Republican establishment adviser Ana Navarro has worked for Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), No Labels co-chair and failed GOP presidential candidate Jon Huntsman, and is close to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Jeb Bush. Like other advisers to these candidates, Navarro is quickly becoming the “Republican” the mainstream media love to use as their preferred attack dog against conservatives.
On NBC News’ Meet The Press on Sunday, Navarro attacked Rep. Steve King (R-IA), saying to his face that he should “go get himself some therapy for his melon fixation. I think there might be medication for that.”
“I think he’s a mediocre congressman who’s got no legislative record, and the only time he makes national press is when he comes out and says something offensive about the undocumented or Hispanics,” she continued.
Navarro, whose national profile was upped when she became a CNN contributor during the 2012 campaign, was responding to comments King had made in an interview with Newsmax last month in which he pointed out that the DREAM Act would also give citizenship to plenty of illegal immigrants who are drug dealers.
“For everyone who’s a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds–and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert,” King said. “Those people would be legalized with the same act.”
As Breitbart News reporter Matthew Boyle documented, mainstream outlets like the Christian Science Monitor and the Associated Press have extensively reported on illegal immigrant children who are becoming drug mules and criminals.
While Navarro attacked King like others in the Republican establishment have done, she did not address King’s substantive point about how some illegal immigrants who came to this country before their 16th birthday are criminals and drug dealers instead of valedictorians and National Merit scholars.
Navarro gets upset when conservatives attack establishment Republicans. She seems to believe it is perfectly fine when Republicans attack conservatives but unacceptable when conservatives hold establishment Republicans like her to account.
She has said Republicans need to be more “collegial to each other and ratchet down these very dramatic and personal attacks that are being waged amongst and between Republicans.”
“We’re putting on a spectacle that’s frankly not benefiting Republicans,” Navarro said last week on CNN’s The Situation Room. “It’s benefiting Democrats. We have got to learn to disagree without wanting to take each other out because we disagree as Republicans. It’s something, diversity of thought in the Republican Party, is a good thing and it’s something that we have to learn to live with.”
Minutes after she uttered those words, Navarro, in criticizing the efforts to defund Obamacare, essentially accused Senators like Ted Cruz (R-TX), Rand Paul (R-KY), and Mike Lee (R-UT) of “demagoguery” and of a “lack of understanding of the political consequences and consequences on the nation of a shutdown.”
She then blasted conservative groups like Heritage Action for demagoguery as well, asserting the organization of employing gimmicks to raise funds in a dismissive tone to a Heritage Action representative whom she was debating.
“This is just doing you know, a cause to be able to give them themselves a higher profile including organizations like Heritage, which is fine,” Navarro said dismissively. “I get it. I get the joke, but it’s a cost to the entire party and the nation.”
These are not the first times Navarro has claimed Republicans need to be more civil before mocking and ridiculing conservatives she disdains.
“I never thought at , I’d hear more shots fired against other Republicans, than against Obama. Hell of a way to grow a Party,” she tweeted during this year’s CPAC, which means the shots were fired, as they were, at the “establishment Republicans” that attack conservatives more than they do Democrats and the mainstream media they desperately want to befriend.
Months later, when a poll showed Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) leading the 2016 field in Texas, Navarro could not resist the urge to show her disdain for Cruz, who may be a direct competitor in 2016 to Rubio, whom she has repeatedly praised.
“I love Texas. But those cowboy hats may be a bit too tight,” she dismissively tweeted, using her perch in the mainstream media to knock conservatives to gain favor
As Twitchy wrote, Navarro “was the National Hispanic Co-Chair for the presidential campaigns of John McCain in 2008 and Jon Huntsman in 2012. That said, Navarro still believes she can spot the winners, and doesn’t think Ted Cruz could be victorious in 2016.” Navarro continues to mock those who support Cruz as being a either Democrat or conspiring to help them, perhaps because he is a direct threat to those like Jeb Bush and Rubio that Navarro wants to ultimately butter her bread.
Navarro is compiling a record of dismissing conservatives–like Cruz and Sarah Palin–that threaten her establishment backers. She has trashed and mocked Palin, accusing her of not being able to appeal to Hispanics. As of December of 2012, though, Palin polled better among Hispanics than Rubio, according to a national poll conducted by Public Policy Polling. And Rubio’s numbers have further plummeted since he became the face of comprehensive immigration reform in the Senate.
Navarro has figured out–like Steve Schmidt, David Frum, and Nicole Wallace before her–that the more she trashes conservatives, the more pats on the head and airtime she receives from the mainstream press.
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