When former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., decided to write a book about his life in the U.S. Senate, he titled it “Herding Cats: A Life in Politics.” If you’re not familiar with the expression, herding cats is an idiom “denoting a futile attempt to control or organize a class of entities which are uncontrollable or chaotic.” In his experience, that’s what it was like trying to get a hundred senators on the same page.
In California the felines are a little bit easier to control — they all seem to hate President Trump and are willing to do anything possible to block his agenda.
And the kitties like to scratch.
Not long after President Trump was elected, state Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, promised, “We will lead the resistance to any effort that would shred our social fabric or our Constitution. … We’re going to do everything in our power to protect our people and our values as Californians.”
The main point of contention appears to center around Trump’s vow to deport immigrants who came here illegally. De Leon has accused the president of wanting “to shock and awe and instill fear.”
Which is why it’s funny that last week de Leon made headlines by shutting up an immigrant colleague and having her physically dragged off the Senate floor.
The forcible ejection went down when state Sen. Janet Nguyen, R-Garden Grove, the first Vietnamese American in the country elected to a state senate seat, dared to criticize late state Sen. Tom Hayden’s, D-Santa Monica, support of the communists in Vietnam.
The back story is that Nguyen immigrated to the United States from Vietnam by boat in 1981 when she was 5 years old, fleeing a brutal communist regime that killed members of her family.
In the 1960s and ’70s, Hayden and his then-wife Jane Fonda took their anti-war activism to the extreme and openly supported a communist military victory for the North Vietnamese, over our allies in South Vietnam. That was an inflammatory position that led many, including myself, to believe that he and Fonda were traitors to the United States.
Fast forward to October of last year — Hayden died and members of the Democratic majority decided to invite his third wife and widow, Barbara Williams, to the floor of the Senate last Tuesday so that he could be eulogized.
Out of respect for the widow, Nguyen decided to wait until Thursday to deliver her critical remarks. In Vietnamese Nguyen said, “Mr. Hayden sided with a communist government that enslaved and/or killed millions of Vietnamese, including members of my own family. Mr. Hayden’s actions are viewed by many as harmful to democratic values and hateful towards those who sought the very freedoms on which this nation is founded.”
As soon as she transitioned to English, Sen. Bill Monning, D-Carmel, a friend of Hayden’s, told her to zip it.
She didn’t.
That’s when the presiding officer, Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, had her 86’d from the Senate floor.
Who knew the California Senate could kick immigrants out at a much faster pace than the Trump administration?
De Leon has promised to investigate the situation.
For the record, this isn’t the first time that California Democrats have tried to tell Nguyen, and her fellow refugees fleeing the horrors of communism, to take a hike.
In 1975 when Republican President Gerald Ford asked California to accept half a million Vietnamese refugees, then-Gov. Jerry Brown told him to drop dead. Brown’s argument was, “We can’t be looking 5,000 miles away and at the same time neglecting people who live here.”
And then he threatened to block refugee flights into Travis Air Force Base, just outside San Francisco.
But that was back when refugees were fierce anti-communists who voted Republican.
As we have learned, the Democrats still don’t want them. I guess California is only a “sanctuary” for those willing to shut up and toe the Democratic Party line.
John Phillips is a CNN political commentator and can be heard weekdays at 3 p.m. on “The Drive Home with Jillian Barberie and John Phillips” on KABC/AM 790.
