Ed Morrissey ready to capitulate on amnesty (Hot Air, immigration)

Ed Morrissey of HotAir is ready to help the GOP deal itself a losing hand, and is trying to round up others.

Morrissey quotes ( peekURL.com/zSYJQs5 ) this from Jeff Poor of the Daily Caller:

After Tuesday night's re-election victory for President Barack Obama, MSNBC's Chuck Todd predicted that one of the president's agenda items - one promise he never managed to fulfill in his first term - would breeze into law. "Immigration reform," he said, will get “80 to 90 votes in the Senate." Since the election night results showed Republicans unable to attract Latino voters, he said, “Republicans will run, not walk, in trying to support that now."

Obviously, that would be a stupid and bad thing to do both for the GOP and the country; see comprehensive immigration reform for some of the many downsides of what's usually referred to as amnesty. If the GOP helps the Democratic Party pass amnesty, Obama and the Democrats will get most of the credit. Unless the GOP moves completely to the Democrats' "left" on immigration, the Democrats will always be able to undercut them. For instance, instead of highlighting how the GOP helped the Democrats pass amnesty, the Democrats and the media will highlight those who resisted the plan, lying and misleading as necessary. Even if there's just one leading opponent of amnesty, the media and the Democrats will make that person symbolic of the entire GOP's stance on the issue.

At the same time, the GOP will have helped the Democrats pick up millions more votes and will have given even more political power to groups like the National Council of La Raza. The Mexican government already has political power inside the U.S., and they'd get even more.

Of this, what does Ed Morrissey say? Take a look (bolding added):

Now, immigration reform looks like low-hanging fruit compared to the crises that face our political class now. The lame-duck Congress has to undo sequestration and deal with Taxmageddon. The next Congress has to figure out how to deal with massive deficits and unfunded entitlement liabilities that will crush the American economy within a decade without serious reform. On those issues, there is substantial philosophical and ideological hostility. In comparison, there are only a few issues keeping immigration reform from being passed, nearly none of which are ideological, and most of which are either technical or matters of prioritization.

I'd expect this to get taken up in early 2013 and pass by the summer, with substantial compromise on both sides. It may be the only real bipartisanship we see next year.

Maybe taking yet more bad, inaccurate advice from those who helped the GOP lose the election isn't a wise idea.