Rod Jetton's mouth is a Democrats' best friend

Rod Jetton spoke at the annual Lincoln Days gathering of Missouri Republicans and, as is usually the case, he did not disappoint...Democrats. Jetton, who suffers from an incurable case of athletes mouth, shared his thoughts on illegal immigrants with his fellow Republicans. According to a report by Jo Mannies of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch;

• Jetton ignited even more applause when he said illegal immigration was to some degree the public's fault. "I hate to tell you, but there are a lot of lazy Missourians out there who don't want to work," Jetton said. "I'd like to trade some of our people for some of the Mexicans who work so hard." Jetton isn't running for re-election this fall and plans to focus on his political consulting business. Hulshof is among the candidates who have been cited as potential Jetton clients.

Jetton's statement is interesting in several respects. First, it is probably not a good idea for a guy looking to drum up business for his "political consulting" business to attack his target audience. However, Jetton's statement also shed light on the big lie that Missouri Republicans want to do something about illegal immigration. Illegal immigration is important to the big business contributors the Republicans rely on and Jetton's statement is right out of the PR department of the industries which violate the law by employing the illegals.

While Jetton's statement was probably shared by the group of elitist Republicans he was speaking to, it was certainly inconsistent with the "party line" which Republicans are selling to get elected. It was also inconsistent with the rank and file membership of the party. You would think a "political consultant" would know this.