John Hawkins, who I usually respect, is joining the caucus that is ready to blow up the Senate GOP over immigration. As I have said, I’m not thrilled with where we seem to be headed on this issue, and I understand the concern of people who think that more immigration will damage the GOP electorally (and help offset the Democrats’ natural demographic disadvantage that flows from being the party of people who don’t bear or beget children).
But I can’t sign on to going bonkers over this issue. There’s a war on. There are still fundamental differences between the parties on scores of core issues – taxes and economic liberties, life, the courts, the rule of law. Face it, we have lived with bad immigration policy for decades. We should fix that – but it’s not the end of the world if we don’t, and electing Democrats, of all people, won’t help.
5 thoughts on “Forget the War, Taxes, and Abortion”
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I think a lot of the reaction is driven by how this is getting done. Withholding detail, dishonest debate and deal marketing, and that’s within the Republican Party. People care about immigration policy, and they care about how the issue is handled. We have lived with bad policy for decades, this legislation was the opportunity to address that; it does not. As you note, electing democrats will not help, but if this is the best we can expect from Republicans then this issue has been lost. The will rile some, more so when they realize that they have no friends of significance within the party.
I got to call you on this, because you’re willing to give up abortion in order to back Rudy (who’s going to change this a neutral party at the convention, or if not just into a hypocritical party.) So basicall you can only really say taxes and the war.
I was commenting this weekend on how immigration debate is really beating up the GOP…they have built their “southern strategy” on a combination of religiosity and appeal to the bubbling underbelly of silent racism on the one hand, and funding from corporate types like Bob Perry, a large construction donor to the GOP/Swift Boaters on the other. They can’t tell their large construction company and other beneficiaries of illegal labor donors to start hiring only W2 and legal employees, and they can’t tell their angry white male support structure that they won’t get rid of all the brown skin workers in the country and send ’em back to Mexico. A real bind. It is ironic that it was only raised originally to try to split the democrats between the union leaders and the minority rights organizations. Backfire, big time.
I think a lot of us thousands of miles from the alleged “southern strategy” are simply tired of the Beltway elite playing us for rubes.
They are backtracking on what they already agreed to and now pretend that’s not what they did to get Teddy to bless the bill.
We’re not marks. Play it straight or don;t play at all.
I consider strong border defense part of the war effort Crank. The drive to legalize our illegals by the Democrats should have been leveraged to get much more value. Electing Republicans for the sake of the R next to their name is not enticing enough for me. It’s going to get “Blue Dogs” a lot more looks the next time around.
Well not for me, I live in MA, so my Senators and Representatives generally run unopposed. But I will stop donating to the national republican committees. In fact I have.