Who Will Get The Blame?

The conventional wisdom is that the GOP is taking it on the chin over the party’s split on immigration reform. Funny thing about conventional wisdom – it’s often wrong – especially in politics. I don’t pretend to know what the ultimate political fallout will be but it’s probably time for a reality check.

Polls have given us mixed messages on who gets the political chits as things stand today. There are, however, some things that appear directionally correct. For example, in all polls I have read Americans, by a good majority, want better border security of one fashion or another. The House bill includes that. It goes too far to say that Americans want a 1500 mile fence but it does not go to far to say that they want a “virtual” fence. It’s also apparent that Americans have no stomach for the stiff penalties included in the House bill and are more inclined to to think about stopping the bleeding than completely fixing the entire problem. Obviously attitudes are subject to change as information is digested but that’s about where we stand.

As in many contemporary issues, Americans are pretty equally divided on this one with the single exception that a majority wants stronger border security. We can do that. But doing so is going to take some hefty compromise and the only thing that could have accomplished that was passage of the Senate bill and hard knuckle negotiations in the conference committee. That looks like an impossibility right now although stranger things have happened.

Moving back to the conventional wisdom, however, I was struck by a piece written by Ruben Navarrette of the San Diego Union Tribune with the headline The Democrats Sell Out Latinos. I dismissed it at first thinking it was simply political twaddle – until I ran across this quote from Cecilia Munoz, vice president of the National Council of La Raza:

I don’t believe that it’s wise for Democrats to come to our community and ask for votes by saying: ‘Hey, we kept an immigration bill from going forward.’ … People understand when they’re being used

This seems remarkable to me for the fact that this comes from La Raza.

And there is more:

The Washington Post said in an editorial: “Democrats — whether their motive was partisan advantage or legitimate fear of a bad bill emerging from conference with the House — are the ones who refused, in the end, to proceed with debate on amendments, which is, after all, how legislation gets made.”

Frank Sharry, the executive director of the liberal National Immigration Forum, said in a statement: “We cannot escape the conclusion that the Democratic Senate leadership was more interested in keeping the immigration issue alive in the run-up to midterms than in enacting immigration reform legislation.”

And Sen. Kennedy told The Associated Press: “Politics got ahead of policy on this.” He then refused, according to the article, to defend Reid’s performance. The story noted that, “Outside the Senate, several Democratic strategists concluded that the best politics was to allow the bill to die.”

I don’t know if any of this will ultimately resonate with the Latino community – but I don’t sell them short.

Those, however, that think this is the issue that will bring GOP power to an end in November are suffering from a bit of wishful thinking. The picture is far too blurry to make that statement right now and there are some very smart strategist in the RNC that might figure out a way to turn lemons in lemonade.

Only time will tell but I’m taking all bets off the table.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 12th, 2006 at 3:10 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.