Hey, You Know How Cheap It Would Be to Seal the Southwest Border?

Five billion, all told, which is "a rounding error" in the GM bailout.

But this isn't about costs, of course. It's about identity politics. The Democrats want to pretend there's border enforcement going on to appease Whitey (or minorities who think like Whitey, of course) while actually not doing much enforcement, or engaging in ineffectual-by-design enforcement (virtual fences for everyone!), to curry favor with Hispanics. (Good Hispanics, I mean, real Hispanics, not Hispanics who think like Whitey.)

Republicans are wishy-washy on the issue, too, of course, because they fear backlash from Real Hispanics. (The ones who don't think like Whitey.)

They need to get over that. You can never beat Democrats in a bidding war like this -- if Republicans cave and say "half-hearted enforcement," Democrats trump that with "even less enforcement." If Republicans propose amnestying 1,000,000 illegals a year, Democrats trump that with 2,000,000.

Democrats can go as high as they like with such numbers, since most of the caucus in in favor of it (except for blacks, who on this issue, think like Whitey, but the Democrats have never been notorious for really caring what blacks think), and have no countervailing pressure to hold back on buying new votes.

Plus, you know, I kind of giggle when I hear Republicans talking about winning the Hispanic vote, and how conservative immigrant Hispanics are. On what? Religion? Fine, and on everything else, they're liberal -- they come, after all, from socialist countries, and even if they find those countries deficient (as they seem to), they're inculcated with the belief that the government exists to provide cradle-to-grave benefits. Even a more "conservative" immigrant from Mexico or South America is going to have an economic politics to the left of the average American.

Beyond that, there's the fact that George W. Bush -- the guy who did so very, very well with Hispanics -- got a mere 40% of the Hispanic vote. Which means that even our best guy with Hispanics ever looses 200,000 net votes for every million Hispanic voters.

It's unclear how many such "victories" we can endure before being obliterated as a party and as a movement.

It's worse than that, of course, because most of Bush's 40% came from non--recent-immigrants, that is, Hispanics who were assimilated Americans.

I don't know what the voter splits on recent immigrant Hispanics are -- I'd bet we don't come close to a 40/60 split, though. I'm guessing 25/75 at best.

So for every new 1,000,000 recent immigrant Hispanic voters, we lose net 500,000 votes.

And some in the GOP have this terrific idea where we amnesty 20 million.

Great. That will cost us only 10 million net votes.

And no, even if the GOP is pro-amnesty, it won't change that fact. Because if we propose amnesty for 20 million, they propose amnesty for 30 million plus.

No matter what we say do, we come out of this the "anti-immigrant party."

It's time to bite the bullet and accept that choices come with consequences. The GOP needs to choose and stop playing it both ways.

posted by Ace at 03:19 PM

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