The real divide in the GOP over immigration

BY GREG SARGENT
June 12 at 3:33 pm

What if the real divide in the GOP over immigration reform is not between the Tea Party and establishment wings of the party, but between those in the party who have scaled down its ambitions to only winning Congressional elections and those who still hope to win the White House?

That’s what a veteran GOP operative who wants reform suggested to me today, in the wake of Eric Cantor’s loss, but more on that in a sec.

Now that multiple observers have responded to Cantor’s defeat by declaring immigration reform even deader than they pronounced it months ago (who knew there were various degrees of deadness?), proponents of reform have produced a raft of new polling designed to prod Republicans out of their own brain-deadness on the issue.

Jon Lerner, a pollster with impeccable conservative credentials, has just published a survey (funded by pro-reform Fwd.us) taken in Cantor’s district yesterday that finds only 22 percent of Republicans who voted for David Brat cited immigration as the reason, while 77 percent cited other factors. “Immigration was not a major factor in Cantor’s defeat,” Lerner concludes.

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