Dick Morris: "Republicans should back immigration compromise"

In case you were wondering why I erupted into peals of laughter moments ago, your answer is here. Of course, then I wondered, "Is he still working for the Democrats, or Mexico?"

The Republican Party would be self-destructive (not for the first time, either) if they did not let the immigration compromise negotiated by Sens. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) pass and become law. The hopes of the entire Latino community are pinned to immigration reform and, if the GOP is seen as blocking it, the consequences for the indefinite future will be horrific. The Republican Party will lose Hispanics as surely as they lost blacks when Barry Goldwater ran in 1964 against the civil rights bill (even though a higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats backed the bill in each house).

The "entire Latino community"? That's certainly a false statement. I doubt whether most Puerto Ricans, for instance, really care all that much about allowing Mexicans and Mexican-Americans to import their relatives here via endless chain migration. Of course, some may do so out of pan-Hispanic solidarity, but surely Republican - or at least conservative - principles say that should be discouraged and fought against, rather than encouraged. Wait, what was I thinking assuming that Dick Morris even knows what principles are?

If the Hispanics are not massively turned off by a Republican rejection of immigration reform, they will drift into an increasingly pro-Republican orientation just as Irish and Italian Catholics did before them. Already Protestant evangelicalism has converted a third of the American Latino population, a clear precursor of GOP political support.

Of course, those who realize the dangers inherent in the GOP becoming a vassal of religious fundamentalists might not approve of the tack Morris implies: delivering the bread and circuses via gay marriage, abortion, and other red meat social issues.

Other tags: comprehensive immigration reform · hispanics as republicans · ted kennedy

Immigration2007a · Wed, 05/23/2007 - 11:24 · · Importance: 4

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