Can the Republicans do the right thing on immigration?

A front page Post piece this morning looks at the GOP reaction to the immigration deal.  Not suprizingly many in the right are rebelling against the most important part of the new Senate deal - the process to legalize the status and provide a reasonable path to citizenship for the 12 million undocumenteds already here. 

While many on the progressive side - including those of us at NDN - have reasons to be concerned about the new immigration deal, it is important to realize how far the GOP has come on immigration, and how, in essence, they have as a national Party repudiated the strategy they used in 2006.  At the press conference on Thursday we saw many Republicans who had previous stayed away from the issue embracing this new construct, including the provision for the 12 million.   Given the rhetoric of the 2006 elections, the blatantly racist ads, the extraordinary obsession with the issue, it is remarkable how far they've come. 

As anyone who has been reading our stuff this past year knows we believe the Republicans made an historic strategic blunder on immigration in 2006.  It became one of the three defining issues for them in elections, after the war and economy/taxes.  They spent tens of millions of dollars on ads, countless hours of free press, and invested their core brand in a mean-spirited and often racist demonization of Hispanics.  It simply didn't work, and was not only ineffective, but had huge opportunity costs for their Party and did a great deal to damage their brand with the fastest growing part of America, the Hispanic community.  Most Republican campaigns closed with other themes as it never materalized as a salient voting issue, even though it had great saliency for a small number of passionate few in their base. 

There was never public or private polling data showing that the way the GOP played immigration in 2006 was going to work.  I always believed that the investment the GOP made in immigration was really because the rest of their agenda had collapsed, and they essentially had nothing to run on.  They had to dig into 2nd tier issues for their national positioning, ones that there was little evidence would work.  Immigration, because of the intensity of the issue in their base, was chosen for promotion to the 1st tier.  It was a terrible mistake, cost their Party dearly, and significantly contributed to their enormous electoral defeat in 2006. 

Up until a few days ago it was not clear that the national GOP understood how damaging this debate had become to their brand.  They had whipped up national concern about an important issue, then offered a wild, ineffective and often racist set of solutions to solve it.  The way they handled the issue played right into the Democratic indictment of the modern GOP - that it was more concerned with [playing politics than solving important problems facing the nation.  I have been quoted, and I still believe, that if the GOP had continued down the path they were on immigration that they were in essence turning the emerging America of the 21st century to the Democrats, as Pete Wilson turned California to the Democrats in the last decade. 

But this new Senate deal, and the appointment of Mel Martinez, a pro-immigration reform Hispanic immigrant, as RNC Chairman, shows that there reasonable elements in the Republican Party who are trying to change the orientation of their Party on this issue of extraordinary consequence.  As progressives we should welcome this change of heart and strategy, and hope that this week, in what will be a remarkable Senate debate on immigration, that the reasonable ones win the battle with the less than reasonable ones, and that we emerge with an immigration bill that shows that our leaders have what it takes to come together and solve the pressing problems facing the nation today. 

As progressives, while there is much we must fight to improve in whatever comes out of the Senate, we have to keep in mind that Senator Kennedy got the GOP to agree to what is the single most important provision in deal - to offer legal status and a path to citizenship for the 12 million undocumenteds already here.  If we can do this, and get a bill signed into law this year, and within a few months see millions of families come out of the shadows, it will be one of the most important accomplishments of our movement in some time, and one of the proudest moments of my time in politics. 

Friends there is much at stake here.  Let us ready ourselves for a debate of great consequence this week, and acknowledge for a moment how far we've come in the last two years on this vital and important issue.