Any party that is dumb enough to bank on that elusive conservative Hispanic vote deserves what it will get:
Republican opposition to legalizing the status of millions of illegal immigrants is crumbling in the nation’s capital as leading lawmakers in the party scramble to halt eroding support among Hispanic voters — a shift that is providing strong momentum for an overhaul of immigration laws.
Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, a Tea Party Republican, on Tuesday became the latest to embrace a more welcoming approach, declaring to the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants that if they want to work in America, “then we will find a place for you.”
While he never uttered the word “citizenship” and said a secure border must come first, Mr. Paul strongly implied that citizenship would eventually be available to them.
It’s disappointing, but hardly surprising, that Mr. Paul’s conventional, (and in this case, erroneous), libertarian instincts would get the better of his economic and nationalist sensibilities. America doesn’t need 11 million illegal immigrants working. It doesn’t need 30 million legal immigrants working, for that matter. Those who think they do clearly don’t understand supply, demand, and the consequences of increasing supply with regards to price.
One would think that Republicans would learn to rethink their actions any time the New York Times lines up behind them, but apparently one of the key aspects of being a Republican is never remembering what happened last time.
“His new message follows the publication
on Monday of a blistering report from the Republican National Committee
that urged the party’s members to champion an immigration overhaul that
Hispanics can embrace or risk seeing the party shrinking “to its core
constituencies only.””
Ronald Reagan once noted that he didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left him. The Republican Party is now in the process of abandoning its core constituencies in favor of an imaginary and alien one.