TFIRE President Called out After Conflating Boston Bombing with Border Security - "Shame on you!"

During a debate hosted by the Clear Lake Tea Party on the "Gang of Eight's" Immigration and Border Security Bill, Texans for Immigration Reduction and Enforcement President (TFIRE) Larry Korkmas attempted to deceive the highly patriotic audience by conflating the tragedy of the Boston Marathon terrorist attack with our nation's lax border security policies and illegal immigration. In fact, the Boston bombing has nothing to do with border security or illegally crossing our borders. Those people were admitted to the United States legally, one of them even became a United States citizen through naturalization.

Of course, Larry knows the two things have nothing to do with each other, but since when did someone making an emotion-based argument ever let the facts get in their way?  The trick Korkmas employed was straight out of Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" playbook. Interestingly, he had referenced Alinsky earlier in his remarks. When he then attempted to wrap the nation's lack of border security with the shroud of the heavy emotions of a fresh wound that the Boston Bombers left our nation with, it should have come to a surprise to no one.

During his closing remarks, Korkmas fed the already emotionally primed audience with vivid descriptions of the horrific wounds received by some of the innocent bystanders in Boston. He did this knowing full well that his next comment would be readily received and accepted as fact by the people listening to his passionate plea. "I'll tell you who I blame as much as I blame the jihadists," Korkmas proclaimed. "I blame the people, who starting right after that last amnesty, did not close this border and did not secure our country. Every politician who has sat in Washington since that day is guilty, as far as I'm concerned, as an accessory to homicide."

His remarks received the desired ovation as per his plan. His audience was now solidly of the belief that were our nation's border secured, this horrific tragedy would have never happened because these nasty illegal immigrants would have never graced our shores. There is only one problem with that which I pointed out in my response to his incongruous remarks.

"Larry, shame on you," I began. "You're using the Obama tactic of never letting a good crisis go to waste and in an amazing fashion. The Boston bombing has nothing to do with illegal immigration. Those people were admitted to the United States legally, one of them was a United States citizen through immigration. It had nothing to do with an unsecured border, and it had nothing to do with what we're talking about here tonight... and you know it."

The real shame here is this is why many conservatives have a hard time with solving our broken immigration system and getting the security on our borders that most Americans want. When we make factless arguments veiled in heavy emotional appeal, people can see through that and you lose your credibility. Normally conservatives pride themselves on winning the battle of ideas with logic and sound application of conservative principles. But for some reason, in this area, many tend to fall into the tool of liberals... emotional based arguments.

Why did Larry Korkmas subject the people of the Clear Lake Tea Party to this kind of disinformation? The Boston bombing had nothing to do with illegal immigration or the lack of border security, yet Korkmas intentionally conflated these issues to confuse the audience.  Is there a hidden agenda here?  The people of the Clear Lake Tea Party who took their time to come and listen to a debate on the Senate Bill S.744, architected by conservative champion Marco Rubio (R-FL), deserved better than this emotional and irrelevant appeal. The American people deserve better from all of us. They deserve to get a real solution to securing our borders, fixing our broken immigration system and dealing in a sensible manner with the millions of undocumented residents in our nation.