The Senate "amnesty" bill, in addition to bad policy, is just bad politics. It's chances in the House of Representatives are so far looking fairly poor without significant modification. This means that the Senate GOP may very well have managed to alienate the party base to a massive degree without even managing to actually achieve their desired policies. Furthermore, those policies appear to only have the most minimal of enforcement aspects, and allow not only for current illegal immigrants to stay in country (which I think can be defended reasonably) but for those persons to get fast track to citizenship, and for massive numbers of family members of those persons to come into the country. This all without any real border enforcement. This is worse then the 1986 bill that Reagan signed.
The great irony is that current aliens are seem hesitant to the new law's requirements, and speak of it "driving them further underground." Such talk raises serious questions for people on both sides of the immigrant debate about what solutions are possible on these issues.
On the Presidential front, Romney came out strong against the bill, with Rudy not coming all out against it but noting that law enforcement elements were necessary. Speculation over whether this bill, which had is partially the work of collaboration of John McCain and Ted Kennedy, will halt Guliani's slide among social conservatives (who also tend to be immigrant-hawks), has already began, although in the past Guliani has also been rather liberal on this issue in the past. This could opportunity for Mitt Romney to rebound, for Duncan Hunter to emerge, or Fred Thompson's chance to enter the race.
Serious questions are abound regarding the effect on '08 turnout. Several leading conservative bloggers have encouraged their readership to encourage the GOP to change course through the rather radical method ending their allegiances to the party, and ending financial supporting to otherwise solidly conservative candidates who voted for the McCain-Kennedy bill. Complaints have been made that the party is not listening to their constituents, or, in a more Jacksonian sense, the people who got them elected.
Strictly speaking, of course, it is not usual for a political to disagree with their constituents or vote for something that is out of step with their district. It is worth mentioning that President Bush was elected despite having a more liberal immigration policy then not only the Republican party, but the country as a whole. He certainly never kept it a secret (although he may, like any politician, said things like "this is not amnesty" that is debatable in a pragmatic sense if not an technical sense). Still, the fact that the Republican party, especially in the Senate, and including social conservatives, has views so starkly different from their own base on the issue of both immigration and illegal immigration is rather striking. The failure of the President, and much of the GOP Senator's to failure to understand the consequences of angering the party base does not bode well for the parties future.
18 May 2007, 4:07 pm
