"Republican Immigration Nightmare Could Recur"

[applegrove]

Republican Immigration Nightmare Could Recur

by Mckay Coppins at Buzz Feed

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mckaycoppins/republican-immigration-nightmare-could-recur

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But the conservative campaign to kill the immigration bill in Washington ultimately succeeded — at a high electoral cost. Whereas exit polls in 2004 showed Bush receiving upwards of 40% of the Latino vote, that figure plummeted to about 31% for John McCain in 2008, and 27% for Mitt Romney last year. The reasons for the Hispanic exodus are complex and varied, but few Republican strategists these days will argue with the notion that the 2007 culture war on immigration reform stained the party's brand.

Six years later, as a new bipartisan immigration bill makes its way through the Senate, anxious Republicans are worried that the cycle is beginning to repeat itself.

"Go to sites like RedState or Breitbart and search headlines about immigration and Rubio, and then look at the comments. Some of them are really, really nasty," said one prominent Republican strategist who spoke on condition of anonymity. "That's the thing that I worry about a little bit. That kind of tells me that the harsh xenophobic thing from 2007 could be coming back."

The strategist added that a large-scale conservative campaign against immigration reform would be particularly disastrous if the bill actually passes, creating millions of new Latino voters over the next decade who would be tasked with choosing between the party whose president signed the reform measure and the party whose members fought to keep them out.


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