I think, out of all the current issues driving the commentary these days, immigration reform is the one with the most potential to cripple the Republican Party.
As we all know, there have been cracks developing for quite some time-i.e. Tea Party, Boehner breaking the Hastert Rule-threatening to completely fracture the coalition that allows the GOP to be so formidable.
The current GOP has many tentacles. Probably the most noteworthy is the big corporate interests. They are not only the main source of funds, but this apparently results in some of the most influence over the GOP agenda.
However, the rest of the tentacles make up the base who will essentially go along with anything the party says, so long as it caters to their own personal niche.
The evangelicals, the racist/xenophobes, the chauvinists, the gun righters, and then the real whackaloons that even some Tea Partiers might try to keep in the basement when company is over.
So this makes for a very straightforward strategy on their part. Advocate against things like gay marriage and abortion to win the church crowd, and you also win their votes on the other stuff like gun rights. Cry out about birth certificates and Benghazi to appease the conspiracy fetishists, and you don't lose them over the ever-bloating military complex.
I think this goes a long way to explaining why the party as a whole doesn't ever seem to change course even in the face of significant pressure. Marriage equality, Obamacare, gun safety, these are all issues that the GOP have already essentially lost, but still they cling to these losing issues, even in the face of withering scrutiny.
And yet this seemingly makes the likelihood of a GOP fracture almost infinitesimal.
I consider it a paradox. The GOP establishment is predictably dragging its heels over marriage equality, likely earning it the indefinite devotion of a great many within the evangelical community. Yet let's say hypothetically, the GOP establishment made a statement tomorrow declaring they it supports marriage equality. Logically, wouldn't this then mean that they would lose all those evangelical votes? Wouldn't they threaten to leave the GOP umbrella for something more ultra-conservative? Probably not. I think the majority of them would still proudly consider themselves Republican, and only on this one issue is their party wrong, and not even Dick Cheney shooting each of them in the face one after another would change that.
So why is immigration reform different? Why would it be the single issue that breaks this double-strain of stubbornness?
Unlike the other major issues, like Obamacare and gun rights, immigration pits one tentacle directly vs. another tentacle.
With most of these other major issues, often times only one tentacle is really in the fight, and the others don't really have a dog in the fight. So we will see the evangelical wing fighting gay marriage, and the gun rights groups fighting gun safety, and these are for the most part completely separate battles. Sure, there is often some overlap between groups (one can be evangelical and racist and pro-gun), but basically, they rarely pit the resources of one tentacle against the resources of another.
And mostly being social issues, none of them ever really step on the toes of the most serious tentacle of all, big business.
But with immigration reform, we have the wishes of the corporate tentacle directly against the racist/xenophobe tentacle.
For all intents and purposes, businesses want immigration reform. In basic economic terms, immigration reform ensures a larger number of low-wage workers. Besides the agribusiness that relies significantly on seasonal immigrant workers, most low-wage industries in general will suddenly have a larger pool of potential employees from which to draw. Supply going up means demand goes down, meaning companies will be able to keep wages low. Not to mention, more legal residents means more consumers. Add it all up, and you get an issue that should be incredibly popular with big business.
On the other hand, you have that racist/xenophobic tentacle of the GOP Party, who does not want immigration reform. So under the normal playbook, the GOP as a whole should be against it as well, shouldn't it?
The GOP has spent a great deal of time and dog whistles on nurturing a subtle and overt dependence on the racism/xenophobia of its base. There's all that ruckus of building a fence and keeping the illegals out. There's the creepiness over trying to make Obama just some Muslim. There's the general persecution of anyone looking like they can walk around outside and not need sunblock so much. There's the general sense that every GOP agenda presumes foreign policy involves warring with foreigners or ridiculing their cultures. All of this is their own doing. But now all of a sudden they're faced with supporting immigration reform, that seemingly goes against all of this prelude.
The Republican Party could likely make a reasonable case to reasonable people that it is in the party's reasonable interests to support reasonable immigration reform. However, the Republican Party has taken a great deal of effort to ensure that it is not very well populated with reasonable people.
So the Republican Party needs to support immigration to serve the interests of the corporate side, but it also needs to oppose immigration to serve the interests of the racist side. So here we are.
The GOP thrives when each subgroup is wrapping its tentacle over their own personal issues. But once the tentacles start crossing over into each others territory, then we start to see the cracks in the GOP open up.
Immigration reform is popular with the American public. It is already in the interests of the Democratic Party to support immigration reform. It can't be denied that the Democratic Party has a bit of corporate tentacle inside it at times as well. Regardless, both on principle and on the issues, Democrats are on the right side of immigration. And just like with gun safety, Democrats are poised to win significant political points over immigration reform. The GOP has been unable to reap any rewards out of any of these issues so far.
This conflict over immigration reform is a self-inflicted wound. Had the GOP not invested so much in its racist tentacle, and if the GOP did not rely so much on a coalition of groups who hold unpopular views, it would not be stuck in this situation. Immigration reform would sail through as easily as exempting the FAA from the sequester. Instead, it is likely facing pressure from both sides, and building up the animosity within the party in the process. Not to mention adding another weapon to the Democratic party arsenal of the GOP being out of touch with the rest of the American public.
So, not being an expert on political science, I will not claim to know what exactly will unfold over immigration reform, whether or not the GOP will be crippled like I surmise.
However, I do feel confident enough to hazard a few guesses. Because of the strength the corporate arm has over both parties, I foresee immigration reform succeeding, with likely far less resistance than gun safety has faced.
This will likely alienate the racist tentacle, but didn't I just use marriage equality as an example that this would probably not be enough to make them switch allegiances?
Well unlike marriage equality, immigration reform forces the GOP to squarely place one tentacle over another.
And this leads me to my final insight in the type of people who choose to align with the Republican Party: they do not respond well to challenges to their superiority over others. Being placed below another group, even another group within their own party, might be enough to finally create a significant internal backlash that shakes the GOP to its core.
P.S. I know some businesses support marriage equality, just like some oppose it. In general, I think immigration reform is the only issue that would benefit most businesses regardless of their specific situations and policies.