Immigration Report: The Gringo View
The fallout from the immigration fiasco spells trouble for the GOP. by Rick Moran
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From the “As If They Didn’t Have Enough Problems Already” Department, the Republican Party just spilled toxic waste all over its nice, clean shirt by inexplicably pushing an immigration bill guaranteed to send most of their conservative base screaming for the exits. Thankfully, the bill went down to ignominious defeat due to the arrogance of its backers and the anger generated against it by the measure’s opponents. But one wonders if many on the right will find their way back in time to save the party from disaster in 2008.
One would think that the purpose of a political party is to grow larger so that when election time comes, they would get more votes than the other fellow. Not so the GOP. In what has to be considered a revolutionary approach to party building, the Republicans believe in first shrinking the party so that only little old ladies who think that Wendell Wilke is nifty and young hip-hoppers who took a wrong turn on their way to the MTV Video Awards show up at the next caucus.
Republican leaders should consider themselves lucky that they have the Wilke bloc wrapped up for 2008. Whether they can persuade the 50 Cent Fan Club to vote for the GOP is another question. And perhaps, if they try very hard, they may be able to snag a couple refugees from the last episodes of Survivor: Fiji, possibly the only souls in the nation who are unaware of how bollixed up the Republican Party has become.
None of that matters as much as the storm of outrage roiling much of the country over what many conservatives chose to call an amnesty bill. The white hot anger — felt by the GOP’s most loyal, most reliable voters — directed at much of the party’s leadership threatens to ignite a grass-roots prairie fire that could make the 2008 election the Republican Waterloo. A nail in the coffin of the GOP that will keep it in the political wilderness for a decade or more.
The pleas and entreaties from the base to Senators not to bring the bill to the floor went unheeded. To make matters worse, several high profile backers of the bill all but called opponents of the measure racists and xenophobes. This incredible tone deafness on the part of party bigwigs will cost them dearly. Conservative websites are filled to the brim with commenters who swear that they’ll never vote Republican again, much less contribute any money to the party. Even if you chalk some of this up to hyperbole, the universality of the sentiments expressed by conservatives against Republicans is something that party leaders ignore at their peril.
The fallout affecting the President may be the most damaging of all. Having just defied a Congressional subpoena by invoking executive privilege, Bush may very well need the base he has just alienated in order to fight off efforts by Congress to dig deeper into the administration’s paperwork jungle. While it’s unclear how hard the Democratic Congress is willing to press the issue, they will not have to worry about a united Republican Party standing behind the President.
Then there’s Iraq. Will the base still go to the mat for Bush in September when the next round of the Bush vs. Dems cage match begins? Public support for the war is already at its lowest ebb. If conservatives were to abandon the President, he would find himself in a lonely position indeed. Already bleeding support on the Hill, by September the Commander in Chief could find himself in the position of being barely able to muster a corporal’s guard worth of Congressmen to support him on Iraq.
Finally, the “I” word. Speaker Pelosi promised there would be no impeachment proceedings against the President following the Democratic takeover of Congress last November. But impeachment talk has been recently revived among the powerful netroots community, and defying a Congressional subpoena will do nothing to tamp down that kind of talk. Depending on how far the Democrats want to take a constitutional confrontation, the pressure on the House Democratic leadership to at least begin an investigation into the possibility of impeachment may be too great to resist. One wonders if Bush has enough support in either chamber to survive such an effort. He certainly won’t have much help from angry conservatives out in the hinterlands.
Because many Senate Republicans worked to bring this bill back from the dead, I might suggest that some kind of wholesale sanity test be administered to discover the basis for this mass delusion. Either that, or perhaps we should open an investigation into whether or not we have a coven of closet masochists serving in the most deliberative legislative body in the world. Any explanation would be preferable to the idea that these guys really aren’t that bright, and have shaken the Republican Party to its foundations simply because they were too stupid to realize the consequences of their actions.
Rick Moran blogs at Right Wing Nut House.
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13 Comments
1. davecatbone:This isn’t a partisan problem. It’s an elitism problem. The powers thought the stupid provincials would shut up and do as they were told. Wrong. We’re not dumb, and the GOP may be witnessing the start of a series of corrective actions by the voters who are determined to reclaim their party from elitist moderate liberals.
Jun 29, 2007 - 5:02 am 2. danipt99:This immigration bill was backed by an overwhelming Democratic majority - will they “spin” this outcome to advance their party….sure they will. It was a win-win situation for the Democrats. If it was passed - they had millions of potential “new” voters - if it wsan’t passed - they blame the GOP. Pathetic politics is all…
Jun 29, 2007 - 7:15 am 3. marisa elise:dave catbones nails it! I can never believe how out of touch our politicians and upper class are.
They import thousands of Burundis, for example, but do you think the elites live anywhere near the trouble the elites import and think up?
one example of millions…. oh Lord, for an honest politician!?!
Jun 29, 2007 - 8:03 am 4. Gilbert Brahms:2008 will be a hard year for any Republican congressional candidate who has displayed the kind of elitist hauteur of a Trent Lott or Lynsey Graham, but don’t think conservatives are going to risk placing the Hildabeast in the White House. Resentment will not run to such suicidal depths.
Jun 29, 2007 - 9:06 am 5. Carole:Demand that Mel Martinez step down as the face of the GOP…Demand money from any contributions etc. be returned.
