Will Arizona Swing Blue in 2018?

Trump and anti-immigrant extremist Arpaio.

One of the big questions for 2018 is whether or not Hispanics and Millennials will turn out in force at the polls come November.  If they do, the 2018 midterms and other elections could be brutal for Republicans. Hopefully, Democrats across the country are replicating the ground game and get out the vote effort Virginia Democrats under Ralph Northam mounted in 2017.  One state that many pundits and party operatives are watching is Arizona, which among other things, has an open U.S.Senate seat.  Two of the would be GOP nominees are trying to out-Trump Der Trumpenführer when it comes to Hispanic bashing.  The other is swinging to the hard right to court the racist GOP base.  With luck, this primary will motivate Hispanics and Millennials to seek revenge in the November general election.  A piece in The Guardian looks at the dynamics in play in Arizona.  Here are excerpts:

With its growing population of young Hispanic voters, Arizona has long seemed a tempting prize for Democrats. Year after year, electoral success has eluded them. As the 2018 midterms approach, with Arizona one of the biggest political battlegrounds, Democrats are indefatigably optimistic.

Issues that animate liberals across the country – immigration, healthcare, education – are raging in Arizona. Last month, public school teachers walked out of their classrooms – and won salary increases and more funding for schools. The state is also at the center of the roiling debate over illegal immigration and border enforcement. It is home to Hispanics, 31% of the population, and suburban white voters who strongly disagree with Trump’s hardline politics.

Republicans outnumber Democrats in the state and have nearly twice as many precinct committee officials. But Democrats say their numbers have jumped since 2016 and the combined total of unaffiliated and third-party voters is greater than those for either party. Accordingly, the state Democratic party has launched a 15-county strategy to reach new voters across the states and especially independents.

Democrats say they are optimistic they can pick up at least one, possibly two congressional seats. They are also excited about the possibility of winning control of the state senate and insist they have a chance of unseating the Republican governor, Doug Ducey. The biggest prize of all is an open Senate seat that could determine control of the chamber. Republicans, of course, push back.
 Chuck Coughlin, a veteran Republican strategist, was less emphatic. Though he said too many Democrats were running as progressives in a state that is still conservative and waved off the chance of a defeat for Ducey, who negotiated the pay rise for teachers, he said the Senate seat, held by a conservative Republican since 1995, “clearly leans blue”.
 Immigration has already emerged as a defining issue of the battle for Arizona’s seat. The three Republican candidates have largely embraced Trump’s agenda – policies several party strategists quietly worry are too far right for the general election.

The Republican primary is a three-way contest between US congresswoman Martha McSally, a decorated air force veteran and party favorite; Kelli Ward, a former state senator and far-right conservative; and Arpaio, whom Trump pardoned after he was convicted of contempt of court for refusing to stop racially profiling Hispanics.

Democrats hope a nasty Republican primary will open the door to a first Democratic senator in a generation. US congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema, a “Blue Dog” centrist and the presumptive nominee, has positioned herself as an “independent voice” and consensus builder, willing to work across the aisle. While the Republicans vie to be seen as the most conservative, Coughlin said, Sinema is honing a positive, general-election message, in English and Spanish.
 McCain, the six-term Arizona senator who is fighting brain cancer at his ranch in Sedona, warns that Republicans are “on the wrong side” of the immigration debate and risk losing Latino voters for a generation.

“Most Arizona high school seniors are Hispanic,” McCain writes. “Do you think most of them would consider voting for the party that pulled their friends out of school, took them away from their teams and clubs and neighborhoods and put them on buses to Mexico?”

Joseph Garcia, director of the Morrison Institute Latino Public Policy Center at Arizona State University, said Latinos made up more than a fifth of the Arizona electorate in 2016 election but their influence was limited by low voter turnout.
 A study he worked on, however, found that by 2030 Arizona could become a “blue, progressive state”, in large part because of the Latino vote.

“The die is cast as far as changing demographics [go],” Garcia said. “It’s not hard to predict the future when you have the numbers.”

Trump Riles GOP During Meeting Aimed at Finding Common Ground

Donald Trump continues to engage in behavior that confuses and/or enrages Republican politicians. Yes, Trump has ridden a wave of racism, xenophobia and extremism carefully nurtured by the GOP for nearly two decades or more.  Yet his erratic behavior is seemingly inexplicable at times unless one keeps in mind the fact that Trump suffers from narcissistic personality disorder - a disorder that makes his opinion of the moment the only one that matters and that makes all focus on satiating his uncontrollable ego and tempestuous love affair with himself.  A column in Talking Points Memo looks at some of the dismay and blow back arising in the wake of Trump's meeting with congressional Republicans that was supposed to be aimed at building party unity.  Here are highlights:

Everything that happened in that meeting underscores Trump's extreme ignorance and, just as importantly, extreme indifference to being ignorant. But the exchange about Hispanic support has a unique significance in the context of that meeting.

Trump was asked - not surprisingly and not unreasonably - what about your unpopularity with Hispanics voters and what about down-ballot races? Trump's response: No, Hispanics love me!

This is obviously ridiculous on its face. The GOP is generally unpopular with Hispanics and Trump is personally unpopular with Hispanic Americans at a level that is historic and unprecedented. We know this from a limitless trove of public opinion data. As a factual matter, it's no more ridiculous than the 12th Article of the Constitution Trump pledged to protect or numerous other examples of Trump nonsense. But it has a particular import here.

This was a private meeting, meant to reassure skittish members of Congress. A predictable and half way reasonable way to respond might have been, "Look, the border is important and it's what our core voters care about. But we've got a plan to soften that opposition from Hispanic voters over coming months."

Given everything we've seen, that wouldn't be a terribly convincing response. But it would be a response that at least engaged the reality of the situation. If I were a Republican member of Congress and heard what Trump said, I'd be angry. And I strongly suspect many of them were. If I'm a GOP member of Congress I hear that and think, "Damn, you've got zero plan to ensure I don't lose my job. I can't even tell if you care. But you definitely haven't even thought about it." 

We often say that the GOP has collectively cast anchors from the world of empiricism and the reality based universe others inhabit. But even the biggest numskull in the House, the biggest nonsense spewer is very, very empirical when it comes to getting reelected. . . . . they want real answers on this one very specific question.

When that's Trump's answer, his real answer in private, to a serious and for some Republicans existential danger, it's immediately clear there's no there there, no net, no back-up plan, nothing but a jackass riffing and talking the way he does when he's trying to get a mark to sign on the dotted line. That's fine about global warming, Putin, ISIS, virtually anything. But politicians need to get reelected. That's real. I have great confidence that many of the electeds in that room weren't just dumbfounded by the Hispanics response. They were mad.

The GOP establishment and many of the elected officials nurtured the base that loves Trump.  They are reaping what they have sown.  I continue to hope that Trump destroys the GOP - it needs to die given how ugly and foul it has become.

