While “Christian” GOP governors like Indiana's Mike Pence are busy turning away Syrian refugees who had been approved for relocation to their state, leaders like Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy are trying to make up for it.
Malloy explained to MSNBC’s Chris Hayes Tuesday night why most GOP governors are shooting off at the mouth about Syrian refugees not being welcome in their states.
“The reality is is what they’re trying to do is say, this is a very small segment of people, we can pick on them relatively easily and we can make our political point. And by the way, that’s what terrorists want. They want us to stop being Americans. They want us to stop believing in liberty and freedom. They want to be able to go back to wherever they’re from and say, ‘See, Americans didn’t really mean that they were an open society. They really don’t mean that they’re going to treat out people the same way as they treat everybody else. They’re gonna single us out one way or the other.’”
Malloy is a Democrat, as is Washington's Gov. Jay Inslee, who was interviewed on NPR about his open-door policy toward the refugees.
INSKEEP: Have you thought about the possibility that, having taken such a forward stance on this issue, there is that possible moment in the future when one person who's admitted as a refugee does something terrible a year from now or three years from now?
INSLEE: You bet, and that's the price of leadership. Maybe Franklin Roosevelt was thinking about that when he locked up the Japanese-American citizens who were good neighbors and put them in camps. But it was a bad decision, and it wasn't consistent with who we are as a country. And we look back at that now and say, you know, we lost our way. And it's really easy to lose your way in moments like this, when we are so fearful. [...] But we also have to win the moral battle. And that's a battle of hope and a vision for the future where we can live together. And I think this is part of that.
Ahh ... leadership—a lofty concept that's apparently been lost on most GOP "executives" in their present-day modus operandi of finger-pointing and victim-blaming. Leadership is about making tough choices, not scoring cowardly political points. Delaware Gov. Jack Markell said it best in this eloquent opinion piece for CNN:
The refugees that President Obama and supporters of his approach are talking about are families in desperate straits. According to the United Nations, about half of these individuals are children -- a group particularly at risk of falling ill, being malnourished, or suffering from abuse or exploitation. They continue to run toward the harsh weather of a European winter and take other tremendous risks, because anything is better than the chaos that has engulfed their homeland. [...]
Instead of using the mourning in France to deny opportunity to thousands of innocent people, we should recall the most famous gift we received from the French -- the Statue of Liberty, with the famous inscription recognizing America as a place that welcomes "your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."