Jennifer Rubin couldn’t disagree more with Bill Kristol and Rich Lowry about immigration reform. For Rubin, who I think actually cares about maybe seeing a Republican president again in her lifetime, the opponents of immigration reform are hypocrites. They say that there is a big crisis at the border but they don’t want to do anything about it.
But Kristol and Lowry are probably more interested in their magazines’ circulation numbers than winning elections, so they take a casual attitude to the consequences of killing reform.
At the presidential level in 2016, it would be better if Republicans won more Hispanic voters than they have in the past—but it’s most important that the party perform better among working-class and younger voters concerned about economic opportunity and upward mobility. Passing this unworkable, ramshackle bill is counterproductive or irrelevant to that task.
“It would be better if Republicans won more Hispanic voters than they have in the past—but…”
Where I come from a vote is a vote. If you lose a white working class vote but gain a Latino vote, it’s a wash. What Republicans like Ms. Rubin are trying to avoid is creating a situation where Latinos conclude, like blacks before them, that the Republican Party is implacably hostile to the interests- even their mere existence.
Now, some white working class voters might be annoyed if the Republicans help pass immigration reform, but they won’t conclude that the GOP simply hates them and wants them to cease to exist. Some might stay home on election day, but they won’t go running into the embrace of the Democratic Party. But if the Republicans kill immigration reform, a lot of Latinos will do more than vote against the GOP; they will work to defeat them.
It’s not a fluke that both of Arizona’s senators, who are both conservative Republicans, were leaders on the Senate’s immigration bill. Arizona is probably the last southwestern state that is still attainable for a Republican presidential candidate, but it won’t stay that way if the Republicans don’t begin working harder for the Latino vote. Texas is not far behind. And it’s possible that Florida is slipping out of their reach, which would really put any Republican presidential candidate behind the 8-ball.
But, hey, keep on pandering to the white bigots. It’s working out for us.
I really can’t tell what the House will do:
a.) kill the bill by passing essentially what they passed in 2006, wherein it is irrevocable with the Senate’s version; in that, Boehner sends conferees who plan to get that bill passed or nothing at all (or he sends no one).
or
b.) They kill the bill by passing nothing at all because the bills coming out of talks and committees don’t have electric fences, moats, turrets lined on top of the fences, and of course the “Shoot on Sight and Grant Immunity to Minutemen” amendment.
What’s pretty much certain at this point is that there will be no bill. There never was going to be one, although I can see why people might have thought that there was momentum. It wasn’t enough for Sean Trende, who’s “analysis” has more or less made conservative commenters reverse themselves from election night (as they eventually would). And then the Republicans killed the Farm Bill, what has always been a “must pass.” And if that wasn’t enough, now they’re separating SNAP out of the Farm Bill, and doubling down. I wonder if that Farm Bill will pass lol.
But he, my Tea Party brother stopped over last night and he was happy as hell about the state of our governance. It’s going down just the way he wants it to. He’s ready with his bug-out bag, his bible and his copy of Atlas Shrugged. He’s ready for the revolution. All that’s missing is that catalyst to start it all.
He’s ready for the government to stop so that he can revolt? I don’t follow.
Also, whose*
Seabe, I didn’t say it was rational. The sense that I get right now is that anything that puts a choking boot on the throat of government is considered a good thing. Health care, SNAP, Medicaid expansion, repeal of DOMA; it’s all the minions of evil working in the government to bring about the final days. Don’t know if you have the privilege of knowing anyone who is wrapped up in the whole end-time, anti-government ideology. But it is quite a mind blowing effort to try and wade through all the far-right, conspiracy laden, “bible based” craziness in that fever swamp. I love my brother dearly, but we have a very fragile truce right now when it comes to politics. And also to religion, which is tightly wound around his politics. We both know that things could quickly descend into some very nasty vitriol. I just don’t want to go there with him. It’s too poisonous and too explosive.
My parents, most notably my mother. She’s an Agenda 21’er. I know it all too well. Coincidentally, the father was an employee of the federal government for 15 years. He just recently left out of frustration with management/the sequester.
Yep, and here’s the kicker for me, too. My brother has held a government job for almost 25 years. He hates that fact. But he is not so much of a zealot that he is willing to shit in his own cereal. There’s your principles….and then there’s the fact that ya’ gotta eat and pay da’ bills! Cognitive dissonance, anyone???
So the Republicans have this idea now that they can block immigration reform and, simply by changing the packaging, win over enough Latino votes to stay relevant. They cite the jackass, John Kyle as one who, though extreme in his politics, managed to draw Latino votes by being consistently polite. However, said jackass lead efforts to reform immigration last time around. This was one of the only issues on which he was not extreme.
I love watching them convince themselves of what they want to believe. The funniest part is that, no matter how hard the leadership tries to get rank-and-file representatives to speak respectfully and not saying anything overly racist or stupid, it’s inevitable that there will be a steady trickle of idiotic remarks that keep Republican hostility toward people of color in the headlines.
Actually, the RCP article was predicated on the GOP winning 10% of the black vote.
The GOP is like a zombie. It keeps coming back regardless of how far gone it seems. And oddly enough, they seem to recover faster each time they show their true fangs and get punched down. That faster recovery time might have something to do with modern Democrats more prone to hugging their former nemesis than how their predecessors treated their former rivals. FDR knew how to treat them.
White versus Black. Which is which? 🙂 http://linkapp.me/A6Odp
Actually, K and L’s arguments are on target.
And, anyway, it would be bad for the GOP nationally (and excellent for the Dems) for these folks (and the next wave, and then the next) to get to vote.
Republicans from states with large Hispanic populations may be more concerned with their individual survival than the national prospects of the party.
But the Main Street Republicans in the House may kill the bill, all the same.
K and L may have a point, there, too.
Working class Americans of all races see the continuing flow of immigrants as an unhelpful drag on an economy short of jobs, and unwanted competition at the low end.
Opposition to this bill may help the GOP with other voters more than it hurts with some current Hispanic voters, who are divided on immigration, anyway.
And it spares them having to contend with all those additional Democrats a path to the voting booth for the illegals would create.
Wall Street Republicans want this bill for the cheap Tech labor. So it’s Wall Street vs Tea Party. When the chips are down, who rules? The fate of this bill will tell.
My money’s on Wall Street.
In the Senate, yes. And that is why the Senate passed the immigration bill with some GOP support.
But in the House, barking mad wingnuts rule, and Wall Street cash is less important than ideological purity.
Keep in mind a few things.
Finally, as I said in the piece, all votes are equal. But there is a difference between apathy and organization. If you gain a vote through being pro-immigrant and lose one through alienating a base voter, you’re even. But if you keep a passive vote through xenophobia and inspire a new oppositional organizer, you are behind.
Whose labor needs were those, again?
Oh, right.
Wall Street.