The GOP’s Cruz/Trump Cancer

I complain often about what has happened to the Republican Party, a party that I once strongly supported.  Now, it is like insane asylum peopled by white supremacists, right wing religious fanatics, and spittle flecked racists who are furious about their waning white privilege and the demographic changes sweeping the country.  As a piece in The Daily Beast underscores, the current vile state of the GOP traces back to opportunistic members of the party establishment like Karl Rove that welcomed in the ugliest elements of American society for short term election victories.  Now, the swamp fever ridden party base has hijacked the GOP and the so-called party establishment seems powerless to stop the monster it has unleashed.  Enter Donal Trump and Ted Cruz who like a cancer are moving to kill the Republican Party for perhaps a generation.  The piece has dome great quotes from Lindsey Graham, a/k/a the Palmetto Queen, who is on target as to the problems facing the GOP and the menace posed by Trump and Cruz.  Here are some article highlights:

When asked to assess the presidential prospects of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, Sen. Lindsey Graham famously said, “It’s like being shot or poisoned. I think you get the same result, whether it’s quick or takes a long time.”

Republicans breathing a sigh of relief because Cruz beat Trump in Iowa are rejoicing at the prospect of being poisoned. They may have dodged a bullet, but there’s a long-term critical condition they can’t afford to ignore.

Because Cruz and Trump do not represent different visions of the Republican Party so much as different manifestations of the same kind of conservative populism that gets weak-kneed watching a strongman preach with fact-free certainty from the right side of the “us vs. them” divide.

These Crump voters see incivility and inexperience as political assets. Their candidates are proudly dividers rather than uniters, channeling white populist anger at undocumented immigrants and Muslims as well as President Obama. Amid the emotional blurring of church and state, social-issue litmus tests have moved so far right that libertarians need not apply. The Crump coalition constitutes a majority of the Republican field right now. And they can’t win a general election.

The rise of Cruz and Trump are symptoms of a larger problem in the GOP, a problem of their own making. Because the Republican Party systematically purged its center-right, it doesn’t have the ballast to withstand Wingnuts anymore.

Trump’s strength in national polls, where he still leads by double digits, was spurred by fear-mongering over illegal immigrants, Fortress America promises to build a border wall, and a proposed ban on Muslim travel to the United States
And while conservatives might be relieved by the Iowa results, Ted Cruz does not represent a return to normalcy in the GOP. Despised by his Senate colleagues, his chief accomplishment is shutting down the government, leading a coalition that his fellow Republican Devin Nunes memorably described as “lemmings with suicide vests.”

In contrast to Trump, Cruz is the darling of the conservagencia, because he reflects their beliefs. He is a card-carrying member of the sub-generation that grew up with the conservative catechism, a steady diet of right-wing texts offered up by his father. 

The rise of Crump is a result of the RINO-hunting that narrowed the base to the point that the Grand Old Party can be easily hijacked by a small but intense group with little interest in winning general elections and even less interest in governing.

The current mess began when mandarins of the conservative movement insisted that the two parties should be cleanly divided on ideological lines. This began the process of marginalizing people who loudly espoused libertarian views on social issues or a more centrist approach to creating winning coalitions.  Their efforts were reinforced by the rise of partisan media and the rigged system of redistricting, which has virtually eliminated competitive general elections from Congress.

Not so long ago, each party fielded a diverse coalition, with progressive Republicans from the North balanced by conservative Democrats in the South. A byproduct was a degree of stability in the system: Divided government was not by definition dysfunctional government because bipartisan governing coalitions could always be created, birthing everything from the Marshall Plan to the Interstate Highway System to civil-rights legislation to welfare reform.

But as geographic and ideological polarization took hold, those coalitions became more difficult to build.  By the start of the 21st century, Karl Rove’s play-to-the-base strategy became the rage, arguing that a razor-thin win was as much of a mandate as a landslide. The red state versus blue state mantra meant that the centuries-old centrist New England Republican tradition was almost extinguished within a decade after running the region as recently as the 1990s.

Whatever unhinged anger came out of the protests was more than tolerated with a wink and nod by Republicans who felt they could harness the fury into election victories and then channel it into something constructive once in control of Congress. But the mob quickly set the tone, creating conditions where elected leaders needed to pander to the outer reaches of politics to avoid their own primary challenges.  Center-right senators were the first to bite the dust, condemned as heretics to the cause.

Another measure of the creeping Crump cancer is the rise of Marco Rubio as the much-spun savior of the center-right. This “establishment” voice was a Tea Party insurgent six years ago. His rhetoric is optimistic and inclusive, but he continues to resist marriage equality and deny climate change, while abandoning his own immigration overhaul bill and opposing abortion even in cases of rape and incest. This is center-right only by the standards of the Crump era.

Speaking to The Daily Beast from Manchester, New Hampshire, Sen. Lindsey Graham was typically blunt in his assessment . . . . . “Our party’s got nuts again on immigration, and Trump started this. Trump’s position on immigration’s insane. . . . . .  every problem we’ve had, Trump has made worse.”   The Republican path to victory means reaching out to women as well as Hispanics, according to Graham. “Name one person who’s been more insulting to women than Donald Trump. When it comes to abortion, I’m pro-life. [But] very few people support the idea of no exception for rape and incest. That will define Rubio and Cruz with young women… that you can have no exceptions for rape and incest, and sell it with a smile, you’re kiddin’ yourself.”

Given the growing diversity of the American electorate and you have a disaster brewing whether Trump or Cruz is the nominee. Both men are underwater in support from independents, women, blacks, Hispanics, and suburban voters.

It’s time to stop pretending that the Crumps’ polarizing populist appeals represent ideas or ideals as much as channeling inchoate rage at changing demographics. The always thoughtful former Bush aide Pete Wehner recently wrote, “If Mr. Trump heads the Republican Party, it will no longer be a conservative party; it will be an angry, bigoted, populist one.”

But that prediction also serves as a diagnosis of the GOP’s predicament, which Trump and Cruz have only revealed. The problem will persist and lead to more general-election losses until the base of the party is broadened. Until then, the Republican primaries will look and feel like a fatalistic circus.  As Senator Graham told The Daily Beast, “that’s what so stupid about this thing. It’s like buying a ticket on the Titanic after you see the movie.  You know how it ends.”

