GOP Thinks Embracing Their Racism Counts as a Strategy

If you read my headline posts (and I've missed a few this week, sorry. I'll most likely miss tonight's too), you'll know that "David Brooks wrote something stupid again" is a running gag with me. He often goes to great lengths to promote the idea both parties are to blame for Washington being broken, taking Evel Knievel-like leaps of logic to arrive at his predetermined conclusions. But like pretty much all pundits, it proves impossible to always be wrong and the frustrating thing about Brooks is that he can be insightful when he drop his trademark false equivalency -- which he very seldom does. So I wasn't extremely surprised when I saw Taegan Goddard pick up two paragraphs from Brooks about immigration reform that were dead on the money. It's not that Brooks tends to be wrong so much as he's committed to not being right -- I guess because it gets him on TV so much (TV news show producers also love the innoffensive "both sides are just as bad" lie).

Here's his take on the GOP and immigration reform:

It's beginning to look as though we're not going to get an immigration reform law this year. House Republicans are moving in a direction that will probably be unacceptable to the Senate majority and the White House. Conservative commentators like my friends Bill Kristol and Rich Lowry are arguing that the status quo is better than the comprehensive approach passed by the Senate. The whole effort is in peril.

This could be a tragedy for the country and political suicide for Republicans, especially because the conservative arguments against the comprehensive approach are not compelling.

The thing about Brooks is, as the current Pope of the Church of High Broderism, that people take him seriously when he singles out one party as being the problem. Republicans won't of course -- mostly because they've become some weird hybrid fantasists/nihilists who don't take anything that happens to be real seriously -- but other pundits in the pundit echo chamber will. Not so much the political suicide part, which is pretty much what most of them are already saying, but the part about GOP arguments against reform being made out of suck. Republican excuses for killing immigration reform are mostly unpopular and all stupid.

And the stupidest of all is the mythical "missing white voter."

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The GOP's Nosedive Among Latino Voters

A new poll by Latino Decisions [pdf] includes an interesting factiod -- in 2004, George W. Bush carried 40% of the Latino vote. The idea that Latinos are all automatically Democratic voters -- an idea pushed by anti-immigrant white nationalists -- is obviously untrue. The thing is, even as Latinos grow as a segment of the population, you don't need to win a majority of that particular demographic to win an election. You can come up short of half and make up for it in other populations. The Latino vote didn't used to be hopelessly out of reach for Republicans. That is, until the Tea Party came along and began worshipping racists like Arizona Governor Jan Brewer and Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Once that happened, Republicans were circling the drain with Latino voters.

Today, one of the very best performing potential Republican presidential candidates is Marco Rubio. And "best performing" isn't a whole lot to brag about.

The Hill: A new poll of likely Hispanic voters in the 2016 presidential election shows strong support for the two candidates seen as potential Democratic nominees: former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vice President Biden.

The survey, by Latino Decisions, also revealed Republican candidates continue to significantly trail among Hispanic voters, with even champions of immigration reform like Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush significantly behind top Democrats.

[...]

According to the survey, Clinton remains the most popular candidate among the Hispanic electorate, mirroring other recent national surveys. The former first lady is seen positively by 73 percent of likely Hispanic voters, while 17 percent have a negative view.

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Obama and Immigration: Why the Right Thing to do Was Also the Smart Thing

President Obama's announcement that he will end deportation of undocumented people who came here as children was seen as a gamble. After all, it may get Latino voters more enthusiastic, but what about those who are freaked out about illegal immigration? The president was obviously throwing those votes away. For example, an analysis by the Associated Press:

There's not much President Barack Obama can do to boost the economy in the next five months, and that alone might cost him the November election. But on a range of social issues, Obama is bypassing Congress and aggressively using his executive powers to make it easier for gays to marry, women to obtain birth control, and, now, young illegal immigrants to avoid deportation.

It's a political gamble that might fire up conservatives, many of whom remain cool to Republican candidate Mitt Romney. Democrats think it's more likely to inspire enthusiasm among groups that were crucial to Obama's 2008 victory — young voters, women and Hispanics.

There is, of course, a glaring flaw in this thinking. Conservatives are already fired up by nearly four years of rightwing BS from Fox News and talk radio. When 51% of Republican voters are birthers and believe that Obama's a Socialist, Communist, Muslim terrorist, and atheist at once, it's a pretty clear indication that they don't like the man very much. Conservatives have worked hard to keep the outrage meter pegged on the right, so anything Obama does comes without consequence on that front.

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