Earlier today, we learned that soon-to-be Speaker Paul Ryan, who was once a supporter of immigration reform, has already kowtowed to the anti-immigrant wing of the GOP. Via Kerry Eleveld at DailyKos:
Rep. Paul “no horse trading” Ryan traded a huge horse last week while trying to solidify support among House crazy caucus members for his speakership: he signed a pledge not to push a vote on comprehensive immigration reform for the remainder of President Obama’s term.
Turns out, the author of the anti-immigrant pledge was none other than Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL). His anti-immigrant fervor knows almost no bounds. For example, in 2011, Brooks infamously stated:
[Undocumented immigrants] have no right to be here. They are clogging up our emergency rooms and making our education system more expensive. There are far too many illegal aliens [in Huntsville county jail] because they have victimized Americans. As your congressman on the House floor, I will do anything short of shooting them. Anything that is lawful, it needs to be done.
Yeah.
Today, we saw another bit of honesty from Brooks. He explained to Talking Points Memo one of his greatest fears about immigration – the voter pool:
Actually, too late, Mo. That voter pool is already changing – and changing fast. As Gary Segura from Latino Decisions often states, “demography is relentless.” All Brooks and his anti-immigrant cabal in the GOP are doing is making sure new voters avoid the GOP. For example, there’s this from today’s AV release, which focused on Donald Trump’s 11% showing with Latino voters (yes 11%), but is applicable here, too:
In the 2012 general election, which featured the largest Latino voter electorate in history, Latino voters ended up supporting President Obama by a whopping 75%-23% margin over Romney, according to Latino Decisions Election Eve polling (71%-27% in media-sponsored exit polls). Now, not only is the ugly immigration discussion helping to engage as well as alienate the Latino voting bloc for 2016, but the Latino electorate is growing more sizeable by the day – a recent article in National Journal highlighted that, “Every 30 seconds, a Latino turns 18 and becomes eligible to vote. That’s about 66,000 every month, or 800,000 every year, according to the Pew Research Center.” The Latino electorate is expected to rise from approximately 11 million voters in 2012 to 13 million voters in 2016.
As AV’s Frank Sharry noted in that same release, “Largely because of immigration, the Republican Party is building a wall between its candidates and Latino voters.” Rep. Mo Brooks is doing his part to build that wall around an ever expanding voter pool.
