In bed with Rudy and Mitt

OPINION:

When Rudy Giuliani was mayor of Sanctuary City, coddling illegal aliens was part and parcel of his let’s-clean-up-New-York campaign. While he made national headlines for his conscientious efforts to crackdown on crimes and criminals — and any graffiti or other intolerable evidence they might leave behind — Rudy essentially had one policy regarding illegals: Don’t ask, don’t tell. Pity the nefarious critter born and bred in America who got busted urinating in the Rockefeller Center station.

Mitt Romney can hardly get an immigration-reform word in edgewise, and it’s probably because voters know he left his mark on a state bluer than the canton on Old Glory. But Mitt, like Rudy, is an “experienced” chief executive whose record speaks for itself. Mitt spoke out of both sides of his mouth when he was governor of Massachusetts, letting sanctuary cities do as they pleased while asking the feds to work with Massachusetts State Police to enforce some — repeat some — immigration laws. The latter was a smart policy. Unfortunately, the ink on the agreement was barely dry when his successor, Deval Patrick, a Clinton Democrat, overturned the Romney policy and began buffing his own nails.

Mitt and Rudy aren’t alone, of course, as city halls and town criers around the nation make much ado about immigration and illegal aliens.

Ordinary Americans are hardly silent on the issue. They continue to let Congress know — in no uncertain terms — that they want our borders secured and do not want those aliens who have no respect for our sovereignty and our laws to be granted amnesty. That’s the beginning and the end of the discussion among all demographics.

The threats America faces are as real as rising gas prices, whether you pull up to the pump in an SUV or a Mini Cooper.

Yet, while the polls keep showing Americans’ discontent with the open-borders types, the list of bedfellows saying don’t ask, don’t tell continues to grow.

Did you know that the mayor of the nation’s capital has hopped into bed with them?

That’s right. Adrian Fenty pulled back the covers on Wednesday, telling Gary Emerling of The Washington Times: “It is our job to provide services, not to ask questions about legal status.”

Wrong, Mr. Mayor. It is your job to deliver services and ask questions of the people you are delivering them to.

Mr. Fenty is no Gerald McBoing-Boing, but he does need to explain himself to D.C. stakeholders. No. Wait a minute. D.C. is more than a city. It is America’s capital.

Adrian Fenty owes an explanation to every red-blooded, hard-working American whose tax dollars help pay the District’s bills. Americans pony up for everything in D.C. — from public safety, public education and public transportation to Medicaid, homeland security and social services. You name a “service” in D.C. and Americans pay for it.

Mr. Fenty, some critics would say, has a fixation with New York. It’s the model Mr. Fenty turned to when he decided to reform public schools. I heart New York as much as Robert DeNiro but Mr. Fenty needs to understand that the nation’s capital is not — and never can be — New York.

In lying in bed with Rudy and Mitt, Mr. Fenty makes the District a prime target for Fred Thompson and hard-nosed pols who rightly say that the government should withhold money from sanctuary cities. “Taxpayer money,” Mr. Thompson said earlier this week, “should not be provided to illegal immigrants.”

Sorry, liberals. There were no qualifiers.

Nor should there be.

(I remember what happened to D.C. when we became the “social services” sanctuary for the homeless and drug pushers in the 1980s. The city has yet to recover.)

The city was forced to close its public hospital a few years ago because of insurmountable debt. Meanwhile, the traditional population that uses public health facilities is facing multiple chronic illnesses (and, no, neither Medicaid nor SCHIP can solve that problem).

I’m the last person who would want to deny medical care for an illegal who has, for example, been raped. But police and other law enforcers ask us to prove who we are at every turn. Indeed, even Hizzoner can’t get from here to Bermuda without providing valid, picture-perfect proof of who he is — and that’s the way it should be, proving Fred Thompson has it just about right.

Mr. Fenty got off on the wrong political foot the other day. It wasn’t the first time, and it certainly won’t be his last. On this sanctuary city mess, however, he needs to understand that the nation’s capital cannot sustain his path of least resistance.