One year ago today, the RNC released its Growth and Opportunity Project / 2012 autopsy report — a document which recognized its missteps in the last presidential election and offered prescriptions on how to attract more voters to their tent. They even encouraged Congressional Republicans to pass immigration reform, because, as the report put it, “Hispanic voters tell us our Party’s position on immigration has become a litmus test, measuring whether we are meeting them with a welcome mat or a closed door.”
A year later, House Republicans have done exactly nothing for immigration reform, and in many instances have even gone the opposite way, acting on bills like the SAFE Act and ENFORCE Act. But that’s ok, says Tom Tancedo in a new column at World Net Daily (h/t Right Wing Watch). The GOP is better off without immigration reform.
Tancredo begins his op-ed expressing his relief that reform has so far not passed:
It was only a year ago that the Republican establishment was enthralled by the so-called bi-partisan “Gang of Eight” amnesty bill, which grants legal status to 15 million illegal aliens and sets them on a path to eventual citizenship. That scenario ended in Sen. Rubio’s repudiation of the deal, followed by backroom congressional maneuvers to plan amnesty by stealth in 2014…
Throughout 2013 and into 2014, the Beltway plutocracy had its run of the field in demanding “immediate action” on amnesty. But that game is over. Suddenly, common sense is breaking through the fog of self-delusion that has led the Republican establishment down so many blind alleys.
But contrary to the RNC autopsy report, Tancredo argues that opposing reform doesn’t mean Republicans can’t still reach out to Latino voters:
If Republican leaders and Republican candidates will start talking to Hispanic citizens as Americans who have the same hopes and dreams and fears as other citizens, they can and will win increased Hispanic support. Republicans do indeed need to improve and expand their outreach efforts in Hispanic communities, and they can do so without the baggage of the amnesty debate.
That’s right — contrary to every poll out there, Tancredo thinks immigration reform not passing is just fine for Republicans trying to win the Latino vote.
Tancredo himself is running for governor of Colorado this year, and recently even broke an old promise not to campaign in Spanish. It’s hard to understand what a guy who once called Miami a “third-world country” thinks he has to offer immigrant and Latino voters. ‘I believe there are too many Latino immigrants, but you should really check out my position on taxes’? ‘I think your undocumented family members, friends, and neighbors should self-deport, but you’ll like where I stand on guns’?
Tom Tancredo is fooling himself, and so is the rest of the Republican Party, if they don’t think their inaction on immigration reform is going to have major consequences in 2016.