The GOP Moves Backwards Again

With religion on a sharp decline (see the previous post) and vast demographic changes overtaking the country one would think that the Republican Party would begin to grasp that retreating back to a fictional version of the 1950's is long term political suicide.  But coming to such a conclusion seems impossible in a political party where ignorance is celebrated and objective reality is simply ignored if it doesn't conform to an ideology increasingly out of touch with the lives and views of most Americans.  Among those leading the charge to the past in the GOP is Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions who makes the Alabama politicians from the years I lived in that state look progressive in comparison.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the GOP obsession with going backwards in time and ignoring pressing need for change.  Here are highlights:

If you want to see where the impulse to reform the Republican Party in a more libertarian direction of limited government, social tolerance, and free markets goes to die, look no further than the recent attacks on immigration and freer trade by Jeff Sessions, the influential senator from Alabama. Every time the GOP seems finally ready to orient itself in a forward-looking, post-culture-war direction, some holdover from an America that never quite existed to begin with blows his whistle and the next generation of would-be party leaders fall into line like the obedient von Trapp children in Sound of Music.

Indeed, Scott Walker has explicitly attributed his remarkable flip-flop on immigration to conversations with Sessions. Just a few years ago, the Wisconsin governor and leading Republican presidential candidate used to favor liberal immigration and a path to citizenship for illegals. Now he’s calling for “no amnesty” and universal, invasive, and error-prone E-Verify systems for “every employer...particularly small businesses and farmers and ranchers.”

[H]e wants to curb not just illegal and low-skill immigration but also the number of folks chasing the American Dream under H1-B visas, which apply to “workers in short supply” who are sponsored by specific employers with specialized needs.

In a recent Washington Post op-ed, Sessions complained  that “legal immigration is the primary source of low-wage immigration into the United States.” Exhibiting the zero-sum, fixed-pie economic thinking that conservatives and Republicans routinely chastise in liberals and Democrats, Sessions continues, “We don’t have enough jobs for our lower-skilled workers now. What sense does it make to bring in millions more?”

Sessions brings the same populist and anti-immigrant animus to his critique of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the trade deal the Obama administration is brokering between the United States and 11 other countries. Sessions, along with progressive Democrats such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Martin O’Malley, only see the shadowy machinations of elites at work in the reauthorization of Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) or “fast-track” negotiations.

Such rules, which have been standard operating procedure since 1974, allow the executive branch to negotiate terms and then bring the deal to Congress for an up or down vote.

Contra Sessions, there is no clear public desire for reducing immigration, except among Republicans. Fully 84 percent of Republicans are dissatisfied with the current generous levels, a super-majority that only shows how out of touch the GOP faithful is with the rest of the country. Earlier this year, Gallup found that 54 percent of Americans are either satisfied with current levels of immigration or want more immigration. Just 39 percent were dissatisfied and want less immigration, which is 11 points lower than the same figure in 2008.

[I]mmigrants are twice as likely to start their own businesses as native-born Americans. The fact is they tend to be either higher- or lower-skilled than the typical worker, so they complement rather than displace natives. And, as the Cato Institute’s Alex Nowrasteh documents in his exhaustive rebuttal to Sessions’s Washington Post piece, immigrants not only consume less welfare and commit less crime than the average American, they pay taxes (often without any hope of getting the money back) and stop coming when the economy sours.

Sadly, lived reality holds little appeal for Sessions and Republicans such as Walker, who are instead doing their damnedest to turn the party of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush decisively against its long and glorious history of relatively open borders and freer trade.

With 2016 coming into clearer and clearer focus—and with Hillary Clinton doing her own flip-flop on immigration and now embracing newcomers—the GOP and its presidential candidates have a choice to make. They can follow Ronald Reagan’s example and embrace libertarian positions on immigration and free trade. Or they can follow Jeff Sessions’s retrograde populism and see just how few Hispanic votes they can pull.

Cultural Fascism and the GOP

It's not just the Virginia Republican Party that has been infiltrated by extremists.  To see the broader problem, one only had to follow the gather of lunatics and extremists at the recent CPAC confab where would be GOP presidential candidates paraded through doing everything but putting on rouge while holding a Bible under their arms as they prostituted them selves a crowd that worships ignorance and could have been confused for a religious gathering or a KKK convention.  The thought of Jeb Bush meeting with an extremists and hate monger like Tony Perkins ought to send chills down the spines of saner Americans.  A piece in Salon looks at the larger problem of today's GOP although the CPAC gathering certainly provided a frightening glimpse at the ugly reality of today's GOP.  Here are excerpts:

Another CPAC came to an end this weekend. The hungover millennials are back to campus by now, with their backpacks full of Rand Paul buttons, and the oldsters are counting their profits. The consensus in the press is that this year’s extravaganza was a more sedate affair than usual, with the “Happiness is Hillary Clinton’s face on a milk carton” T-shirts relegated to the dustiest corners of the hall.

Brent Bozell issued a predictably turgid assessment of the threat America faces from terrorists the left:

“Tyranny is knocking at our door,” he warned, before declaring that the left “will do anything, using any means at their disposal, legal or otherwise” to strip conservatives of their freedom of speech and saying that the government isn’t “all that different from the East German Stasi.”  “Cultural fascism has arrived in America,” Bozell said. “Let us understand this soberly and unequivocally”

But despite the fact that the new CPAC organizers encouraged a slightly less fringy tone, they were unable to do anything about the fringy policies. Even the Great Whitebread Hope, Scott Walker (who, predictably, committed yet another embarrassing gaffe), reversed his position on immigration reform. He was for it before he was against it. And needless to say, the legislative game of chicken the House of Representatives was playing in the background over the funding of the Department of Homeland Security proved that the Tea Party wing of the GOP isn’t dead yet. Until the establishment is able to put a stake through its zombie heart, they have a big problem on their hands.

One little discussed CPAC panel on demographics discussed a new bipartisan report that reveals a daunting statistic that will make it very, very difficult for Scott Walker or any other anti-immigration Republican to win the White House in 2016. Ariel Edwards-Levy at Huffington Post reported:

“The fundamental challenge for my side is the seemingly inexorable change in the composition of presidential electorates,” Republican pollster Whit Ayres, whose clients include Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), said during a panel discussing the report. “And there’s no reason to believe that that’s going to stop magically.”

The demographic change poses little problem for the GOP in midterm elections, when young and minority voters are far more likely than older, white voters to stay home. But in the run-up to 2016, the demographic trend has some Republicans citing a need for change.

 In 2004, Republicans’ most recent presidential victory, George W. Bush won 58 percent of the white vote, and 26 percent of the non-white vote — numbers that would lose him the White House today, Ayres said.

‘”That’s the stunning part for me in running these numbers — to realize that the last Republican to win a presidential election, who reached out very aggressively to minorities, and did better than any Republican nominee before or since among minorities, still didn’t achieve enough of both of those groups in order to put together a winning percentage” for 2016, Ayres said.

Today the Republican Party is so aggressively hostile to minorities that many of them are willing to defund the federal police agencies entirely rather than allow the president to soften our policies toward undocumented workers. They are likewise unable to contain their most vicious bigots — an open David Duke ally is a current member of the House leadership. And neither can they keep their primitive patriarchs from promoting barbaric practices like forcing girls to give birth to their own siblings. They have, in short, taken several giant step backward from the time when George W. Bush eked out a win by getting a quarter of minority voters to cast their ballots for his ticket. The chances of them being able to even get half of that today are getting fewer by the minute. And according to their pollsters, they need to exceed his numbers to win.

