GOP Doesn’t Flog Immigration in House Health Care Vote—King Asks, Where’s the Wedge?

America's Voice Blog

Posted 11/11/09 at 10:22am

King In the aftermath of Saturday's landmark passage of a health care reform bill in the House of Representatives, many Republican Members of Congress are scratching their heads and wondering how they could have allowed the bill to pass. They are questioning why their leadership didn't agree to use the immigration issue to kill the bill by offering a tough anti-immigrant amendment at the end of debate.

As Roll Call reports, "conservative Republicans were perplexed and angry Monday that their leaders decided not to force Democrats into a tough immigration vote that they believe could have brought down the bill." Chief among these conservatives decrying his leadership's decision is Rep. Steve King (R-IA), who stated:

"I wanted to put everything into killing the bill. I wasn't interested in anything that had later political calculations. Whenever you get something this bad, when you have a chance to kill it, you have to kill it."

Clearly, Rep. King is not interested in strategies with "later political calculations" -- if so, he wouldn't have designed his party's horrendous Latino and immigrant scapegoat strategy that is threatening to turn the GOP into a regional party for the foreseeable future.

You see, the GOP's embrace of the illegal immigration wedge strategy -- on full view during the 2008 Republican Presidential primary as well as down-ballot primary and general elections all across the country -- have cost the GOP dearly with Latino voters. George W. Bush won 48% of the Latino immigrant vote in 2004 to John Kerry's 52%, a near dead heat in this critical swing demographic. Yet following years of GOP immigrant bashing, and a bruising primary in which McCain distanced himself from his own immigration bill, Obama bested McCain 67% to 31% with this demographic. And it clearly made a difference, as the Latino and immigrant vote helped Obama carry crucial states like Nevada, Florida, and Colorado -- states that Bush won in 2004.

As polling from Bendixen & Associates shows, Latino voters have personal connections to the immigration debate, with 67% having a friend or loved one who is undocumented. And fully 87% of Latino voters won't even consider a candidate who advocates the kind of mass deportation strategy that Rep. King champions.

As Norman Ornstein stated in his op-ed in Roll Call yesterday:

If Republicans cannot win some significant foothold among Hispanic voters, they will be consigned to minority party status for the long run.

To recap: for wedge politics junkies like Steve King, using anti-immigrant fear mongering to kill a completely unrelated piece of legislation is a matter of standing on principle.

The choice for the Republican Party is clear: follow the King strategy and get unelected -- or embrace practical immigration solutions, drop the wedge, and move the country forward.

The latter comes with the added bonus of remaining relevant.