GOP Debacle PREMERISIMO

My fellow conservatives have a lot of back-slapping going on with the new get tough on illegals policies cropping up everywhere.  There's just something that warms their heart about enforcing a long unenforced set of laws, human carnage notwithstanding.  I don't get the payoff, is the slap on the back worth what we are getting for slapping around the Latino community resident here?  [I'm all for sealing the borders, but we are mistreating the Latinos already here.]

WaPo has the best summary.  It sees the right's immigration stance as the gift that just keeps giving (to borrow a Rove phrase).  The article is here (but you have to pay for it).

This is my abstract:

ABSTRACT OF

Division Problem; The GOP's Ruinous Immigration Stance
The Washington Post - Washington, D.C. Author: Michael Gerson Date: Sep 19, 2007 Start Page: A.23

Author Michael Gerson states that immigration is an issue among Republicans and is used as a weapon to focus grass roots anger on the immigration problem.  Romney and Giuliani each tried to paint the other as soft on illegals.

He states that it is strange for conservatives to try a broader appeal across all demographics and simultaneously attend to this grass roots anger.  The effect is to reverse remarkable Republican gains among one of the fastest-growing groups of American voters.  G.W. Bush appealed to Latinos with a middle of the road worker policy proposal to good effect.  Dole got 21% of the Latino Vote.  Bush 2000 got 35% and in 2004 Bush and the Republican Congress got 40% -- the high water mark.  After conservatives voiced strong support for deportation policies, the party got only 30% of the Latino vote in 2006 – the year they lost both houses of Congress.  Further Hispanic media reinforces the Republicans as the party of Tom Tancredo and his harsh deportation policy proposals.

The core of Gerson’s piece is this: “I have never seen an issue where the short-term interests of Republican presidential candidates in the primaries were more starkly at odds with the long-term interests of the party itself. At least five swing states that Bush carried in 2004 are rich in Hispanic voters -- Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado and Florida. Bush won Nevada by just over 20,000 votes. A substantial shift of Hispanic voters toward the Democrats in these states could make the national political map unwinable for Republicans.”

For more see Hispanics and the 2008 Election: A Swing Vote? by the Pew Hispanic Center