Over the weekend you started to hear some rumblings from a few Republicans on TV who categorized the right-wing fringe in the House as “delusional.” But keep in mind that they don’t think they’re delusional because they are insulting massive numbers of voters without whom they cannot win the presidency.

But nobody should be fooled into thinking that the various calls from Republicans in recent days to end this game of chicken has very much to do with a sober realization that they cannot afford to keep alienating minority voters if they ever expect to win the presidency. That may be the reality but it’s a reality they simply cannot face. Their base simply won’t let them.

Despite their best efforts to suppress the vote, gerrymander districts in their favor and otherwise try to rig the system, they simply cannot win a national election unless they change their approach toward racial minorities. At the moment the white tail is wagging the multicolor dog and there’s little evidence that’s going to change any time soon.

If one isn't a white, heterosexual, far right Christian, you simply are not welcome in today's GOP.  And the fascists at CPAC plan on keeping things that way.

Another GOP Meltdown Bodes Ill for 2016

Yesterday, after gaining all kinds of negative publicity, John Boehner and his band of GOP cretins among the House of Representatives punted on Home Land Security funding and passed a spending bill for the coming year.   That's the good news.  The bad news is that now the GOP will face another show down a year from now in the lead up to the 2016 presidential election when it will be important that the GOP can show that it can govern - a concept lost on the Christofascist/Tea Party darlings of the GOP base.  Kathleen Parker has again ceased, at least temporarily, drinking the GOP Kool-Aid and writes in the Washington Post that the GOP is setting itself up for failure in 2016.  Here are column excerpts:

I’m getting that deja vu feeling as House Republicans these past several days have failed to alter the public’s perception that they’re incapable of governing. 

This week marked Episode 2, Season 2 in the series “Homeland Security Face-Off.” Subtitle: “How Republicans Forfeit the White House in 2016.”

We’ve seen this all before. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) tries to get his conference to act rationally, but the 52 or so whose mission is to act disruptively at any opportunity force the House majority into a “bad deal,” to borrow from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s description of our current negotiations with Iran. 

President Obama, much of the media and the tea party gang share common cause in placing blame for the House’s fumblings on Boehner’s leadership. But comparisons to previous speakers are too facile. Times change.

Lest the tea party faction or the Freedom Caucus construct an effigy in my image, allow me to note that, yes, they are doing their people’s bidding. These folks who prefer shutdowns to compromise were elected to stand on principle, no matter the consequences. Given that most are in no danger of being challenged in their home districts, they seem perfectly content to oblige.

But principles defended at the expense of pragmatic application is the business of priests.

Here on terra firma, if you lose, you lose. You may be reelected as approval for your zeal as a live-free-or-die, stand-with-Bibi, “Duck Dynasty” patriot, but to what effect if one’s ability to bring about change is neutered in the process?

Not even Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), who is a member of the tea party, has been able to whip his brethren into line. Herding cats? Loading frogs into a wheelbarrow? There is yet no simile or metaphor adequate to describe the moment. How about this: They are like the football player who intercepts a pass, then turns around and runs the ball over the opposing team’s goal line.

Insisting that Homeland Security funding be attached to the president’s executive actions to curtail deportations of immigrants here illegally — a predictably losing gamble for Republicans — was a touchdown for the other team.

Whether this solution changes public perception sufficiently — and whether it can hold up through the Republican primary process — is yet to be seen. In the meantime, what we do know is that a Republican can’t win the presidency if the party more widely is considered not ready for prime time.

Without the 40 percent of the Hispanic vote widely considered necessary to win — and enough independents and moderates who are turned off by the more-righteous-than-thou Freedom Caucus — a Republican doesn’t stand a chance.

The GOP ceased to be a party of rational thought and logic years ago now when the Christofascists - the Tea Party is truly a bunch of Christofascists parading under a different name along with white supremacists - were allowed to hijack the party base.  When those how blindly follow dogma unsupported by objective reality and knowledge, are allowed control, what we are now seeing is the only plausible outcome.  The insanity will continue. 

What if the Republicans Win Control of the Senate?

Next Tuesday will decide which political party controls the United States Senate for the next two years.  I'd be lying if I said I did not want the Democrats to manage to retain control.  Up until now, the Senate has saved the nation from the batshitery of the GOP controlled House of Representatives and, if the GOP takes the control of the Senate, only a presidential veto will stop the worst of the insanity.  A piece in the Washington Post by partners in a Republican political and public affairs research firm somewhat sanely conjectures on what will not be accomplished by the GOP even if the Senate falls to the GOP. Don't expect the GOP base or the political whores of the Christofascists/Tea Party to make such a  rational analysis of what a win of control of the Senate would mean. In fact, a win of the Senate on Tuesday may set the stage for GOP defeats in the future because many in the GOP will close their eyes to the need to change.  Here are column highlights:

[M]ost models are predicting a Republican takeover of the Senate, as well as gains in the House, following Tuesday’s midterm vote.

Such a victory gives the Republican Party a significant opportunity to recast itself in the eyes of voters. But let’s be clear: Winning on Tuesday will not necessarily portend success in 2016. After all, big GOP wins in 1994 and 2010 did not lead to a President Dole or a President Romney in the subsequent elections. In fact, the Republican Party hasn’t managed to string together three successful elections since the 2000-2002-2004 political cycles.

So what does a GOP win in 2014 mean for the coming presidential contest? Let’s start with what it doesn’t mean:

It doesn’t mean we’ve solved the GOP math problem.  Democrats like to accuse Republicans of being bad at science, but in fact we’re really bad at math. Winning in a non-presidential-turnout year, when older and white voters make up a larger percentage of the electorate, should convince no one that we’ve fixed our basic shortfalls with key electoral groups, including minorities and younger voters.

Assuming that the Democrats replicate their 2012 electoral success with minority voters two years from now, and assuming that Hispanics grow as a percentage of the overall electorate, which they will, we calculate that Democrats will already have almost half (24 percent) of the votes they need to win a majority of Americans in 2016. To win 50.1 percent of the popular vote, we estimate, Republicans will need nearly 64 percent of the white vote . . . 

Further, there is little evidence that GOP prospects are improving with younger voters, especially younger women. We can no longer depend on voters 45 and older to carry Republican candidates to victory (Romney won voters 40 and older, but still lost the election.)

It doesn’t mean we’ve solved the GOP map problem.   Republicans can win in red states. Tuesday should bear that out pretty well. But the challenge for the GOP long-term is winning in blue or purple states. Our success in states such as Iowa, Colorado and New Hampshire on Tuesday may indicate that we’re getting back on track. That’s pretty important, because in 2016 we face the “Big Blue Wall” — the 18 states (plus Washington, D.C.) that have gone for the Democratic presidential candidate six elections in a row. They add up to 242 electoral votes, leaving the Democrats needing just 28 of the 183 electoral votes in the 18 toss-up states. 

