BIG PROBLEM FOR McCAIN: IMMIGRATION ISSUE TEARING UP THE REPUBLICAN COALITION AGAIN

It was inevitable that a grasping careerist like McCain, with no strong sense of values beyond junior high school level kickin' ass, would exacerbate the Republican Party's most divisive fault line: the disconnect between the Greed and Selfishness wing and the Hatred, Fear and Bigotry wing. Bush always wanted to be Reagan and the only way he even remotely succeeded was in holding together this sometimes unruly and unlikely coalition of convenience. This morning's NY Times highlights one of the reasons it is falling apart and how McCain's inept leadership is accelerating the fracture.

Immigration policy is absolutely toxic for anyone trying to appeal to a Republican base brainwashed by tawdry hatemongers like Limbaugh and Savage and Hannity looking for cheap media ratings. Republican strategists looking beyond quarterly ratings reports know that without the support from second and third generation immigrants, the GOP is utterly doomed-- even in what people think of as a deep red hellhole like Texas. Friday when we looked at xenophobic maniac John Culberson (R-TX) we saw a perfect of the irrational psychosis among the modern day Know Nothing strand of Republicanism-- shared, of course, by Democratic reactionaries exemplified by North Carolina bigot Heath Shuler. McCain's serial flip-flopping on the immigration issue was best exemplified by this portrait in courage:



But it's gone beyond a symbolic fence to a widespread crackdown on employers in 8 states, including swing states like Colorado, Arizona, New Hampshire, West Virginia and Missouri. Business groups are mobilizing and fighting bitter battles-- mostly against hard core right-wing Republicans-- in Kentucky, Arizona, Virginia, Oklahoma, California and Indiana, rupturing the GOP coalition.

Business groups have resisted measures that would revoke the licenses of employers of illegal immigrants. They are proposing alternatives that would revise federal rules for verifying the identity documents of new hires and would expand programs to bring legal immigrant laborers.

Though the pushback is coming from both Democrats and Republicans, in many places it is reopening the rift over immigration that troubled the Republican Party last year. Businesses, generally Republican stalwarts, are standing up to others within the party who accuse them of undercutting border enforcement and jeopardizing American jobs by hiring illegal immigrants as cheap labor.

The Times points out that "state lawmakers said they had acted against businesses, often in response to fervent demands from voters, to curb job incentives that were attracting shadow populations of illegal immigrants." And the corrupt, right wing governor of Missouri, Matt Blunt, has railed that "illegal immigration is a threat to the safety of Missouri families and the security of their jobs. I am pleased that lawmakers heeded my call to continue the fight where Washington has failed to act." But in politics, money talks and business controls a lot of it-- plenty for the Democrats and almost the whole show for the Republicans. Without business money the GOP is just a glorified version of the KKK. And predictably one state where the KKK tradition is big enough to trump business's power is Mississippi, the country's most backward, most bigoted, and least educated state. Mississippi is the only state that completely slammed the door on the business lobbies. "Under a bill passed this year, Mississippi is the first state to make it a felony for an illegal immigrant to work. The measure also allows terminated employees to sue their employer if they were replaced by an illegal immigrant."

The Bush-McCain attitude towards the chaos and turmoil is very cynical and shows a complete abdication of leadership and willingness to face a tough issue head on-- something they share with many equally cowardly Democratic leaders, particularly Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) who views immigration as a political weapon to use against his partisan adversaries.

Bush administration officials said the crackdown was the price employers must pay to persuade voters to agree to open the gates to immigrant workers. In an interview, Mr. Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, said, “We are not going to be able to satisfy the American people on a legal temporary worker program until they are convinced that we will have a stick as well as a carrot.”