Today is a travel day for me, but I will be back to my regular routine tomorrow. I want to drop a quick note on this POLITICO/George Washington University Battleground poll on people’s attitudes about immigration reform. The overall numbers are encouraging, but let me point out that only 49% of Republicans support a path to citizenship, while 45% oppose it. And guess which half of the Republican Party has all the energy on the issue?
Therein lies the rub. In many Republican districts, voting for a path to citizenship is a very risky move. In fact, I’d like to see a poll of just Republican opinion within Republican House districts. After all, it doesn’t matter what a Republican in Minneapolis thinks.
The president appears ready to make a full-court press for immigration reform. The timing appears to be good. He just won reelection thanks to the heavy support of Latinos in key states like Nevada, Colorado, and Florida. The GOP knows that they can’t win the next presidential election unless they repair their relationship with the Latino community. The stars would seem to be aligned.
Yet, the GOP is tearing itself apart on the issue. Can they be divided and conquered, or will their racist base prevail?
I know what side of that fight I want to be on.
Repubs apparently think that by paying some sort of meaningless lip service to Latinos they can get massive numbers of Latino votes. Delusional, but that’s their reality.
But anything Team Repub could support would have to be meaningless and fake reform ala Rubio’s watered down Fake Dream Act. And they’d have to lie about even that to get their rancid wingnut base to go along. Probably they’d cynically sell it as the “2016 Route to Victory!”—“We’ll trick Latinos, Haha!”
But real immigration reform? No, today’s “conservatives” cannot be made to support it, ever. The idea of Boner’s Boneheads passing an actual immigration bill in the next Congress is an inconceivable fantasy.
Republicans must be wondering what Obama is going to throw at them next – Fiscal Cliff, Debt ceiling, Immigration reform, Obama Care implementation, tax reform…
It is so refreshing to see Democrats playing offense for a change…no doubt the centrist media will shout “librul over reach”, but can Boehner et al take the heat?
Can they be divided and conquered
Yes, they can!
Let them obstruct immigration and continue to fail to pass a farm bill. Those anti immigrant bills of the south left farmers without labor to harvest their crops and to watch them root in the field. I don’t see how they will continue to hold onto the house if they don’t get immigrant labor back in the farm fields.
I’m thinking “No”.
Michael Steele made the comment that with 50,000 Latinos being born a month here…and may I add that they will be voting…you can’t ignore their voice.
I don’t know that dividing the Reps means conquering them. Part of me, at least, could go with letting their wackjob base prevail until the GOP shrinks until it’s small enough to, well, drown in a bathtub.
That Obama, he’s so divisive! He’s tearing
Americathe republican party apart.