Immigration as an issue will destroy the Republican Party

The draconian new law in Arizona has turned the Arizona Latino community, previously the most Republican leaning in the country into instant Democrats virtually overnight.

Tue Apr 27, 2010 at 01:30:04 PM PDT
The California GOP's embrace of the hateful Prop 187, which would've banned undocumented immigrants from all government services, including public education, continues to cost their party 16 years later. Since the initiative passed in 1994, Arnold Schwarzenegger in the only Republican, under bizarre conditions (the recall election), to win a governor, senator, or presidential race in the state. Democrats have dominated the rest of the statewide elected offices, with just a smattering of Republicans occasionally picking up the odd seat.

Now, California Latinos are a solid Democratic bloc, even though on social issues, they oftentimes line up more naturally with Republicans. In the Golden State, Barack Obama won 74 percent of the Latino vote, compared to just 23 percent for McCain.

In Arizona, Obama won 56 percent of Latinos, with McCain getting 41 percent. Of course, McCain was a native son, so perhaps that boosted his numbers? Nope. In the 2006 Senate race, wingnut Sen. Jon Kyl got the same41 percent of the Latino vote.

Now look at PPP's latest polling of the 2010 Arizona governor's race:

There has been a great deal of movement along racial lines. In the September poll Goddard had a 3 point lead with white voters, but he now trails Brewer by 8. At the same time he's increased his lead with Hispanic voters from 20 points to 46. There are a lot more white voters in the state than Hispanic ones so from a cynical, purely political perspective Brewer's actions last week probably did her some good.
A 20-point lead among brown voters is essentially the same 60-40 Democratic

Senior Republicans who still live in the reality based community understand this is a disaster but are utterly captive to their extremist nativist base - who are calling for immigrants to be surgically implanted with tracking chips like dogs.

Napolitano: She's gonna bankrupt the Republican Party and the state of Arizona. Look at what happened to the Republicans in California with the proposition --

Cavuto: What happens?

Napolitano: Ah, Hispanics -- who have a natural home in the Republican Party because they are socially conservative -- will flee in droves. She's also gonna bankrupt her state, because no insurance company will provide coverage for this. And for all the lawsuits that will happen -- for all the people that are wrongfully stopped -- her budget will be paying for it. Her budget will be paying the legal bills of the lawyers who sue on behalf of those that were stopped.

This will be a disaster for Arizona -- to say nothing of the fact that it's so unconstitutional that I predict a federal judge will prevent Arizona from enforcing it as soon as they attempt to do so. That will probably be tomorrow.

Up until recently, the Democrats were heading for a bruising midterm election - possibly even losing the House. As the effects of this new law begin to sink in with Latinos, non-whites in general and political independents expect those poll numbers to change dramatically - there were already indications that the all important independents, while irked with all incumbents, were losing patience with Republican obstructionism.

The crazy head GOP base may be fired up, but the fire is incinerating any Republican support outside of the base.