"As soon as the House and Senate GOP have their leadership teams in place, and soon after the lame duck session ends, the 250 House and Senate members should repair to a conference center somewhere for a long conversation on illegal immigration leading to a consensus position. Certainly there will be outliers, but an ongoing bloodletting over the issue is the only major obstacle in the path to return to majority status. An ongoing focus on the issue is found at Powerline, and though I am unwilling to simply credit Tamar Jacoby's take on the subject, she is generally correct that the issue of illegal immigration did not deliver a wave of support for GOP candidates who thought it would."
It is true that immigration is a wedge issue.
It is also a trust issue.
Tamar Jacoby is *NOT* an unbaised observer, but a minion of the open-borders lobby.
There does need to be GOP-based consensus, but it cannot happen by having elites dictate that 'consensus' to the voters.
Look at AZ English-only prop.
According to NumbersUSA, who I trust on immigration much more than I trust Hugh Hewitt on anything:
11.5% of all Republican seats in Congress were lost as Democrats took back control of Congress,
but only 6.7% of the Members of Tancredo's Immigration Reform Caucus lost their seats.
While 9.6% of Republicans with a NumbersUSA A grade lost,
25.0% with an F grade lost.
Immigration control did not take the Republicans down, far from it. The insane, tarbaby nation building Iraq policy, corruption, and big spending took them down. Don't buy the Hewitt kool-aid or 2008 could be a disaster even bigger than 2006. (Wasn't this the guy who was saying on election eve that the Republicans were going to do very well?)
States and communities all across the country are taking immigration control measures because of the unwillingness of Bush and Congress to act. This is and will continue to be a big grassroots issue that the Republicans will abandon at their peril.
My tagline says I'm skeptical...