Yea, you’re right about the GOP. I’ve not seen a dumber bunch of malfeasants in my life. Admittedly, I’m not a octogenarian who can claim to have seen the Depression as a pup, but the GOP’s current bench seems filled with complete dolts, and the problem is that people like you and I would rather be dragged across a cheese grater and then into a puddle of salt water than run for Congress (or anything else, actually).
I don’t think the surge in new migration from Mexico is going to pan out. The vast majority of the money that attracted them in the post-Bush wave was tied to the housing industry in the south/southwest.
That industry is gone, done, fini. I expect to see a couple/three major homebuilders go BK here in the next year, and the change in population in places like Nevada is apparent just by driving around. The jobs for illegals on residential construction sites are gone.
Commercial real estate is next in the chute.
It is far better to be poor in the US than in Mexico and Latin America. And we are building such a large Hispanic population, that is can support a major underground economy. Today, there are no border states when it comes to immigration. Every state has become a border state. for example, in 1990, based on census figures, the Mexican-born population of North Carolina, was 8,751. In 2000, it was 179,236.