Republicans Divided and Weak on Immigration

by DemFromCT

Why aren't you reading this headline in the media? Why is it that Democrats are slandered when they nearly unanimously vote for the change in Iraq policy that Americans want, but Republicans who play games with immigration, like the phony House hearings designed to placate their base, get a pass when they deny Americans what they also want?

(And be sure to Note the Journal's analysis of the results of CA-50: ". . . all that election really proved is that a GOP Beltway lobbyist could keep a seat in a 60% Republican district so long as he outspent an opponent who committed the final-week gaffe of encouraging immigrants to vote illegally").

Dan Gilgoff of US News has a "Republican strategist close to the House" saying that the GOP's immigration hearings "gambit" was born "largely of meetings between" NRCC honcho Tom Reynolds and "dozens of Republican congressmen locked in competitive races this fall. Over a series of monthly meetings, the vulnerable members told Reynolds that they 'could not swallow' the immigration bill that had passed the Senate because anything less than the House's enforcement-only measure 'would be considered weakness.'" LINK

Anyone paying attention to the issues also needs to pay attention to the continuing media spin, and then call them on it when it happens. The lazier members of the media love to lock in a narrative to make their thinking and writing easier; praise the sharper ones, and damn the lazy ones, before it becomes written in stone.

Republicans are weak and divided on immigration, and there will be no immigration bill to speak of this year before the elections. Add it to the growing list of Reoublicans' failure to govern. The country is not happy with the direction the US is going, and this is exactly why. Hello, media?

UPDATE see Greg Mitchell from E&P:

Of course, time will tell if they actually go ahead and vote their beliefs. But reading the latest poll results, one might conclude the opposite of what many reporters and pundits now seem to be suggesting: that, actually, the GOP faces an uphill fight on re-selling the Iraq war, now in its fourth year.
 

Comments

[DemFromCT]

Kudos to greg mitchell of Editor and Publisher.

Polls, Pundits and Pols You'd never know it from some of the reporting and bloviating on the debate over an Iraq withdrawal, but all major polls show that the public favors withdrawals, with strong support for a timeline or total pullout within a year.

By Greg Mitchell

(June 22, 2006) -- The new efforts by Republicans in Congress, and in the media, to use Iraq to their advantage by branding Democrats as favoring a "cut-and-run'" policy, has received wide coverage in the past week. Often pundits, and even reporters, have suggested that this is working, because Americans are not in favor of a "hasty" withdrawal. Democrats are in shambles, they report, as they fear that proposals for setting a timetable for withdrawal put forward by Sen. John Kerry and Rep. John Murtha will prove disastrous for the party in the November elections, due to the alleged unpopularity of this stance.

This conclusion, however, flies in the face of surveys by all major polling firms, as E&P has chronicled over the past two years.

[emptywheel]

Mitchell does pretty good work.

Maybe not as good as one CT blogger I know, but he's catching on.

[Mimikatz]

This is really a no-win issue for the GOP, because they are caught between their business (especially small business) base who love cheap labor and the nativists. They really can't put much of a crimp in the current low-wage business model, but many people are upset about the culture changing. And of course there are the demographics of future elections.

The Dems have less of a problem, but they too are caught, between workers who are undercut by illegal immigrants (who are exploited by business) and liberals who benefit from the large supply of service workers and are generally more cosmopolitan and tolerant.

The issue really isn't simple, nor are the solutions. But it is the GOP to whom people are looking for solutions and they can't deliver. At least the Dems look reasonable for trying to compromise. MMy guess is that whatever benefit there is from demagoguing the issue will backfire in 2 years. (See Wilson, Pete.)

[DemFromCT]

from National Journal this week:

06-24-2006 National Journal Insiders Poll

Richard E. Cohen and Peter Bell (Email this author)
© National Journal Group, Inc.

Q: What impact will Iraq have on the midterm election?
Republicans (45 votes)

Help Republicans 44 percent
Help Democrats 22 percent
Little impact 29 percent
Hurt incumbents, or too soon
to tell (volunteered) 4 percent

Q: What impact will Iraq have on the midterm election?

Democrats (39 votes)

Help Republicans 0 percent
Help Democrats 95 percent
Little impact 5 percent

Clearly Republican IQs on the Hill are a good 20 points lower than previously thought, even accounting for Allen and Kyl.

[DemFromCT]

Mimikatz, the difference is also that R constituencies in certain areas of the country want and expect action. It's not nearly the issue in CT it is in AZ.

[spartan68]

I always considered this a lose-lose proposition by the Republicans. As a Democrat, I was simply enjoying yet another factional split in their party. I mocked them.

But...three things strike me as at odds...

1. Republicans are the only ones who can change directions (for now).

2. The US public is unhappy with the direction things are headed, and hence WANT change.

3. The Republicans are split and can't deliver on the change that the public wants.

It is like they shot off their mouths and got everybody freaked out demanding action, then um...hmm... well, are not going to actually DO anything. Geez, it's like they are trying to look bad and piss people off.

[jasmine]

Dont underestimate the effectiveness of Republican attack on immigration locally. We may not be listening to the one they are hearing. Because I am surprise how my intelligent Republican relatives buy the stinker that Democrats are for bringing more illegal aliens and amnesty for them and Republicans are not. In a low voting elections this makes a big impact--as evidence on CA-50.

I suggest our local Dems fight this issue. Republicans are talking about listening tours. Dems should do the same thing with the purpose to of educating. There should be a thinktank to provide tools(talking points) to fight the issue locally--not in terms of talking to Democrats--but in the language of the Republicans and southerners.

[Hero]

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[Hero]

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