California Republican: Immigration Is 'Killing the Republican Party'

[pampango]

http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2010/05/28-7

Primary Battle Drives GOP Candidates to the Right, Drives Latino Voters Away

As Republicans continue to embrace anti-immigrant measures like the new Arizona law, block attempts to move forward on a comprehensive immigration reform overhaul, and wage primary campaigns over who can sound tougher on the issue of illegal immigration, the state of California offers a fresh reminder of the political perils of such an approach.

In a brilliant piece in Politico today, Jonathan Martin writes that the California Republican gubernatorial primary's focus on anti-immigration measures may be, "the political equivalent of biting into forbidden fruit - tantalizing at the moment but potentially fatal in a general-election matchup with Jerry Brown."

Allan Hoffenblum, a Republican strategist in Los Angeles, says of immigration, "This issue is killing the Republican Party." In response to the back and forth battle between Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner, he added, "This is bringing back all the fears that the Republican Party is a white man's party," Hoffenblum said of the primary's back and forth on immigration. "It's depressing." Fellow California Republican consultant Adam Mendelsohn says, "It's why we've taken a bloodbath in the last 10 years."

Martin's story also notes that the California Republican Party is still reeling from its past demagoguery on immigration issues - specifically, the 1994 passage of the anti-immigrant Proposition 187, which helped cement Latino voters as a Democratic bloc in California and turned a once-purple state blue. NBC's political team recently noted that in "presidential races from 1952 to 1988, Dems won California just once. After Wilson's Prop. 187, Republicans haven't come close to winning the nation's biggest state. The next California could be Texas, and the GOP can't afford to have that big state become competitive."

Of course, Republicans across the country do not seem to be heeding the lessons of California. Whether it's John McCain's primary-driven about-face on immigration and call to "complete the danged fence" or Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul's advocacy to change the 14th Amendment to remove its birthright citizenship component for the U.S. born children of undocumented immigrants, the anti-immigrant faction of the Party is winning the day.

According to Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America's Voice, "How does the GOP ever think they can win back California, hold Texas and Florida, or have a chance to re-take the White House if their candidates continue to rip pages from the Tom Tancredo blueprint for political irrelevancy? Though the lessons from California should serve as a giant stop sign when it comes to anti-immigrant politics, the national Republican Party seems content to ignore the traffic signal and barrel straight through the intersection."