Philip Klein is aghast at the House speaker’s decision to pursue immigration reform in the lead-up to midterm elections:
If immigration reform passes, it will boost Democrats’ prospects in 2014 by demoralizing the GOP base and elevating President Obama, who just delivered a State of the Union Address that tacitly acknowledged he could no longer achieve anything major. If it fails again due to a conservative backlash, then it will trigger another wave of Democratic attacks on Republicans for being anti-Hispanic.
Per the chart above, Republicans favor neither legal status nor citizenship for illegal immigrants:
28% of Republicans oppose [temporary legal status] ‘strongly’. Around third also strongly oppose permanent residency (34%) and citizenship (36%) for illegal immigrants.
Overall, around half of the country (49%) favor a conditional ‘pathway to citizenship’ for illegal immigrants living in the U.S. that have passed background checks, paid fines and have jobs. 41% are opposed. This is about the level of support seen in YouGov polling over the last seven months. Granting temporary legal status is favored by 55%-36% opposed and permanent residency by 52%-39%. All three ideas are favored by the majority of Democrats.
Reihan thinks the GOP should focus on jobs instead:
If Republicans want to build trust with voters — foreign-born and otherwise — they ought to instead pass a serious jobs bill. In his State of the Union address, President Obama made it clear that he will use raising the federal minimum wage as a wedge issue to put GOP lawmakers on the back foot, and there is at least some reason to believe that he will succeed. A Gallup survey from late last year found that 58 percent of Republicans favored a substantial minimum wage hike, a fact that has greatly complicated conservative efforts to beat back a policy they fear will dampen future job growth. The perfect populist issue has fallen into the president’s lap, and a GOP immigration reform push will do nothing to dull its effectiveness.
But Ambers says now may be the “least worst” time for the Republicans to act. He lists reasons why this reckoning is inevitable:
(1) At some point, Republicans will no longer be able to build national political coalitions without reliably attracting more than 40 percent of the Latino vote. This is demographic destiny. The date of this eschaton can be delayed but not put off.
(2) Republicans will endure short term pain. (They’ll have given amnesty to people who don’t deserve it. They’ll be laying the groundwork for a cohort of Democratic voters. They’ll be ratifying ObamaCare.)
(3) Every cycle that passes by without immigration reform is a cycle that is one more removed from the day when Republicans will begin to rebuild a new political coalition that includes more Latinos.
John Avlon credits Boehner for taking on reform despite the political toxicity:
The good news is that Speaker John Boehner has finally decided to do what’s in the long-term best interest of his party and his country, betting big on what could be his most lasting positive legacy. “This problem’s been around for at least the last 15 years. It’s been turned into a political football. I think it’s unfair,” said the consummate dealmaker Boehner. “I think it’s time to deal with it. But how we deal with it is going to be critically important.”
The bad news is that the Tea Party and associated right-wing activist groups have already declared immigration reform a betrayal of conservative virtue, shots fired in the GOP civil war. A “Death Warrant for Conservatism,” declared the Powerline blog, while Heritage Action’s Dan Holler told The Daily Beast’s Patricia Murphy the proposal amounted to “a full-throated embrace of amnesty.”
Looking at the districts where the Latino vote is decisive, Cillizza concludes that immigration reform won’t help any Republicans get elected to the House this year:
Of the 24 districts with a Hispanic population of 25 percent or higher, half are places where the Hispanic vote amounts to something close to the only Democratic vote in heavily Republican seats. Only four of the 24 districts were won by President Obama in 2012, and only five others — California’s 25th, Florida’s 25th, California’s 39th, California’s 49th and New Mexico’s 2nd — can be considered even potentially competitive between the two sides. Those nine districts represent roughly four percent of the 232 seats the Republican majority currently controls in the House.
Passing immigration reform is, without question, the right move for a Republican party with an eye on winning back the White House in 2016 and staying competitive in the presidential race for decades to come. But, viewed from the how-does-this-affect-me-and-my-political-career perspective that most rank and file House Republicans see the world, passing immigration reform is a far more mixed bag politically speaking.
Sargent sees it differently, noting how the politics could actually be worse next year than right now:
Here’s an alternate reading: If the party tackles reform in 2015, it could get tied up in GOP presidential primary politics, pulling the GOP field to the right and leaving the eventual nominee saddled with extreme party rhetoric and positions on the issue, further alienating Latinos in the general election — exactly as happened in 2012. So while it might be difficult for Republicans to get reform done this year, braving it might be better than waiting.
Sean Trende wonders whether the push is happening now because Boehner fears a big win this fall:
First, a landslide would present as much of a problem as it does an opportunity for those who might want to revisit the issue in 2015, especially if the GOP establishment (or its donors) believes this is a must-do before the 2016 elections. The base would be even more agitated after a big victory, and appalled at any compromise on this issue if the GOP picks it up in 2015. In addition, absent a majority, Democrats wouldn’t have the same incentive to support a bill that contained further compromises, especially since they already view the bill as a compromise in the first place. They’d be better off watching Republicans flail and fail to pass a bill as their own base abandons them; this is roughly what happened in the mid-2000s. …
This isn’t to suggest that the GOP leadership is affirmatively doing this to minimize Republican gains. What I am saying is that they are closer to neutral about big gains than we might think, given the problems that the surge in base enthusiasm caused for them after the 2010 elections. So if they check agenda items like this off the list now and still get a landslide, great. But if they end up cooling off the base’s enthusiasm and get a narrow, establishment-based Senate majority and keep the House, well, that’s not the end of the world either. In fact, it would mean a more docile caucus in both Houses, which is good for those who run those Houses.
The Dish 