It doesn’t mean we’ve solved the GOP image problem.  Even though President Obama is significantly less popular than he was two years ago, the GOP is not well positioned to capitalize because our party’s image has also gotten worse since 2012. In the most recent NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll, half of respondents had a negative image of the Republican Party — only the fourth time that has occurred in the past six years. (Reminder to Tuesday’s winners: Threatening impeachment or shutting down the federal government doesn’t endear you to middle America.)

The GOP's Hispanic Dilemma

Even as the Tea Party base of the Republican Party continues to do all it can to denigrate - and alienate - Hispanic voters, the reality is that the GOP is moving closer and closer to a form of political suicide if something isn't done to end the current trajectory.  Not that this reality seems to register whatsoever with the Christofascists/Tea Party extremists.  A piece in Salon looks at the growing dilemma that someone in the GOP needs to solve.  Here are excerpts:

Last year, in a rare moment of political lucidity, Republicans gave themselves good advice on appealing to Latino voters. “If Hispanic Americans hear that the GOP doesn’t want them in the United States, they won’t pay attention to our next sentence … they will close their ears to our policies,” wrote the Republican National Committee in its Growth and Opportunity Project report. “[O]ur Party’s position on immigration has become a litmus test,” it continued, “measuring whether we are meeting them with a welcome mat or a closed door.” Republicans had to solve the immigration problem in order to move forward.

Almost immediately, however, the party’s right-wing base reasserted itself. House Republicans railed against the measure, rejecting the path to citizenship and demanding more funding for security at the border. . . . . By the end of the year, reform was nearly dead, with tough, if any, odds for progress.

In other words, Republicans knew what they had to do to make an appeal to Latino voters. But rather than follow their own prescription and embrace a new approach, they splurged on their old habits, binging on anti-immigrant rhetoric and indulging their worst nativist instincts. Indeed, the past few months have seen Republicans come unhinged at the mass arrival of child migrants and refugees from central America, with warnings of disease and mayhem.

The Republican Party’s original analysis was correct. After the RNC released its report, Latino Decisions published a poll on Hispanics, immigration reform, and the GOP. Among all Hispanics, 32 percent were more likely to vote Republican in the future if comprehensive immigration reform passed. What’s more, a later Latino Decisions poll—this time of Latino registered voters—found that 61 percent would be more likely to listen to Republicans on issues like taxes or school choice if the party supported reform.

Put another way, it’s no accident that only 12 percent of Hispanics associated the phrase “cares about people like you” with the Republican Party,  . . . 

[T]he GOP’s predicament. It wants a larger portion of the Latino vote—lest it be crippled in future national elections—but it doesn’t want to pass immigration reform, lest it alienate core supporters. But there are no shortcuts to building respect and goodwill. If Republicans want more than a rump share of Latino voters, they’ll need to shift on immigration reform. Otherwise, they should expect Latinos to meet them with a “closed door.”

The GOP Road to Extinction

GOP circular firing squad

The Republican Party seems hell bent to continue to travel down the road to extinction based on its decision to continue to pander to the bigots and racists in the GOP base who only want white conservative Christians to be allowed into the party - or given the full rights of citizenship for that matter.  The rest of us, especially racial minorities and Hispanics in particular, simply are not "real Americans" and are not welcome.  Projected demographic changes over the coming years mean that more states will shift to swing state status as the Hispanic and non-white population swells and the bitter, angry aging whites die off.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the data and the suicidal implications for the GOP.  Here are excerpts:

Over the weekend, as the Conservative Political Action Conference wound down, Michele Bachmann was greeted with a roar of approval when she said this:

“The last thing conservatives should do is help the president pass his number-one goal, and that’s amnesty.”

CPAC showcased that deep divisions remain among Republicans over whether to pursue immigration reform. The conservative interpretation of the GOP dilemma appears to be that passing reform is a no-no because it would be a gift to the hated Obama (whom you can’t trust in any case). Never mind whether it’s the right thing to do politically for Republicans, not to mention the right thing to do on policy.

And so reform may have to wait until Obama leaves office. Which would mean Republicans will head into the 2016 election without having repaired their Latino problem.
A new analysis performed at my request by political scientist Michael McDonald, who heads the United States Elections Project and studies voting patterns, underscores once again the perils this holds for the GOP.

The analysis finds that the share of the eligible voting population that is Latino will rise by two percentage points from 2012-2016 in three critical presidential swing states: Florida, Colorado, and Nevada. It will rise by two percentage points in New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona. And it will rise by one percentage point in Virginia, Georgia, and North Carolina. While that last finding may seem negligible, it is a sign demographics in those three states — one purple swing state that’s key in presidential elections; the others long reliably red — are trending in a favorable direction for Dems.

GOP pollster Whit Ayres, who favors reform, tells me Republicans should take the two point rise in critical swing states very seriously.  “It’s significant,” Ayres says. “Some aspects of the future are difficult to see clearly. The increasing proportion of Hispanics in the electorates in key swing states is not one of them.”

“Swing states are by their very definition closely contested,” Ayres continues. “Many of them have been won in close races by only a percentage point or two. Changing the demographics of the state by two percentage points puts a finger on the scale in each of the swing states for the party that’s doing well among Hispanics.
Ayres adds that the one-point rises also matter. “It is a sign of things to come,” he said. “States that have been comfortably red, like Georgia and North Carolina, are changing, and will become swing states unless Republicans figure out how to win significant support in the Hispanic community.”

“These are significant changes,” McDonald says. “This is the canary in the coal mind. The trend is there. We know it’s going to happen. There’s no reason to assume these trends won’t persist. The future is now.”

Immigration Groups Done Playing Nice with House Republicans

As noted a number of times on this blog, the base of the Republican party has increasingly controlled by racists and white supremacists (many of whom are Christofascists as well for good measure) and as a result Congressional Republicans simply lack the spine to enact any of the much needed reforms to America's broken immigration system.  Belatedly, immigration reform groups have finally realized that paying nice with cowards and bigots doesn't get one very far.  As a result, as Politico is reporting, this groups are going to stop playing nice, especially with House Republicans.  It is noteworthy that even the typically morally bankrupt Conference of Catholic Bishops is demanding that Republicans embrace immigration reform. Here are some story highlights:

Immigration reform advocates are done playing nice with House Republicans. After holding their fire for years at the urging of the Obama administration, several immigration reform groups now plan to unleash their anger at the right.

A new, more aggressive campaign kicks off Tuesday, when these groups say they will begin confronting Republican lawmakers at public appearances, congressional hearings and events back in home districts. The goal: Shame Republicans in swing districts into taking up the issue — or make them pay at the ballot box in November.