Jun 29, 2007 - 9:33 am 6. M. A. George:Oh, boy. Do they really think we will forget the insults and slanders so casually tossed out at us? They are counting on the proverbial short attention span of the American voter. Not this time, pal. Lott and Graham and their ilk have disgusted us so thoroughly that their infamy is burned into our provincial little Republican souls. Now, we know what they really think of those who have voted for them, supported them, and taken endless bull-cr*p for them. No more.
Jun 29, 2007 - 9:59 am 7. El_Cid:I suggest everyone keep hammering at the border issue. The president (I left it with small p deliberately)had the audacity to tell the Congress to get its act together and give the people what they want .Unbelievable!! Am I having a lucid dream or what?
He is the C.E.O of the executive branch of government and has a duty to execute the laws on the books.! Congress does not execute He does. Chertoff should have been at the border with binoculars instead of worrying about the price of a head of lettuce and skateboarding thru the Senate trying to convince other Senators everything is ok. This scenario is laughable even though I know its serious.
I cannot believe he and his transnational cabal of senators think we are still uninformed. The Jig is up. We know, we listen, we watch, we learn.
Its simple..start jailing the employers who knowingly hire illegals, and I garanteee that when you demagnetize the magnet..the particles will fall off (Michael Savage and common sense) they will go back home on their own..without us having to run after them like keystone cops. Employers are a lot more manageable and smaller group than 20 million illegals. if you don’t we as Americans will have to seek affirmative action protection for ourselves . Keep the heat on folks. Listen to your radios, stay on the internet at sites like this and Drudge..they are the last high ground we have left.
Jun 29, 2007 - 10:40 am 8. MarkD:Bush isn’t running. I’m unaware of any Republican contender who supported this bill. Yes, McCain supported it, but he’s going nowhere.
I’m still wondering how a bill opposed three to one by the voters and pushed by the Democratic majority magically drives all Hispanic voters to the Democrats but has no effect on anybody else. I guess blacks are supposed to ignore the fact that the Dems wanted to import more poor people to compete for jobs and benefits. I guess everybody is supposed to ignore the fact that 46 of these arrogant Senators decided that their opinion/idea/political deal was reason enough to ignore the wishes of their constituents, unless their Senator happens to be Republican.
Jun 29, 2007 - 11:07 am 9. M-Duh:Americans on both sides beat this bill down - and if Republicans are smart they will try to capture that momentum, claim it as their own, and turn it into a border security bill that stops the invasion. Then Americans will listen to a party that has a coherent, logical immigration strategy.
If they arent going to get it done now, then make border security a top priority in the 2008 election and force candidates to go on record with what they would do first to solve this problem. Listening to the Dem candidate basically repeat what’s in this bill as it sits now might give Repubs a shot.
Jun 29, 2007 - 12:50 pm 10. usasteve:This column is nuts.
The roll call, known as a cloture vote, was 46 for and 53 against. Twelve Republicans joined 33 Democrats and an independent in voting to invoke cloture, while 15 Democrats and an independent sided with 37 GOP members in opposing it.
This mean two-thirds of Dem supported it. Three-fourths of Republican opposed it.
All Dem Presidential candidates supported it. All GOP candidates except McCain opposed it.
A new CBS News poll shows only 13% of Americans thought the Senate should pass the bill. The final Rasmussen Reports national telephone poll before the vote found that just 22% of Americans supported the legislation.
So this is a GOP problem that the Dems supported this unpopular bill and (on average)the GOP did not?And that the Dem Presidential candidate supported it and the GOP candidates didn’t?
“Nut case”, indeed!
Jun 29, 2007 - 2:04 pm 11. Hugh P. McCarthy:The immigration cloture vote provided a whole lot of insights to everyone who watched it on C-Span live. Among the lessons forcefully driven home to me were the following:
Jun 29, 2007 - 9:50 pm 12. gfschue:1) The allocation of time to debate for Dems/vs.Repubs was either 40/20 or 50/10. And when Dems exceeded their time limits they were given extensions.
2) And when the voting was concluded, the next speaker, Robert Byrd, was given 20 minutes to say a whole lot about nothing — at the rate of about 6 words per page.
3) This “most distinguished deliberative body” in the world, proved over and over again what a joke it really is — and yet the members don’t get it!
4) Not just Dems (Reid), but Reps (Specter) extolled the virtues of this deliberative body. Yet Reid, in his anecdotal claptrap about his friend (Tim)never established whether Tim was in danger of being deported, or Tim’s friend was. What place does this chit-chat belong in the world’s most deliberative body.
5) 700-page laws, with 300 page amendments are needed by no one. If there are laws already on the books, then enforce them or repeal them. Is that too difficult for the “Masters of the Universe” to comprehend?
6) It’s really beyond time when this nation has to come together. The London near-bombs have got to let us agree — either we act as a nation, threatened, or we continue to squabble, to tear ourselves into factions and “special interest groups) — and that includes posturing politicians…or we succumb.
Sen. Kennedy warned us that failing to pass the Immigration Reform bill would create “two Americas.” That condition already exists: career politicians in Washington working for special interest groups vs. the average American on the street. He’s right.
This bill died because of a fundamental problem: how do you ask young American men and women to go to Iraq to bleed and die for that nation’s sovereignty when you refuse to protect ours here at home?
Jun 30, 2007 - 4:54 am 13. j king:Maybe, since much of the GOP has abandoned the will their voters, they will go the way of the Whigs. Its about time for a new Conservative party that will represent the people and not just special interests and big business.
Vote Libertarian
Ron Paul ‘08
Jun 30, 2007 - 6:27 pm