Opinion: Local GOP Leaders Disgraced Our Party in Recent Migrant Protest

You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone more opposed to immigration than me. Not just illegal immigration, but legal immigration as well. My credentials on that subject lie further to the right than even most self-proclaimed MAGA conservatives.

For the Republican party to succeed in the future, our leaders must embrace fact. Conspiracy theories and false information plague our politics on the right.

Case in point: the protest of legal migrant workers in Maitland, all of whom were assumed to be illegal based on dubious footage published by Laura Loomer, a conspiracy theorist turned congressional candidate.

The workers, temporarily residing in Maitland, commute to Apopka daily to work at a nursery. Bryan Nelson, Mayor of Apopka, confirmed this information to the Local News, and a press release vindicated the legality of their status in the United States as H2A workers.

But don’t bother some activists with the facts, they’ve already made up their minds. Despite this rumor being disproven by documentation from the Department of Labor, dozens of protesters still showed up to the workers' hotel, refusing to believe the report: "I saw it on video. Everybody knows where they came from," one protestor told the Local News in an interview.

As to other conspiracies, no mention of the Big Steal, QAnon or JFK, Jr.'s zombie came up.

Humor aside, the bottom line is, this incident is a black mark on our community. It is disgraceful and shameful, not only in terms of the behavior of the activists, but also the web of lies spun by some of our political leaders.

What's more, the language in one press release appeared to cast blame on a party not involved in the scandal, insinuating that Apopka Mayor Bryan Nelson owned responsible for the error of the protest’s organizers.

In political life today, there are workhorses and one trick ponies.

Republican Congressman Dan Crenshaw highlighted this dichotomy at a recent conservative function: “We have grifters in our midst," Crenshaw said in a recent interview. "I mean in the conservative movement. Lie after lie after lie. Because they know something psychologically about the conservative heart. We’re worried about what people are gonna do to us, what they’re gonna infringe upon us.... There’s performance artists, [and then] there’s legislators.”

The fundamental problem with sensationalist politicians, or performance artists as Crenshaw labels them, is that they are disingenuous to their voters. By lying and ginning up passions, these Republican politicians may win a few votes and mobilize supporters, but ultimately fail to address the true concerns of their constituents by misleading them down a path of deceit.

The "performance art" exhibited by Republican leaders promoting this event was disgraceful. Their behavior displayed the worst episode of political malfeasance and irresponsibility witnessed in years— dehumanizing the migrants, insulting their own voters' intelligence and maligning the reputation of a Republican colleague not involved in their cesspool of controversy.

The candidates and officials who concocted these shameful lies know better and must be held to account. If our leaders misconstrue the facts in the small things, how can we rest assured that they will be honest about the big ones? The truth is, most Republican politicians, including those on the so-called far right, lack the fortitude to outright oppose legal immigration in policy— thus resorting to dog whistles, coded language and false controversies to mobilize voters. Our leaders would do well to pick up a dictionary and reread the definition of two key words: courage and honesty.