It’s unclear if the strategy will truly damage Republicans with their constituents. Or worse, whether it might backfire and oust some of the movement’s best potential allies across the aisle.

Still, the groups believe it’s time to try something new. The movement embraced a distinctly positive message when Barack Obama took office in 2009 and stuck with it publicly even until last month, when the groups applauded House Republican leaders for releasing a set of immigration reform principles at a GOP winter retreat.

But things changed last week when Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) dashed hopes that a major immigration overhaul could happen this year — leaving immigration groups to say enough is enough.

The groups also plan to target House Republicans in swing districts with a wide section of Latino voters — even if they’ve expressed support for immigration reform before. That means that lawmakers such as Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.), who has gone as far as to sign onto a Democratic-backed comprehensive bill, aren’t safe from the wrath of the pro-reform groups.

“We’re not going to go away,” added Kevin Appleby, director of migration policy for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. “The speaker’s comments were a reality check that we have to redouble our efforts. We need to translate the overwhelming support of the American public for this into public power, and I think it would be a mistake to let Congress — and especially the House — off the hook.”

Is the GOP Trying to Dump the Tea Party?

While the so-called Tea Party - a group that is in many ways just a renamed version of the Christofascist element of the GOP that includes an extra large measure of racism - may have helped the GOP to advance the GOP position in the House of Representatives in 2010, the increasing fanaticism and embrace of ignorance by these may be wearing thin with more and more in the GOP.  Or at least to the extent that there is anyone sane left in the GOP.  That's the premise of a column in the Washington Post that thinks a growing realization is occurring in the GOP that long term, the Tea Party is toxic in terms of the GOP's long term survive.  If this is indeed occurring, one has to wonder why it has taken so long.  And if it is happening, it surely has not yet begun to manifest itself in the Virginia GOP.  Here are some column highlights:

The botched rollout of the health-care law has called forth some good news: Republicans are so confident they can ride anti-Obamacare sentiment to electoral victory that they’re growing ever-more impatient with the tea party’s fanaticism. 

The GOP is looking like a person emerging from a long binge and asking, “Why did I do that?” The moment of realization came when last fall’s government shutdown cratered the party’s polling numbers. Staring into the abyss can be instructive. For the first time since 2010, the middle of the House Republican caucus — roughly 100 of its 233 members — began worrying less about primaries from right-wing foes and more about losing their majority status altogether.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is telling his rank-and-file that they can win the 2014 elections simply by avoiding the stupid mistakes their more-ferocious colleagues keep urging them to make. In this view, the health insurance issue will take care of everything, provided Republicans end their tea party fling.

In fact, it’s an illusion for the GOP to think that bashing Obamacare is an elixir  . . . . Now that its benefits are fully kicking in, Republicans should be asked persistently, “Who do you want to throw off health insurance?”Also: Do you want to go back to denying people coverage for preexisting conditions? And: What about those 3 million young adults now on their parents’ health plans? “Repeal Obamacare” is not as popular as it seems in GOP bastions.

Nonetheless, some illusions are useful. Boehner is using them aggressively. The immigration principles he announced at his caucus’s retreat last week in Cambridge, Md., are a breakthrough because they are potentially more elastic than they sound.

A bill barring a path to citizenship would be a nonstarter for Democrats — and it ought to be a nonstarter for Republicans and conservatives. Creating a vast population of legal residents who lack citizenship rights undercuts the rights of those who are already citizens.

But reform advocates inside and outside the Obama administration note that even without a “special” path, many immigrants, once legalized, could find ways of gaining citizenship eventually.

Changes in visa allocations, including more generous rules for the spouses and parents of citizens, could help as many as 4 million undocumented residents.

[T]he GOP consists of more than the tea party. Both business interests and conservative evangelical leaders really want a reform law. Most of the intra-party tiffs have been over tactics: whether to use shutdowns or debt-ceiling fights to achieve shared objectives. The immigration battle, by contrast, will expose more fundamental rifts among party constituencies along philosophical lines.

None of this heralds the dawn of a new Moderate Republican Age. Shifts in the Republican primary electorate and the tea party insurgency dragged the party so far to the right that it will take a long time to bring it within hailing distance of the middle of the road. But change has to start somewhere, and the GOP’s slow retreat from the fever swamps may turn out to be one of Obamacare’s utterly unintended effects.

I hope the author is right that some small shred of sanity may be returning to the GOP.  But I will not be holding my breath!

The G.O.P.’s Immigration Delusion

As previously noted, the GOP leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives has floated some supposed principles for immigration reform.  Like most GOP ideas nowadays, the principles have many serious defects, not the least of which is that it would create a permanent non-citizen underclass.  A column in the New York Times looks at other problems with the GOP principles as well as the continued civil war that any sort of so called amnesty would fan with the ever more white supremacist GOP base which views any member of a non-white racial minority as undeserving of citizenship and as not "real Americans."  Here are column excerpts:

THE debate over immigration reform, rekindled last week by House Republican leaders, bears a superficial resemblance to last fall’s debate over the government shutdown.

Again, you have establishment Republicans transparently eager to cut a deal with the White House and a populist wing that doesn’t want to let them do it. Again, you have Republican business groups and donors wringing their hands over the intransigence of the base, while talk-radio hosts and right-wing bloggers warn against an imminent inside-the-Beltway sellout. 

A reasonable compromise, for instance, would condition amnesty for illegal immigrants on substantial new enforcement measures, to ensure that this mass legalization would be the last. But the bills under discussion almost always offer some form of legal status before enforcement takes effect, which promises a replay of the Reagan-era amnesty’s failure to ever deliver the limits on future immigration that it promised.

A reasonable immigration compromise would also privilege high-skilled immigration over low-skilled immigration, given the unemployment crisis among low-skilled native workers and the larger social crisis that threatens to slow assimilation and upward mobility alike. But the House leadership seems to favor an approach that would create a permanent noncitizen class of low-wage workers and expand guest-worker programs — a recipe for looser labor markets, continued wage stagnation and fewer jobs for the existing unemployed.

  [A] big push for immigration reform would not be as straightforwardly idiotic as shutting down the government without clear goals or plausible demands. But it would probably have some of the same political effects: it would divide the G.O.P., perplex the public, and let the White House reap immediate political benefits no matter how the push turned out.

 

So why are Republican leaders flirting with the idea? In part for principled reasons — libertarianism, pro-business sentiment and “compassionate conservative” impulses all align to make comprehensive reform seem like an obvious good to many figures in the party, and to obscure its downsides and its risks.

But it’s also hard for G.O.P. elites to let go of the idea that there’s a simple, one-fell-swoop solution to their electoral difficulties. The entire post-2012 immigration reform push was born out of this hope — that a single policy shift could deliver the Hispanic vote, save the party from its demographic crisis, and (perhaps most important) make other reforms and innovations unnecessary.

