legislatures report. Forty-six state legislatures and the District of Columbia passed 208 laws and adopted 138 resolutions for a total of 346.

The momentum, in part, is being driven by the ascent of Republicans in state legislatures and the U.S. House of Representatives. Many GOP leaders, especially in Southern and Midwestern states, made immigration a flagship issue of their campaigns.

Critics of tougher laws say these newly minted legislators are unfairly targeting immigrants when they should instead be focused on the economy, the No. 1 priority for most Americans.

“I think that you have extremists who have taken over statehouses and governors’ officers across the country,” said Ali Noorani, executive director of National Immigration Forum. “Rather than fixing the economy and reducing budget deficits, they have chosen to scapegoat immigrants. It’s the classic bait and switch, and this time, the immigrant community is the bait.”

Immigration Heats Up at State Level

Republicans say they are taking on this issue because of inaction on the federal government’s part.

“States are responding to their citizens, and it’s resulting in unnecessary expenditure; it’s resulting in some social conflict,” said Texas state Rep. Aaron Pena, who represents a district that’s 90 percent Hispanic. “It’s very frustrating that we have to be wasting our energy on this when it’s not our job.”

Efforts to enact a comprehensive immigration reform package failed in the previous Congress, and with the economy and jobs at the forefront, this Congress is unlikely to take up the issue.

A Pew Research Center priorities survey in January found that dealing with illegal immigration is a middle-tier public concern. About half, 46 percent of Americans, said it was a top policy priority, placing it far behind the economy, jobs and a number of other issues.

In a joint press conference with Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon, President Obama said Thursday that he remained “deeply committed to fixing our broken immigration system,” and that he was “eager” to work with Republicans and Democrats “to get this reform done.” But the president did not provide a timeline.

The federal government is embroiled in a bitter legal battle with the state of Arizona over its contentious law. But nonpartisan polls show that a majority of Americans support it. Roughly six in 10 Americans, or 61 percent, approve of the law, according to the latest national survey conducted by Pew Research Center for the People and the Press in early February.

Of those polled, 42 percent said the priority should be to tighten border security and more strictly enforce immigration laws, but at the same time also create a way for undocumented residents to become citizens if they meet certain conditions.

While economy may be at the top of Americans’ minds, that’s not stopping states from moving ahead with vigorous immigration laws.

The Utah House passed a bill that would require law enforcement to detain anyone for a misdemeanor or felony if he or she cannot prove citizenship or legal status.

In Alabama, legislators are set to vote on a bill that would make undocumented residents guilty of trespassing, a crime punishable by up to a year in prison.

South Carolina is considering an Arizona-style measure that would give law enforcement the authority to check people’s immigration status.

Nebraska, Kansas and North Carolina are looking into similar bills.