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.

Related:
Dick Morris still wrong; Hispanics, unprincipled GOP, religious conservatives
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Base responds to Dick Morris' Base Desires
Dick Morris' idiotic thoughts on immigration
Dick Morris offers thoughts on Bush and immigration

Comments

Morris' recollection of history is faulty. Goldwater did not lose the election in '64 because he opposed the Civil Rights Act. Following JFK's assassination, Goldwater knew there was no way the country was going to unseat LBJ, kicking out a president who had been in office less than a year. To have 3 presidents in a little less than 14 months time was too much instabiliy for most peoples' taste. The '64 election also saw what was probably the first use of a truly dirty TV ad, the little girl picking petals off a flower against the backdrop of a nuclear explosion. Now then, as for Hispanics and the GOP, it took more than 75 years for the Irish and Italians to start voting Republican in any significant number, and that was with the help of the 1924-65 immigration reductions that facilitated assimilation. Is Morris stupid enough to think that Hispanics will become upwardly mobile when each succeeding wave of Mexican immigrants is followed by another and another, with all of them competing for the same crappy jobs? Earth to Morris: poor people don't vote for Republicans, no matter how much they believe in God. If, and it is a big if, Hispanics do eventually vote GOP, it will not be in any of our lifetimes, and by then there may not be a Republican party, or even a United States. So why ruin the country and the GOP now because of what might happen in 75 or 100 years? I think Morris must have a Mexican girlfriend on the side who lets him suck her toes.

This guy makes my skin crawl...he spins debates to read that his candidate did the best even when they fail miserably. The day I will let this slime tell me how to vote is the day I slit my own throat!!

Where were all the republicans when the cloture vote came? Sitting with the dems? And suddenly the dems have dropped their timetable tied to funding for the Iraq war. Suspicious coincidence. Was that what was behind the closed door dealings? Bush promising to deliver the necessary republican votes for their amnesty bill in exchange for the democrats continuing the funding of his war in Iraq? Looks like both parties have abandoned their base. The dems will be the party responsible for keeping the war in Iraq alive, while the republicans have agreed to support Kennedy's amnesty, and reject any border enforcement. I think the American Citizen loses on both scores. Screwed by the left and the right. More of our troops will die, defending a Country that won't exist when the war is over.

Wait a minute here! First Dick Morris says that the Republicans must support this amnesty bill so that they can pick up Hispanic support; and then he says "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)." If a higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats voted FOR the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and now blacks vote about 9 to 1 Democratic, how does his logic that Republicans should support amnesty stand up? Trust me, most blacks younger than about 55 have never heard of Barry Goldwater! Does anybody still pay this fool for advice?