This conceit was always a fond delusion, not least because most Hispanics are not single-issue voters, and their leftward tilt has always been related to broader socioeconomic concerns. So with them, as with most Americans, the problem for Republicans in 2008 and 2012 was much bigger than the immigration issue: it was a platform designed for the challenges of 1980, and rhetoric that seemed to write off half the country as layabouts and moochers. And any solution for the party, in 2016 and beyond, would have to offer much more than the same old Reagan-era script with an amnesty stapled at the bottom.

Obviously, the GOP effort at rebranding itself isn't working - especially since other big issues are off the table given the insanity of the GOP base.

The Virginia Gubernatorial Race Proves the GOP Is Suicidal

Yet another conservative columnist is slamming the Virginia GOP for its nomination of a trio of nutcases in a piece in The Daily Beast.  I for one hope all the predictions of a GOP disaster prove true.  In the final analysis, the problem with the Virginia GOP largely traces to the Richmond based hate group known as The Family Foundation ("TFF").  All TFF lacks is a formal designation as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.  Yet, it is the group that, together with its religious extremist allies, not only nominated the GOP's extreme team, but also backed much of the legislation that has come back to haunt Cuccinelli and Obenshain.  Here are highlights from the column:

If a national election were held in a test kitchen, it would resemble Tuesday’s Virginia gubernatorial election.

The race between Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Ken Cuccinelli is a rich stew of national personalities and issues consumed by Virginia voters with “tastes” similar to voter groups nationwide. That’s why the media will see this off-year election as a bellwether for voting trends nationwide.

Speaking as a conservative Republican, I believe the McAuliffe-Cuccinelli campaign has been a recipe for disaster cooked up with the same ingredients that flavor the GOP’s toxic national brand. And that’s the reason why, at this writing, McAuliffe, with his well-earned reputation as a crony-capitalist, is leading Virginia’s attorney general by 6.7 percent and is likely to be the state’s next governor.

This Virginia “test-kitchen race” offers a taste of America’s political future that should be of concern to voters across the remaining 49 states for the following reasons.

Women are McAuliffe’s key to victory. According to a recent Washington Post poll, there is not just a gender gap but a gender canyon, with McAuliffe trumping Cuccinelli 58 to 34 percent with women voters.

Cuccinelli is opposed to abortion and holds traditional views on gay marriage and contraception. The McAuliffe campaign has successfully labeled him as an extremist.

National lesson: If the GOP keeps nominating socially conservative candidates who repel women, expect the Republican Party to lose in traditional blue and “purple” swing states. Furthermore, Cuccinelli won the nomination at the Virginia GOP convention controlled by the more conservative wing of the party. 

The Clintons were practically on the ballot. Politically speaking, McAuliffe’s last name might as well be Clinton, considering he’s been their close political operative and money-man for decades. From the beginning of McAuliffe’s gubernatorial campaign, Bill Clinton has been a cash vacuum for his old friend statewide and nationally.

National Lesson: The Clintons’ star power in Virginia has far outshined every Republican VIP brought in to stump for Cuccinelli. Early on, McAuliffe’s race for governor was billed—by him—as a Hillary 2016 staff and money incubator. Nationally, his victory will likely be viewed as a Hillary 2016 proxy election, with Virginia’s 13 electoral votes practically in the bag.

Hispanic growth is McAuliffe’s advantage. Virginia’s Hispanic population is 630,000, having increased by 92 percent since 2000. Of that number, 214,000 are registered to vote, and two-thirds identify as Democrats.

National lesson. In 2012, President Obama won 64 percent of Virginia’s Hispanic vote, compared with 71 percent nationally. Will McAuliffe top him? If so, it would be a clear signal that the growing Hispanic vote is becoming a lost GOP voter bloc similar to African-Americans. The GOP will cease to be a national party if Hispanics become loyal Democrats by margins as wide as 60 or 70 percent.

National Lesson: Remember what my friend wrote in her email: I voted McAuliffe because I think Cuccinelli is too extreme especially on women’s issues. I really think he is a nut! It looks like “nut” has grown into a larger issue than the Obamacare disaster.

The GOP will not learn anything from Cuccinelli’s defeat. Finally, even though Cuccinelli’s defeat by McAuliffe illustrates a “test kitchen” failure of a conservative candidate in a purple swing state, the Virginia results will be rationalized, marginalized, and ignored. Watch for conservative Republicans to point to Cuccinelli’s defeat as a messaging and communication problem rather than a candidate problem. That kind of denial, more than anything else, is the reason why the Republican Party could be in serious trouble for the elections of 2014 and 2016.

But what about Gov. Chris Christie’s victory in New Jersey, you ask? Good news he won. Bad news he won. That is because the same conservative forces that nominated Cuccinelli in a convention are the same forces that will work to deny Christie the GOP presidential nomination in 2016, no matter how popular he becomes. Caution: big trouble ahead for the GOP. 

The author is correct.   The far right of the GOP will learn nothing if Cuccinelli goes down in flames.  That's what happens when people deny science and every aspect of objective reality to chase after fairy tale stories written by ignorant herders 2500 years ago.

Tea Party Turns on Marco Rubio

Nothing makes for better sport than watching members of the GOP base turn on each other and their former darlings among the GOP elected officials.  As many expected, the drooling, knuckle dragging elements of the Tea Party (doesn't that describe all of the Tea Party?) are turning on Marco Rubio because of his support of the Senate passed immigration reform bill.  Here are highlights from The Daily Beast:

When Sen. Marco Rubio turned 42 on May 28, his Facebook page was swamped with more than 4,000 messages from people livid with him for championing the immigration-reform bill that was moving through the Senate. The notes variously called him a turncoat, a RINO, a traitor, or worse. Some birthday greetings suggested he celebrate in Mexico, Cuba, or hell, while one cheerfully said, “Happy Birthday! Now Resign!”

But the real backlash for Rubio came a month later, after he voted for the Senate immigration-reform bill. Senators headed home for the weeklong July 4 recess, or in Rubio’s case, a week of conservative blowback and hometown heartache, including a Tea Party protest in front of his Miami office.

“It was like a suicide mission that has served no purpose that we can tell,” said Everett Wilkinson, chairman of the Florida-based National Liberty Federation, of Rubio’s lead role on immigration reform. “The feedback I’ve received is that people are extremely upset with Marco. Tea Party members who were active with us and helped get Marco elected—several have said they’re no longer going to support him.”

A split now with conservatives and Tea Party members—the base of his base—will make Rubio a different kind of Republican going forward, for better and worse.

Juan Fiol, a libertarian Republican from Miami who volunteered for Rubio’s 2010 Senate campaign, says he won’t vote for Rubio again, nor will many Latinos he knows. “His own volunteers are turning against him. He’s in a lot of trouble,” Fiol said. “I am a Republican, but I do not identify with Rubio anymore. He could have been our savior, and he’s the nail in our coffin.”

