Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Paving The Road To Defeat

The Republican caucus will hold an important meeting this afternoon where, based on reports leaked to the media, they will begin the process of handing the 2016 national election to the Democrats.
The stated purpose of this meeting is to cobble together a public strategy on immigration reform.  It would seem for all intent and purpose that their strategy has already been put into effect.
Speaker Boehner has publically stated that he will not bring any bill on immigration reform to the House floor unless it has the support of a majority of the Republican caucus.  Furthermore, he has proclaimed that the bi-partisan bill recently passed in the Senate is dead on arrival in the House, and that the House “will go their own way” and start from scratch.
  POLITICO reports that privately, Republican leaders favor a more piecemeal approach: “a border security bill this month…maybe one or two items a month in the fall” with the intent of dealing immigration reforms a long slow death via the political process.
Translation:  Republicans have no interest in passing any legislation on immigration reform.
So, why Republicans would block legislation that is favored by a vast majority of the voters…particularly the rapidly growing Latino community?
Because Republicans are not interested in the will of the country; they are only interested in the will of their gerrymandered districts…districts which are mostly white and strongly opposed to any form of pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants.  
Republicans believe that they can secure the House in the 2014 mid-terms without passing comprehensive immigration reform.    If they have to deal with this topic they would prefer to do it after the mid-terms when they believe they will wield more power against a lame duck president.
That strategy will cost Republicans dearly.
In the aftermath of the last presidential election Republicans promised to do better.  They promised to be more inclusive.  They promised to reach out to the Latino, Asian and African American communities.  They claimed to understand that such change was necessary if they wanted to be a contender on the national stage.  Their words say one thing…but their actions say something quite different.
Republicans are making the same mistake with immigration reform now that they made with voting rights in 2011 and 2012.  Republicans tried to suppress the African American vote by making it harder for them to cast their ballots.  The result was a historic turnout by a pissed off African American community that swept Barak Obama to a second term.
Republicans cannot win a national election without the Latino vote.  Obstructing immigration reform will only encourage Latinos to flock to the polls and make their case at the ballot box.  It will be 2012 all over again.
The Republican Party continues to cow tow to their radical right wing base.  
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
               

No comments:

Post a Comment