Cheers, Mike Parson. Rejecting AG Bailey’s shameful stunt shows GOP how to beat MAGA | Opinion

Three cheers for Mike Parson: On Thursday, the Missouri governor made a simple statement that really ought to go without saying: “I’m going to tell you this: We are not going to target innocent people in this state.”

Pity he had to do it. Parson was pushing back against the attorney general he appointed, Andrew Bailey, who announced that his office will defend three fellow Republicans — state Sens. Rick Brattin, Denny Hoskins and Nick Schroer — who are rightly being sued for acting irresponsibly on social media in the fog after the Feb. 14 fatal mass shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl victory rally. The elected officials reshared posts on the social media platform X that incorrectly identified an innocent bystander from Olathe as a gunman, and also falsely labeled him an undocumented immigrant.

That latter detail wasn’t lost on Parson: “This gentleman did nothing wrong whatsoever other than he went to a parade, and he drank beer and he was Hispanic.”

But this is an election year, and the right-wing outrage jukebox has its greatest hit on constant replay: Menacing hordes of criminals from Mexico and Central America are supposedly laying siege to our southern border — and it’s all part of President Joe Biden’s master plan for them to replace real Americans.

It might be difficult to remember, but before one huge Bill and Hillary Clinton fan, New York City nightlife tabloid fixture and reality TV actor by the name of Donald John Trump pulled off his hostile takeover of the GOP in 2016 with chants of “Build the wall!” at his rallies, most of the party’s leading voices spoke of immigration and the southern border in terms that would get them run out of MAGA town today.

It’s shocking, and more than a little depressing, to watch a video on YouTube from 1980 of then-presidential candidates Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush debating how to treat Mexican immigrants. Bush called for a solution “that would be so sensitive and so understanding about labor needs, and human needs, that that problem wouldn’t come up.” “Reluctantly,” he added, people who broke laws to make it to this country should “get whatever it is that … society is giving to their neighbors,” underlining that these workers are ”really honorable, decent, family-loving people.”

Reagan agreed, noting that Mexico’s high unemployment rate was an opportunity for our economy. “Rather than … talking about putting up a fence, why don’t we work out some recognition of our mutual problems, make it possible for them to come here legally with a work permit, and then while they’re working and earning here, they pay taxes here. And when they wanted to go back, they can go back and they can cross. And open the border both ways.”

That’s Ronald Reagan, radical left-wing commie open borders lunatic.

George W. Bush, John McCain on immigration

Previous Republican leaders have echoed those humane and business-savvy sentiments more often than not. George W. Bush’s first official international trip as president was to to Mexico, to work with President Vicente Fox on the two countries’ “special relationship.” “We understand that the border we share is a vibrant region that unites us,” he later said in D.C. when Fox returned the visit.

John McCain’s crowning achievement in the Senate was his bipartisan 2005 immigration bill with Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy, which provided a path to citizenship for migrant workers already in the country — a win-win for our labor market and for families seeking a brighter American future.

That spirit of a welcoming, hopeful and law-abiding United States for all has utterly vanished in the today’s Bizarro World GOP. Here, Fox News hosts spend hours defending an ex-president — already found liable by juries for sexual abuse (“rape” the judge said) and massive business finance fraud — as he’s now being tried for business and election interference felonies. Elon Musk’s X has reinstated previously-banned accounts by actual Nazis, and every time I see a left-leaning post in my feed, the second one below it is pro-Trump content, often linking to a campaign fundraiser.

In that alternative media climate, is it any surprise that Missouri’s highest law enforcement officer (and eager Fox News guest) might expect support as he goes to bat for his fellow Republicans — even though he can’t not realize they clearly put an innocent private citizen at risk?

Missouri Republicans have shown they aren’t partisan zombies. They rejected Todd Akin in his bid for Senate after his ignorant comments about pregnancy and “legitimate rape.” And to their great credit, they gave frightening and disgraceful Eric Greitens a deserved, humiliating third place in his own Senate race just years after he resigned as governor amid credible accusations of domestic violence, grotesque sexual assault of his hairdresser and campaign finance violations.

Conservative voters aren’t stupid. And I like to think they understand fairness and justice when they see them. Missouri GOP stalwart Jack Danforth regrets enabling MAGA insurrectionist Josh Hawley’s ladder-climb to the Senate. Trump’s veep Mike Pence and Sen. Mitt Romney are strongly opposing Trump’s bid to retake the White House, unlike previous so-called critics such as sniveling New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu or Sen. Marco Rubio. Nikki Haley, who dropped out of the race ages ago, got 1 in 5 votes in red state Indiana’s Republican primary this week. Trump-backed candidates have lost election after election across the country since he first took office. Why so many people in his party continue to think his endorsement and childish histrionics are the golden ticket, I’ll never understand.

So thank you, Gov. Parson, for standing up for the American values most people still remember your party championing. You know AG Bailey is wrong, and said so. The Republican bully-boy persona might be thrilling to the belligerent voices of your base, but I think the evidence shows it has a short shelf life. And nobody ever regrets backing basic decency and justice. In the long term, it might be a political winner, too.