Sunday, August 16, 2009

Seeing Around Corners With Immigration

TW: or alternatively how to potentially make the Limobovian/Palintoligist party's heads explode next year. Who know if Obama can pull off immigration reform after health care reform, resuscitating a failing economy, reducing our presence in Iraq, fighting through Afghanistan etc., but it would sure be nice. Somebody has to do it and if it makes some heads explodes even better.

From Economist:
"...maybe introducing an immigration bill in spring 2010 and having it dominate the headlines in the summer of a mid-term election year would be great for Democrats. As the Sonia Sotomayor Supreme Court confirmation battle showed, the overwhelmingly white conservative core of the Republican Party can be reliably counted on to go absolutely crazy over anything connected to racial diversity and the fossilised remains of the issue formerly known as "political correctness". It's true that immigration reform caused George Bush immense political trouble in 2006. But the reason why it caused him trouble was that it caused a far-right revolt among white conservatives, whose racially tinged invective devastated Republican Party support among Hispanics. Mr Bush's immigration reform efforts were excellent politics—for Democrats.

The conventional wisdom now seems to be that Mr Obama is hesitating to go ahead with a "controversial", "polarising" bill that will doubtless engender "fierce opposition". As Brer Rabbit would say, please, don't throw me in that briar patch! It seems likely that a year from now, with an immigration bill in Congress and elections on the way, we will be looking at right-wing talk-show hosts losing their minds, Minutemen and other conservative groups making borderline racist statements, and, in general, a "divisive racial issue" that pits white nativist conservatives against white liberals... and Hispanics, and blacks, and free-market conservatives, and pretty much everybody else in the country. And suddenly we'll remember that Barack Obama was born and raised in that briar patch."

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/08/the_immigrationreform_briar_pa.cfm

No comments: