Good post.
Actually, this bill may ensure the eventual elimination of the GOP as a national party and make it, at most, a regional party although I cannot think of a region that it could thrive in.
I wonder if the national Repubs are thinking the demographic trend is unavoidable so they must get out in front of the Dems. This gives them the opportunity to say, “We were first on immigration reform!” However, this is naive at best and probably fatal to the GOP’s future viability.
The GOP leadership needs to be absolutely clear that (1) donor dollars are not the same as votes. If immigration reform gets your big donors to give you money, fine, but you will lose elections and pretty quickly your donors will leave to give dollars to winners who will get things done for them. (2) If you think being first on this issue will get you popular press—you are utterly wrong. You will be smeared in the press. That should be clear to you by now. You could field a candidate that walks on water and the press would smear you. The press wants you destroyed no matter what you do. (3) The House can pass immigration reform but the Senate will change it. The only certainty is that immigration reform will inflate Dem voter rolls.
There is no upside to this for you, the GOP. It doesn’t matter if Rubio and other GOP leaders engage in immigration legislation or not—they are playing a game they can only lose. Until they come up with a game that has a possibility of being a winner and not having catastropic downside potential (like increasing Dem voter rolls), the GOP is in serious trouble. I offer this suggestion. Don’t lose your existing voters. Start from that point. There are lots of new ideas you can add to that but don’t destroy your base. You can’t gain enough new votes to overcome that loss for years, if ever.
Not only should they not pass this crap, but they need a plan to fix this Marxist plot to destroy America from within. Start with border security. Enforce employer sanctions with jail time. Take away benefits, and make it a serious crime to defraud American taxpayers by sneaking into the country and then seeking welfare, schooling, housing. Take away anchor baby citizenship. None of this will pass the Senate, but the Leader and the party that pushes it will gain the votes of a majority of the remnant population of Americans, and might still win majorities in Congress and the electoral college. Cave in on this, and our choices are submission or revolution.
Yep! I would be pleasantly surprised if the GOP would get 10 out 20,00,000 votes of takers. Those 10 voters would be probably be crossed eyed.
You perception is correct. The only way the GOP can win anything is to defeat or destroy the press.
I took your well constructed post and sent it over to our R Senator Ayotte here in NH. I couldn’t have expressed it better myself.
“Actually, this bill may ensure the eventual elimination of the GOP as a national party and make it, at most, a regional party although I cannot think of a region that it could thrive in.”
Whether this bill passes or not, the Republican party ALREADY HAS shrunk from being a national party, into being a regional party. The amnesty bill would accelerate this transformation, but the transformation is ongoing.
Consider: how much influence do the Republicans have in America today, in any state north or east of Pennsylvania?
How much influence do they have in the “mid-Atlantic” — New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, D.C., and even in Virginia?
How much influence do the Pubbies have left on the West Coast? In the southwest, we’re even losing in Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado.
The Republicans are already walkin’ the road to “regionalization”.
Amnesty will get them there sooner.
But the destination is certain and the journey has begun...
Fact is, immigration "reform" will likely lose the Hispanic voters that the GOP has now.
I've seen two polls of legal Hispanics -- and they both against any form of amnesty by about 2-to-1 (60/32 or so).
This may surprise some -- certainly, it would shock the GOP-e. But think about it -- legal Hispanics are American. Many families have been here for more than a hundred years, the more recent have played by the rules and worked to get where they are.
Most of the Hispanics against amnesty probably comprise the Republican voting minority. If the GOP betrays them on amnesty, they'll have lost votes among the Hispanics.
Amnesty is a lose-lose proposition for 'pubbies.