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Op-Ed

Dick Morris: Watch Out as Hard Left Takes Over in Mexico

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Now that AMLO — Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador — has been elected president of Mexico (to take office on December 1) the game has totally changed. He is a dedicated Castro and Chavez wannabe who will lead the emerging anti-American coalition in Latin America (members in good standing: Venezuela, Ecuador, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Bolivia).

Today, we have a big problem in the spontaneous decisions of hundreds of thousands of Mexicans to emigrate to the United States illegally each year. But, under AMLO, look for the Mexican government to stimulate the migration as a deliberate effort to infiltrate the United States and turn us further to the left.

We worry about terrorists finding their way across our southern border, but soon, we will face the prospect of the co-operation of the Mexican government in getting them into our country. Similarly, look for AMLO to encourage drug kingpins to migrate to the US. Anything to weaken our country.

These prophesies are not propaganda, but are the results of my up close observation of AMLO. I was not involved in this year’s campaign, but I worked in the successful campaigns to defeat him in 2006 and 2012.

Domestically, within Mexico, look for widespread expropriations and nationalizations of private property, particularly those of American investors and ex-pats. This guy means it when he calls for government action to reduce class inequality and rails against the handful of people who, he says, “own” Mexico.

NAFTA? He attacks the trade deal as vigorously as President Trump does, claiming that it is unfair to Mexico. How he reaches that conclusion is a bit vague. In 2017, Mexico sold $314 billion to the US and bought $243 billion from us for a negative trade balance in Mexico’s favor of $71 billion.

But, AMLO says, “no NAFTA is better than the current bad NAFTA.”

Obviously, AMLO and Trump are headed for a collision that will reverberate strongly in the international community. In effect, the government of our southern neighbor — who shares a 1,954 mile border with us — has fallen into the hands of our enemy.

In American politics, as the Mexican-US relationship sours, Democrats and liberals will ask “who lost Mexico?” just as Nixon asked “who lost China?” in his attacks on President Harry Truman and the Democrats in the early 1950s. They will claim that Trump’s bellicose anti-Mexico rhetoric and tough immigration policies stimulated sufficient anti-American sentiment south of the border to elect AMLO.

Trump is, in reality, not responsible for AMLO’s rise. Mexican politics is dominated by three parties: The right wing (for Mexico) PAN, the left wing Moreno (meaning “brown”, AMLO’s party), and the PRI, the institutional revolutionary party that ruled Mexico last century. The PAN took over from the PRI in 2000 with Vicente Fox and kept control in 2006 with Felipe Calderon. Then, Calderon led Mexico into a fierce war against its drug kingpins that cost 130,000 Mexicans their lives (imagine that toll in a country 1/3 the size of the US). The bloodshed impelled voters to reject the PAN in 2012 and turn, despite their better judgement, to the PRI once again. They figured anyone was better than AMLO. But, under Pena Nieto and the PRI, corruption rose to unbelievable heights driving Pena Nieto’s ratings down to 18% approval.

Into this vacuum came AMLO, sweeping to victory over his two discredited rivals.

So, now we are going to have to live with AMLO. It won’t be easy.

Dick Morris is a former adviser to President Bill Clinton as well as a political author, pollster and consultant. His most recent book, “Rogue Spooks,” was written with his wife, Eileen McGann.

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Dick Morris is a former adviser to President Bill Clinton as well as a political author, pollster and consultant. His most recent book, "50 Shades of Politics," was written with his wife, Eileen McGann.




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