Jay Inslee took the opportunity, just days after the deadly ISIS terrorist attack in Paris, to politicize the issue of public safety and make “cheap political points.” On Monday, Inslee announced Washington State would accept refugees seeking to escape Syria.
Inslee’s announcement came after a majority of Governors across the country expressed security concerns over accepting new settlements of Syrian refugees. For an example, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley stated she “would not oppose migrants in the state if they had already been cleared for entrance, but added she would resist settlement if any standards changed.” MyNorthwest.com,
“This stance is hardly unreasonable. Are there people out there who legitimately can claim if the standards of admittance into this country are loosened, we shouldn’t show any resistance?”
But, rather than take security concerns seriously, our green governor saw an opportunity to score cheap political points out of tragedy—as he so often does. Inslee responded by issuing a press release “that sets aside any meaningful policy discussion, and instead, reminds us how loyal of a Democrat he is.” The press release states,
“I stand firmly with President Obama who said this morning, ‘We do not close our hearts to these victims of such violence and somehow start equating the issue of refugees with the issue of terrorism.’
“Washington will continue to be a state that welcomes those seeking refuge from persecution, regardless of where they come from or the religion they practice. We have been and will continue to be a state that embraces compassion and eschews fear mongering, as evidenced so well by Republican Gov. Dan Evans’ welcoming of Vietnamese refugees here in the 1970s.”
Never mind that Inslee’s comparison of Vietnamese refugees – coming from a country that had been a war ally of the United States – reveals just how troublingly uninformed he and his staff are about national security (and history in general), as KIRO Radio’s Jason Rantz points out, Inslee’s response makes “very little sense” for another reason. Rantz,
“[Inslee] notes that ‘governors do not decide whether refugees come to their states.’ And he claims any Republican governors standing in the way, despite that states apparently do not have a say, shows these ‘anti-refugee comments’ to be ‘troublesome and of little value except to divide people and foment intolerance.’
“But if governors have no say in these matters and statements from governors expressing their analysis of the refugee system, isn’t what Governor Inslee is doing here just a blatant PR campaign?”
Inslee’s statement is not only a blatant PR campaign; it’s an entirely inappropriate reaction to a relevant national discussion. Innocent people lost their lives as a result of a terrorist attack, rather than discuss strategies to prevent that from happening again, Inslee decides to make a political statement, essentially, about what a good Obama lemming he is out here on the Left coast.
