SOUTHERN REPUBLICAN SENATORS BOOED DEFENDING BUSH'S IMMIGRATION BILL-- AT GOP CONVENTIONS

Right-wing Republicans have been very successful cultivating Know-Nothings and bigots in the last few decades. Like "respectable" conservatives in 1930s Germany, who thought they could easily co-opt and control fascism, many GOP politicians may have made themselves a bed they won't be able to get much sleep in. Yesterday South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham got a taste of that-- while Mitt Romney decided to take the low road of xenophobia, divisiveness and hate-filled bigotry.

Look at Graham's voting record. It's rabidly right wing and extremist. There isn't a single issue he has been moderate on and not one for which he hasn't been a blazing red Bush Regime rubber stamp. Yesterday he was booed when he tried defending Bush's immigration legislation at the South Carolina Republican convention. The same crowd cheered Flip-flop Mitt when he, sensing political advantage from the Fox/Limbaugh brainwashed crowd, abandoned Bush and jumped at the chance of leading the Bigotry Parade.

Georgia also held their GOP convention today, and Senator Saxby Chamberpot, even more of an extremist, wingnut and rubber stamp than Graham, also got booed, and for the same reason. As a further show of discontent with the GOP, the Republican delegates gave more straw poll votes to non-candidate Fred Thompson (who has no stand on immigration or much of anything, but has a relatively moderate record low-information Republicans are obviously unaware of) than to front-runners Giuliani, Romney and McCain combined. Thompson garnered 44% of the vote and Rudy McRomney got 34% together.


Chamberpot and Graham will both have to face their constituents next year and both will have to depend, heavily, on these Know-Nothing voters to win re-election. But the immediate impact of the immigration bill, widely denounced by those who dominate and control the Republican base, will be felt in the presidential race where Grandpa McCain's candidacy is likely to collapse completely in the coming week or two as he becomes completely identified with Bush's bill while the others, jackal-like, abandon him and Bush to their fate. Fitting enough, it was Flip-flop Mitt who was the first to smell blood in the water and try to position himself, somewhat disingenuously, as a staunch opponent to immigrants. (Giuliani will also have a hard time worming out of his past as a posterboy for open borders.)

I somehow doubt Republicans will be embracing the balanced views espoused in today's NY Times editorial, The Immigration Deal. The Times calls it "a good plan wedded to a repugnant one."

Its architects seized a once-in-a-generation opportunity to overhaul a broken system and emerged with a deeply flawed compromise. They tried to bridge the chasm between brittle hard-liners who want the country to stop absorbing so many outsiders, and those who want to give immigrants-- illegal ones, too-- a fair and realistic shot at the American dream.

But the compromise was stretched so taut to contain these conflicting impulses that basic American values were uprooted, and sensible principles ignored. Many advocates for immigrants have accepted the deal anyway, thinking it can be improved this week in Senate debate, or later in conference with the House of Representatives. We both share those hopes and think they are unrealistic. The deal should be improved. If it is not, it should be rejected as worse than a bad status quo.

The part the Times finds most appealing-- "to give most of the estimated 12 million immigrants here illegally the chance to live and work without fear and to become citizens eventually"-- has an instant and near psychotic Pavlovian effect on Republican xenophobes. The parts of the compromise most disliked by the Times-- and by fair-minded Americans-- is all that the wingnuts find acceptable, namely that family-based immigration is partially eliminated and that it creates a class of temporary workers who will not-- ever-- be part of "us," but will always be the alien "other."

The deal calls for the creation of a new underclass that could work for two years at a time, six at the most, but never put down roots. Immigrants who come here under that system-- who play by its rules, work hard and gain promotions, respect and job skills-- should be allowed to stay if they wish. But this deal closes the door. It offers a way in but no way up, a shameful repudiation of American tradition that will encourage exploitation-- and more illegal immigration.

Yesterday, David Frum, a longtime and notorious Bush Regime toadie who has been desperately seeking ways of separating himself from the miserable policies he championed, wrote a gruesome Bush-bashing article for National Review, the premise of which is that the immigration compromise amounts to the detonation of a "slow-motion trigger on a Republican debacle in 2008." The well-founded reasons for Frum's dire predictions for GOP electoral catastrophe next year:
1) Income stagnation for American workers under the Bush Regime is bad enough but now Bush is saying, in effect, "Go look to somebody else to help you."
2) Even dullards in the Republican base will now understand that the guestworker program (cheap labor) is the GOP's highest immigration priority, [and] the deal also identifies the GOP as a party that in the crunch puts employers' interests first."
3) Contrast unified and energized Democrats with divided and demoralized Republicans even before the immigration proposal. "The president and the senators have now managed to divide and demoralize their party even further."
4) "The deal scrambles the 2008 race, in ways deeply unhelpful to the party. The deal has wounded all three of the GOP front-runners: McCain because he is deeply implicated in it; Giuliani because he has tacitly endorsed it; Romney because it has added one more flip-flop to his already too lengthy list of reversals. The deal helps the two undeclared Republicans, Gingrich and Thompson - both of whom, alas, are much less electable on a national ticket than the three declared front-runners."
5) Voters can see right through the Bush Regime's defense of the compromise and can't escape the conclusion that Bush and his people are bold-faced liars.
6) Frum, who is certainly in a position to know, feels the elitist instincts of the Regime insiders will further alienate the yahoos who make up the Republican base, "triggering an internecine party conflict on the eve of a difficult and dangerous election is no way to re-elect a damaged incumbent party."
7) The incompetence thing
8) "The deal will worsen Republican prospects among Hispanic voters. Over the years, the Republicans have done not too badly with Hispanics, typically winning about 35%-40% of the Hispanic vote as compared to under 10% of the black vote." The GOP has managed, because of its basic racist and xenophobic instincts, to unite the highly diverse Hispanic population and make them realize the overarching issue at the polls in just to defeat Republicans.

I'll give Frum the last word on this: "Nice work, guys."