Will the Republican party be destroyed by immigration?

Barack Obama, during a recent interview with the editorial board of the Boston Globe, predicted that the Republicans will run next fall on two issues: terrorism and immigration. When I asked a leading Republican strategist and former Bush lieutenant if he agreed, he said merely, “I hope not.” He argued that it was incorrect to think that immigration was the second most important challenge facing the United States. “We need to address other issues, like the economy, health care, and education,” he said. When I asked Tancredo if he was leading his party “over a cliff” or “to the promised land,” he laughed and said, “I see manna out there.”

The evidence so far, though, points to a cliff. In several election contests in the past two years, Republicans tried and failed to deploy immigration as a campaign weapon. This November, Republicans in Virginia and New York who ran on the issue were defeated. Not even Eliot Spitzer’s misbegotten plan to issue driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, which was thought to be ruinous for Democrats, has damaged the Democratic Party; rather, the Party increased its numbers in local races around the state. McCain says that last year he saw how toothless the issue was in Arizona. “Congressman J. D. Hayworth had a pretty good opponent,” he said of the former Republican from Arizona, who lost his seat in the 2006 midterm election. “J.D. ran just on the issue of immigration, in a moderate but Republican district. Arizona State University is there, in Phoenix. And J.D. got beat by four points in the general election. There was a guy who was going to take Jim Kolbe’s seat”—an Arizona congressman who retired last year. “Jim was there twenty years, and had always carried the district well. The Republican candidate was another one where immigrant, immigration, anti-illegal immigration was his theme. He lost by twelve points. So I think there is a lesson in some of those elections when people use anti-immigration as a major part of their campaign. But I also know that it galvanizes a certain part of the Republican Party.”

Far from fearing the immigration issue, some Democratic strategists are quietly cheering how the subject has played out. Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist who has closely studied the politics of the issue, says simply, “The Bush strategy—enlightened on race, smart on immigration, developed in Texas and Florida with Jeb Bush—has been replaced by the Tancredo-Romney strategy, which is demonizing and scapegoating immigrants, and that is a catastrophic event for the Republican Party.”  ...Ryan Lizza, in the New Yorker

Comments

[Thomas Dicochea]

Let us not forget that the republican base is racsist. The power of the internet is now more than ever feeding the common man information that at one time he only would have recieved in bits and pieces. Basically were no longer being fooled. I feel that the repulican party should fly thier true flag which is the confederate flag because that is what they truly are. lastly Jesus heald the sick and fed the poor for free. have a great day.

T.D.

[Paul]

T.D. obviously doesn't know his history. That's understandable because most liberals don't.

Anyway, we conservatives are not racists at all. You liberals are the racists, e.g., your policies have destroyed the black American family, sinking a significant proportion of that race into extreme poverty and making them dependent on your worthless government services. Hell, your liberal Louisiana government couldn't even evacuate 2,500 people from New Orleans, most of whom were black. So don't talk to us about racism you sick scum.

As far as the confederacy goes, the Democrats were the confederates. Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. That's why we are called the Party of Lincoln. Learn some history, and shut the fuck up you fascist liberal.

[PW]

"Shut the fuck up you fascist liberal"? That earned your IP address a place on the banned list for this blog.