Ron Brownstein recaps how the explosive growth of nativism on the right has torpedoed any chance for immigration reform:
Just four years ago, 62 U.S. senators, including 23 Republicans, voted for a comprehensive immigration reform bill that included a pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens….In 2007, Senate negotiators tilted the bill further to the right on issues such as border enforcement and guest workers. And yet, amid a rebellion from grassroots conservatives against anything approaching “amnesty,” just 12 Senate Republicans supported the measure as it fell victim to a filibuster.
….For months, Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., have been negotiating an enforcement-legalization plan that largely tracks the 2006 model with some innovative updates….Yet it has been stalled for weeks because Graham had demanded that a second Republican sign on as a co-sponsor before the legislation is released, and none stepped forward.
I remember being astonished by the collapse of the GOP on this subject in 2006. It wasn’t an issue I followed closely, and I vaguely figured it seemed like a pretty good bet for passage. But then, seemingly out of nowhere (to a lamestream-media-reading liberal like me, anyway) opposition among the base just exploded. It was like watching the tea parties in action opposing healthcare reform during the 2009 summer recess. The Republican leadership caved in to rabid fearmongering, Hispanics defected en masse to the Democratic Party, and the entire topic has been radioactive ever since. If you want to know what’s happened to the Republican Party over the last decade or so, this is it in a nutshell.
