Ted Cruz helps out with border relief effort

Glenn Beck says the media is refusing to cover Senator Ted Cruz’s participation in his Mercury One border relief effort because they’re already trying to influence the 2016 presidential race, and don’t want to give Cruz any positive coverage as a humanitarian:

“Why is nobody covering this?” Beck asked on his radio program Friday. “This came out yesterday. This is a big deal. Why is no one covering that Ted Cruz is going down to the border for a relief program?”

Beck said Cruz’s involvement is scarcely being mentioned because the left has to paint the senator as a “hater,” and some on the right don’t want to help a conservative that is not part of the Republican “establishment.”

“They cannot cover Ted Cruz going down to the border,” Beck said. “This gives Ted Cruz the ammo to be tough on immigration, to be tough on justice. Once you have mercy established, you have credibility to talk about justice.”

“If [former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush] were going down, I guarantee you Fox News would be covering it,” Beck added. “NBC would have cameras there.”

“It’s amazing,” Beck said. “And the lack of coverage should tell you everything you need to know: We are already playing presidential games. We’re already playing presidential games. Can’t we not play games?”

I know Beck knows that’s a rhetorical question.  Consider Senator Cruz’s efforts covered in these quarters.  Here he is helping to unload supplies from a truck, in a photo borrowed from The Blaze’s coverage of the relief effort:

I’m sure this will all be very confusing for media folks determined to paint Cruz as an ogre because he’s sponsoring legislation that would prevent President Obama from making the crisis worse with another irresponsible, unilateral amnesty giveaway, to be followed by bills that would give state governors authorization to deploy National Guard troops to the border, and remove “the current legal obstacles to humanely and expeditiously reuniting those minors with their families back home,” as a statement from his office put it.

But let’s be clear: the number one humanitarian priority at this moment is to stop Obama’s border invasion.  It’s not only an assault on the American immigration system, and a drain on resources that should be used for the benefit of American citizens who need help – a point being made with increasing energy by people initially inclined to support anything Obama does.  It’s also extremely dangerous to the children who are being catapulted across the southern hemisphere, through dangerous terrain, in the company of dangerous people.  That pictorial at The Blaze also includes a few chilling images captured during a predawn tour of the border, including an abandoned infant-size sneaker, and a child-sized life vest with a scorpion crawling on it.

Nothing will stop these people from coming until effective action to begin large-scale repatriation is under way.  I don’t even think we can pin all our hopes on beefed-up physical security, because that just means the squalid disease-ridden camps will blossom in northern Mexico instead of southern Texas, and that’s no “solution” to those with genuine humanitarian concerns.  In fact, it’s a worse situation from that perspective.  

I criticized the way Glenn Beck talked about his big relief effort, particularly his aggressive self-victimization and claims nobody but him cared enough to do something like this, but he and everyone else participating deserves appreciation for actually doing something about a situation the Left created to use as political leverage.  What happens to the actual people they employ as pawns doesn’t matter that much to liberals, when it comes to illegal immigration or any other issue.  Frankly, one reason I had to frown at some of Becks’ rhetoric is that he knows as well as I do that when a large group of people are in need, especially children, you can’t stop Americans from helping out.  And that help is far better provided by hard-working volunteer charity than bloated government programs run by the same mindset that brought you ObamaCare and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

It’s a bit worrisome that shipments of supplies and toys might encourage more Central American families to try throwing their children into the coyote network.  That won’t be a much of a problem, though, if the kids (and far larger cohort of families and adults) are repatriated swiftly.  There won’t be that many people eager to risk their childrens’ lives, and pay what little money they have to smugglers, if the children return a few months later with some bottled water and a Glenn Beck T-shirt as souvenirs from their journey.  

But if Obama continues to serve as the Coyote-In-Chief (as Mark Steyn has dubbed him) by running a taxpayer-funded resettlement service that effective turns the young “refugees” into colonists, while the rest of the American political system talks about giving them citizenship plus benefits, the invasion will never stop.  And considering how copiously the American people have been lied to by the Obama Administration, every step of the way throughout this disaster, I wager it’ll be a while before some Friday-night document dump reveals how many of the children sent here from Central America have been abused and killed.