This move kind of paints Romney in to a corner doesn't it? I mean Obama is essentially adopting a watered-down DREAM act here. What response does Romney put out that doesn't alienate the Latino base?
The question is whether it gets more votes from Hispanics than it loses to blue-collar whites.
And in most every instance of polling I've seen, Hispanics who are Americans or are here legally are not all that favorable of illegal immigrants. They're often seen as "cheating" basically.
I've met a lot of immigrants who were pretty pro-capitalism, which isn't surprising cause they chose to move here. It's all identity politix anyways. The GOP's problem winning over immigrants and minorities always has less to do with individual issues and more to do with people knowing when they're not wanted.
I wonder whether this will really hurt the Republican party in the long-run, or whether third-generation latinos with suburban American accents will be considered "white" and we'll just find some other group to blame everything on.
Yeah, it is interesting on a theoretical level in regards to how immigrants are generally pro-America, pro-capitalism, etc. And then you have blacks who tend to be socially conservative, increasingly pro-school choice, etc. Yet Republicans struggle to make inroads with them.
There is a strong hold on the party from that class that Santorum/Huckabee represented. Quite religious and socially conservative, protectionist, AMERICA FIRST, etc. It's maybe the dominant cleavage of American politics and within a single party it can really throw its weight around. It may be the only bloc in American politics that is consistently engaged.
I think it was The Right Nation that documented the development of how this segment of the population has done its own "long march through the institutions" but more targeted thus giving it outsized political power.
Republicans aren't prone to the group splinter between factions that Democrats are, they align and have aligned into those three or four core ideological blocs for really 50 years now. I saw an interesting thought experiment, maybe from Kaus, about if the Democrats are actually the party "in trouble" because of a possible war between its factions. Specifically when the social welfare state comes up against the public sector unions over division of the spoils.
