Yes, the Wall Street Journal is the mouthpiece for the Corporate Cons, who have a clear interest in the current immigration bill making its torturous way through Congress. But regardless of their motivations, this editorial today nails the GOP's immigration dilemma.
Republicans are being torn asunder between their nativist base, and shifting demographics that could spell doom to any hope of future Republican majorities.
The longer term danger is that the GOP is sending a message to Latinos that it doesn't want them in the party. And if that message sticks, Republicans could put themselves back in minority party status for a generation or more. Hispanics are the largest ethnic minority in the country, and their voting numbers continue to grow. Hispanics were estimated to be 8% of the electorate in 2006, compared with 6% in 2004 and 5.5% in 2000. Census data show that the number of Latino voters could rise to 10% or more by 2008. The demographic reality is that the GOP can't be a majority party with Anglo-Saxon votes alone.
Like most voters, Hispanics care about more issues than immigration. But also like most voters, they take pride in their cultural identity and will reject candidates who send a message of hostility to their very presence in America. They know that when Tom Tancredo calls for an immigration "time out," he's not talking about the Irish. He means no more Mexicans, Hondurans or other Hispanics. If the GOP wants to be deserted by Hispanics for the next few election cycles, that sort of talk should do the trick.
A recent WSJ/NBC News poll showed that Hispanics now self-identify as Democrats rather than Republicans by 51% to 21%. Restrictionist Republicans like to spin this as proof that Hispanics, like blacks, are lost to the party, and that more Mexican immigration inevitably means more Democratic voters. Leaving aside that such determinism betrays a lack of confidence in the appeal of Republican principles, the Hispanic-black comparison doesn't hold up.
Black GOP support has hovered around 10% since 1992, according to exit polls. Hispanic support for Republicans over the same period has often been more than three times higher. Unlike blacks today, Hispanics are a legitimate swing voting bloc, and the GOP's current low standing among Hispanics represents an ominous reversal of recent trends.
In 2004, exit polls showed Republicans winning 44% of the Hispanic vote, up from 35% in 2000 and 38% in 2002. As Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg noted after last year's elections, "the Latino vote had swung more heavily into the Republican camp than any other vote in America. They went from 21% in 1996 to 44% in 2004. This was a doubling of the Republican market share, one of the most significant political achievements of the Bush era."
But in the run-up to last year's midterm elections, Republicans chose to make immigration their lead issue. The GOP leadership in Congress encouraged talk radio and cable news shows to inflate the illegal alien problem, and Republican candidates took a hard-line anti-immigration stance in hopes of turning out GOP voters. It didn't work. Not only did the strategy fail to help Republicans hang on to their majorities in Congress, but support from Hispanic voters fell to 29%, the lowest level this decade. If running against illegal immigration were a winner, Arizona's J.D. Hayworth would still be in Congress.
Looking at this in stark political terms (ignoring the very real problems of our undocumented underclass), Democrats have little interest in seeing this legislation pass. It's a flawed bill that could be dramatically improved on by stronger Democratic majorities in Congress and a Democratic president in two years. And it's failure now, at the hands of xenophobic Republicans, would solidify Democratic hold over perhaps the largest swing constituency in the country.
Republicans would be not be just a regional southern party, but also a lily white one. Latinos aren't afraid to vote Republican, and exit polls showed that new Latino immigrants were more likely to vote Republican than second- or third-generation Latinos. Rove saw those numbers and wants more of the same. But once you attack our culture, it becomes a cultural imperative to vote for those who embrace us rather than demonize. California is exhibit A in this phenomenon.
Karl Rove gets this, and the WSJ has come out with all guns blazing. The danger to the GOP's long-term prospects is stark.
By now, the damage may already be done. Even if this bill somehow becomes law, Latinos will spend the next year and a half hearing the GOP presidential wannabees one-up themselves on brown-bashing, and that will speak louder than any brownie points Bush might earn for fighting to the death for this bill.
But it really is amazing how an issue that seemed destined to hit the Democrats hard just a couple of years ago has suddenly turned into a divisive "make or break" issue for the Republican Party.
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