While Rubio may have hurt himself at home with local supporters, the poll shows that his role on immigration reform has transformed his fortunes with national Latino voters almost overnight. He now dominates the potential 2016 GOP presidential field among Latinos, polling well ahead of Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Paul Ryan, and Rand Paul, and has a majority of Latinos saying they’d be willing to consider voting Republican for the first time in years. The same poll also showed Hillary Clinton taking nearly two thirds of the Latino vote against any Republican if she runs.

But to get to a general election in Florida or nationally in 2016, Rubio will have to make peace with Tea Party activists or make plans to go around them. For now, many say they’d rather support Rand Paul or Ted Cruz.

Will GOP Use Guns and Gay Rights to Derail Immigration Reform?

Let's be clear about something: despite the half-ass GOP blather about wanting to court the Hispanic vote and enacted needed immigration reform, most in the GOP - especially those in the white supremacist filled base - do not really want any reform.  They oppose anything that might increase the number of minority voters.  Likewise, they oppose anything that might enable bi-national gay partners ot gain green cards and they oppose aspects of proffered gun control vis-a-vis immigrants.  As Politico reports guns and gays among other issues may well be resurrected in the immigration reform fight and used by the GOP to kill any reform.  Here are highlights:

As the Senate prepares to consider immigration reform next week, two powerful issues dividing lawmakers could be resurrected on the floor: guns and gay rights.

But debate over amendments to restrict gun ownership for illegal immigrants and to provide foreign-born gay partners with U.S. citizenship would reopen old wounds that both parties would rather see closed — even if those measures ultimately fail.

Here is POLITICO’s list of five issues to watch in the immigration floor debate:

Guns
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), one of the Senate’s most ardent gun control advocates since the Newtown school shootings in his home state, is looking at offering a pair of amendments aimed at restricting immigrants’ access to guns.

One amendment would broaden an existing ban on certain immigrants buying guns to those who came into the U.S. on visa waivers. The other would require the attorney general to notify Homeland Security officials if undocumented immigrants or immigrants on temporary visas try to buy firearms, which is illegal.  After lively debate, a recent Senate push failed to impose background checks on commercial gun sales.

Gay rights
The most emotionally charged debate over the immigration bill came in its final moments, when Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) put forward — and ultimately withdrew — an amendment to extend immigration rights to gay partners.

Gay-rights groups will continue to pressure lawmakers as the bill heads to the floor. Democrats may introduce the amendment there, where a 60-vote threshold would be harder to meet but senators could go on the record for or against it.

Complicating matters, the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the Defense of Marriage Act, the federal statute that states marriage is between a man and a woman. If the law is struck down, gay couples may be able to petition for green cards, and a legislative fix could be unnecessary.

“The amendment would be a critical insurance policy for binational couples if a ruling has not yet been handed down before the final vote,” said Steve Ralls, the communications director for Immigration Equality, which advocates for immigration rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people. “If we have a bad ruling from the court, the amendment becomes especially critical.”

Taxes and benefits
In committee, the Gang successfully lured Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) — a key swing vote — by adopting certain changes that the Utah senator demanded on high-tech visas.  They’ll have to work to keep him.

Hatch has now turned attention to his four amendments on taxes and benefit provisions, which he says must be included in order to win his support on the overall bill. For example, Hatch wants to require undocumented immigrants to prove they have paid back taxes

But immigration advocates have raised concerns that the substance of Hatch’s amendments could dramatically affect the ability of immigrants — particularly those who are poor — to apply to become legalized.

Border security

Border security will be a key test of whether reform can pick up a slew of Republican votes considered in play for the overall bill.

Guest workers
The delicately-negotiated compromise between the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and labor unions on lesser-skilled workers could be the target of changes during the amendments process.

In the current legislation, the number of low-skilled visas starts at 20,000 in the bill’s first year, followed by 35,000 in the second, 55,000 in the third year and 75,000 the following year. The bill also includes wage and labor-friendly requirements for businesses.

Changes to the guest-worker program that yanks it too far to the right or left could upset the deal between the two powerful interests that have major influence in reform’s success.

Republicans: Blind to the Past — and Future on Race

The insanity that engulfed Cheerios' new ad is symptomatic of the larger problem with today's Republican Party: its core constituency out side of Christofascists (although there is significant overlap of the groups) is out and out racists, KKK members and open white supremacists.  The GOP continues to cling to the racial hatred of the past and refuses to open its eyes to the reality that no matter what it and its racist base does, the nation's demographics are changing and will continue to change towards a more diverse population where whites in some areas will be a minority.  A column in the New York Times looks at the problem in the context of the efforts at comprehensive immigration reform.  Here are excerpts:

As a new effort at comprehensive immigration reform inches its way forward in the Senate, dissent from many conservatives is revealing their true contempt for, and fear of, the possibility that demographic groups who look different from their base will accrue power. 

The questions are: Is providing a pathway to citizenship (or at least permanent residency) for the 11 million people in this country illegally an act of humanity and practicality? Or is it an electoral imperative to which opposition ultimately guarantees political suicide?  The answer probably is “yes” to both, although many Republicans seem to think the opposite. 

The most outlandish example of conservative rhetoric in its truly offensive glory on this subject came in an interview last week with Phyllis Schlafly, a prominent conservative activist, on the news site PolicyMic. In it she said: 

“I don’t see any evidence that Hispanics resonate with Republican values. They have no experience or knowledge of the whole idea of limited government and keeping government out of our private lives. They come from a country where the government has to decide everything. I don’t know where you get the idea that the Mexicans coming in resonate with Republican values. They’re running an illegitimacy rate that is extremely high. I think it’s the highest of any ethnic group. .  .  .  Well, that’s unacceptable. We don’t want people like that.”

There are so many stereotypes and fallacies in that statement that it’s not even worth unpacking, but it is a great illustration of some deep-rooted conservative views. 

Republicans, seemingly ignorant of the lessons of history and impervious to the wisdom of experience, are hellbent on revisiting 2005 [when Democrats receive a great increase in Hispanic votes]. While the Democratic advantage among Hispanics in presidential races is large and growing, the Democratic advantage in House elections has slowly begun to shrink again. And Hispanics, seemingly excited by the movement on immigration reform and optimistic about its prospects, have developed sharply more favorable opinions of Congress. A full 56 percent of Hispanics hold Congress in high esteem, up from 35 percent in November 2011, according to an ABC News/Washington Post Poll. 

So what do some Republican lawmakers want to do to the only segment of the population in which a majority now has a favorable opinion of Congress? Spurn them and dash their hopes. Brilliant, if you want to cement Democratic preference among Hispanics in perpetuity.

And not to harp on the issue, but most of these racist members of the GOP base claim to be "godly Christians."  The hypocrisy is nearly complete.