Pirate's Cove

Oh lordy lou, here they go again

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Long after President George W. Bush has retired to his Texas ranch, his fellow Republicans may have to deal with Hispanic voter backlash over his failed immigration reform.

In 2008, in presidential and congressional elections, Latino voters, an increasingly important demographic in US politics, will get their first chance to hand out blame for the collapse of the sweeping immigration bill last week.

Conservative Republicans in Congress, who deserted a president from their own party, and squashed the bid to grant a path to citizenship to at least 12 million illegal immigrants, may be caught in the crossfire, analysts said.

"The unified message of the Democratic leadership is that the Republicans blocked the bill — that’s likely to be the way that Hispanic voters remember this," said Adam Segal director of the Hispanic Voter Project at Johns Hopkins University.

According to a recent poll in the USA Today newspaper, only 11 percent of Hispanic voters now identify themselves as Republicans — down from 19 percent in 2005.

That figure is especially dismaying for the party, as a record 40 percent of Hispanic voters chose Bush in the 2004 election, and the president’s political skills had seemed to have found a new seam of Republican support.

The rest of the article is all about how Democrats have been pandering to Hispanics, along with John McCain (who might as well kiss his 2008 chances goodby like a fart on the wind), and how great! they are doing in that regard. Woopie. Let them. If pandering to people who support law breakers is what they want to do, let them. If they want to pander to people who are not even entitled to vote, let them.

If Republicans pander to the illegals and those who support them, they risk losing any and all support from not only the Conservative base, but people who tend to vote Republican. People who lean Republican. People who might vote Republican. Notice, all these people are legal American citizens with the Right to vote, as opposed to those who are migrant workers, illegals, and others who cannot legally vote.

Polls in the past have shown that Hispanics who are legal citizens, with the right to vote, do not support giving amnesty to illegals. They themselves spent all that time and money going through the citizenship process, and aren’t real happy about people who not only broke the law in coming to the USA, but have generated quite a bit of bad feelings towards Hispanics, being given an easier path to citizenship then they were allowed. They do not like Americans looking at them and wondering if they are illegal. If they are stealing our resources. If they are harming Americans. If they are taking jobs. Some will say that is bigoted. Perhaps. Unfortunately, it is also human nature. If most illegals are Hispanic, well, that will make people think any time they see Hispanics.

Sure, political parties always want to increase their voting blocks, but, should that be at the expense of any priniciples? Democrats think so. But, then, they do anything that is politically expedient. If they thought that their base would increase tremendously, they would probably even abandon abortion on demand. Republicans are supposed to be different. They are supposed to be more interested in what is proper, then what is politically popular. Hence, the beat down that those who supported the shamnesty bill recieved, including President Bush, and rightly so!

W hurt the Republicans tremendously with his support of that "piece of sh*t" bill. Will he make amends? Will the other Reshamnicans? Fortunately, most of the Republicans running for the 2008 presidency are strictly against amnesty.