Republicans only invoke Jesus of the Shinning City when it is convenient.
If you watched the Fox News presidential debate a few weeks ago you are aware that moderators Chris Wallace and Britt Hume poisoned the questions to get the candidates to advocate war, torture and the largest mass round up and deportation in history. Not to mention building the biggest, baddest, highest and longest wall in 2500 years. This of course is all central to conservative ideology, but the most over used questions were not about what Jesus would do, but what Ronald Reagan would do — the same thing to Republicans. Fareed Zakaria in a recent piece in Newsweek pretty much nailed this issue, follows a few quotes from the Gipper himself lifted from that article.
"It makes one wonder about the illegal-alien fuss. Are great numbers of our unemployed really victims of the illegal-alien invasion or are those illegal tourists actually doing work our own people won’t do. One thing is certain in this hungry world: no regulation or law should be allowed if it results in crops rotting in the fields for lack of harvesters." Ronald Reagan as Governor of California 1977
In fact, it was Ronald Reagan, the now perceived God of Gop who pushed and signed the 1986 Immigration Bill which gave amnesty to 3 million illegal immigrants.
"I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life," he said, "but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. In my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and heart to get here." Ronald Reagan in his farewell address in 1989.
Even front runner Rudi Giuliani has recently changed his tune to become more acceptable to the fear and loathing that drives the conservative electorate.
"The anti-immigration issue that’s now sweeping the country in my view is no different than the movements that swept the country in the past," he said. "You look back at the Chinese Exclusionary Act, or the Know-Nothing movement—these were movements that encouraged Americans to fear foreigners, to fear something that is different, and to stop immigration." Rudi Giuliani in 1996
Where does this yet another historic attack on ethnic minorities come from you ask? The real numbers show that there is no national issue regarding these workers causing unemployment, using more services than they subsidize, are responsible for more crime, or even the terrorist infiltration. Rather this all began with Conservative writer Tom Clancy’s 2003 novel, The Teeth of the Tiger, where a gang of Islamofacists swim the Rio Grande to go on murdering sprees across the malls of America. Rush Limbaugh and the rest of Hate Talk Radio crowd pushed his crap 24/7 for months and are still at it now years later. The bottom line is this is just another case of Conservatives basing their arguments upon fiction rather than reality. Or to be more magnanimous, Conservatives do not know that novels are fiction.