The Bush administration's charm offensive continues with Michael Gerson - a Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow and Bush's former head speechwriter ("Axis of Evil") - offering up "Letting Fear Rule/Nativism Is a Recipe for Long-Term GOP Losses". As you might expect, it's one smear after another.

Like Lindsey Graham reading documents from 1911, he leads with the Chinese Exclusion Act, then starts the lies and name calling: "anti-immigrant sentiments", "a nativist party will cease to be a national party", "Tancredo is the lowbrow expression of this fear", "any attempt to grant a legal status to illegal immigrants is as welcome as salsa on their apple pie", "rage and national chauvinism".

His overall thesis is false in at least three ways. First, there's absolutely no guarantee that importing millions more Latin Americans will cause at least 40% of them to vote GOP. Even if the corrupt forces in the GOP prevail and it becomes a party of loose and race-based immigration, the Democrats will always be able to offer a looser deal and one even more explicitly based on race. Anyone who's familiar with this issue realizes that many groups (LULAC, National Council of La Raza/"The Race") are very successful at making racial appeals, as are racial demagogues like Antonio Villaraigosa. Gerson and the rest are actually giving those groups more power, as David Frum stated earlier. He even approvingly quotes someone promoting the "Latinoization of America". There's clearly an extremely strong possibility that he's wrong, yet he doesn't acknowledge that fact.

Second, if his argument has any validity it's one for immigration in general, not massive illegal immigration or massive immigration of any kind from one country or region.

Third, it certainly is possible to both be non-discriminatory to Hispanics and oppose illegal and massive legal immigration at the same time. Yet, he undercuts that by assuming that those are incompatible and smearing those who show it is as "nativists".

He should just be considered a smearing CFR hack and a Bush proxy.

UPDATE: ThinkProgress - the political answer to the National Enquirer - uses his remarks to further spread the "GOP = nativistic racists" meme, something that Gerson and his presumed handlers should spend more time attacking and less time aiding and abetting: