Fred Barnes cautions Republicans: "Shut up about illegal immigration already!"

Opinion - Aug 20
Immigration Overkill?


Washington (The Daily Standard) - AS EVERY REPUBLICAN knows, Democrats are short-sighted in their views on national security, pursuing antiwar arguments that are bound to come back and haunt them politically. This was the case with the clamor among Democrats to pull out of Vietnam and may be the case now as well with their calls for American troops to flee Iraq. The result of this antiwar noisemaking is a reputation for weakness on national security.

Yet Republicans are doing the same thing on another issue, trading away long-term gain for the immediate joy of pleasing voters who may (or may not) decide the winner of the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. That issue is immigration.

By dwelling, often emotionally, on the problem of illegal immigration as a paramount issue and as if nothing is being done to deal with it, Republicans are alienating Hispanic Americans, the fastest growing voting bloc in the country. What's worse is many Republicans are oblivious to this or insist that losing Hispanic voters doesn't really matter because they'll never be reliable Republican voters anyway. These Republicans buy the notion that a sizable majority of Hispanics are and always will be Democrats.

This defeatism is wrongheaded. Hispanics are not lost to Republicans, as President Bush showed by winning more than 40 percent of their votes in 2004 and half their votes in 1998 when he ran for re-election as governor of Texas. The fact is Hispanics are conservative on cultural issues, entrepreneurial on economics, and intensely patriotic. They are a winnable constituency for Republicans.

But not if Republicans continue to concentrate on bashing illegal immigrants, as the party's presidential candidates have. Just this week, Mitt Romney spent day after day zinging Rudy Guiliani for opposing deportation of illegal immigrants when he was mayor of New York. Guiliani fired back that Romney, while Massachusetts governor, had tolerated so-called sanctuary cities that protected illegals....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/weeklystandard/20070820/cm_weeklystandard/immigrationoverkill

please correct me if I'm wrong

I am wondering why some Democrats are buying into this "emergency" issue all of a sudden?

But then, Barnes probably knows this.

Wedge issues are all the repubs have.

This issue has been killing Repubs.Let's hope they all ignore Barnes.I always do. :)