Politics The Elephant in the room...The GOP today

rogue49 · Mar 18, 2013

As a followup for previous presidents...I've got this.
I wonder if people are aware that reality doesn't match the illusions.

Now, personally I'm not saying whether any of these items are good or bad...or had good or bad affects.
It's just that they ARE...not what is portrayed or remembered, but what actually happened.

Why do people warp the past? I see people do this all the time.
I'd rather not be in denial.

While the GOP is trying to find themselves policy-wise or candidates that don't piss off the majority.
They may want to reflect on their standard bearers. (BTW, this goes for the Dems and Libs too. )

Ten reasons why Ronald Reagan would be persona non grata at CPAC 2013
by Jon Perr

As most of the leading lights of the fractured Republican Party gather in Washington for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), organizer Al Cardenas is looking backwards for guidance in taking the GOP forward. Reflecting on Ronald Reagan's 1975 post-Watergate address to the conclave, Cardenas recalled the Gipper's lessons that "conservatives will never compromise their principles because that's the surest way to lose" and "you can't just be a conservative, you've got to be a good candidate."

Of course, Cardenas's mantras seem more than a little ironic in 2013. After all, the American Conservative Union chief refused Chris Christie, the most popular Republican in the nation, a speaking slot until he "earns his wings." And as it turns out, despite having addressed the gathering a dozen times in the 1970's and 1980's, today that ever-compromising, Republican in Name Only Ronald Reagan would never be let through the door of CPAC 2013.

Here are 10 reasons why:

Reagan tripled the national debt

Reagan raised taxes 11 times

Reagan expanded the size of government

Reagan supported the "socialist" Earned Income Tax Credit

Reagan negotiated with terrorists in Tehran

Reagan sought to eliminate nuclear weapons

Reagan gave amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants

Reagan approved protectionist trade barriers

Reagan signed abortion rights law in California

Reagan eventually debunked AIDS myths Republicans continued to perpetuate

1. Reagan Tripled the National Debt
As most analysts predicted, Reagan's massive $749 billion supply-side tax cuts in 1981 quickly produced even more massive annual budget deficits. Combined with his rapid increase in defense spending, Reagan delivered not the balanced budgets he promised, but record-setting deficits. Even his OMB alchemist David Stockman could not obscure the disaster with his famous "rosy scenarios."

Forced to raise taxes twice to avert financial catastrophe, the Gipper nonetheless presided over a tripling of the American national debt to nearly $3 trillion. By the time he left office in 1989, Ronald Reagan more than equaled the entire debt burden produced by the previous 200 years of American history. It's no wonder Stockman lamented last year:
"[The] debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party's embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don't matter if they result from tax cuts."
Sarah Palin's revisionist history Friday notwithstanding, it was Reagan who put the United States on "the road to ruin."

2. Reagan Raised Taxes 11 Times
As ThinkProgress noted, the inedible image of Ronald Reagan the tax cutter is "false mythology." (It is also worth noting that it was President Obama and not Reagan who delivered the largest two-year tax cut in American history.) While Governor Reagan doubled California's state spending and signed the biggest tax hike up to that point, as president he raised taxes in seven of his eight years in office. As former GOP Senator Alan Simpson, who called Reagan "a dear friend," told NPR, "Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times in his administration—I was there."

3. Reagan Expanded the Size of Government
On Friday, Sarah Palin told the Reaganauts assembled by the Young Americans for Freedom, "We need to stop spending and cut government back down to size." If that's the case, her role model should be Democrat Bill Clinton and not Republican Ronald Reagan.

As USA Today pointed out seven years ago, measured as a percentage of gross domestic product, average annual federal spending dropped far more under Bill Clinton (-1.8%) than Ronald Reagan (-0.6%). And as Slate's Michael Kinsley explained 10 years ago in marking Reagan's 90th birthday:
Federal government spending was a quarter higher in real terms when Reagan left office than when he entered. As a share of GDP, the federal government shrank from 22.2 percent to 21.2 percent--a whopping one percentage point. The federal civilian work force increased from 2.8 million to 3 million. (Yes, it increased even if you exclude Defense Department civilians. And, no, assuming a year or two of lag time for a president's policies to take effect doesn't materially change any of these results.)

Under eight years of Big Government Bill Clinton, to choose another president at random, the federal civilian work force went down from 2.9 million to 2.68 million. Federal spending grew by 11 percent in real terms--less than half as much as under Reagan. As a share of GDP, federal spending shrank from 21.5 percent to 18.3 percent--more than double Reagan's reduction, ending up with a federal government share of the economy about a tenth smaller than Reagan left behind.
As the Gipper's biographer Lou Cannon aptly summed it up, "He was no Tea Partier."

4. Reagan Supported the "Socialist" Earned Income Tax Credit
Both during and after the 2008 presidential campaign, Republican candidates and commentators blasted Barack Obama's proposals to offer Americans expanded tax creditsas "socialism," "welfare" and worse. If so, they should also be directing their ire at Ronald Reagan.

While virtually all working Americans pay the Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes (levies increased by President Reagan), many don't pay federal income tax thanks to the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities noted in 2005, the EITC was not only very successful in lowering poverty, the provision "has enjoyed substantial bipartisan support. President Reagan, President George H. W. Bush, and President Clinton all praised it and proposed expansions in it."

While many of his conservative heirs now express disdain for the working poor, Ronald Reagan championed the refundable Earned Income Tax Credit. As the American Prospect recalled in 2006:
Almost 20 years ago, as he signed into law the tax bill expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit, President Ronald Reagan hailed it as "the best anti-poverty, the best pro-family, the best job creation measure to come out of Congress."

5. Reagan Negotiated with Terrorists in Tehran.
Criticizing President Obama as weak on Iran, Sarah Palin declared in December 2010 that "just as Ronald Reagan once denounced an 'evil empire' and looked forward to a time when communism was left on the 'ash heap of history,' we should look forward to a future where the twisted ideology and aggressive will to dominate of Khomeini and his successors are consigned to history's dustbin."

That would be the same Ronald Reagan whose policy consisted of giving the mullahs in Iran a cake, a Bible— and U.S. arms.

The Iran-Contra scandal, as you'll recall, almost laid waste to the Reagan presidency. Desperate to free U.S. hostages held by Iranian proxies in Lebanon, President Reagan provided weapons Tehran badly needed in its long war with Saddam Hussein (who, of course, was backed by the United States). In a clumsy and illegal attempt to skirt U.S. law, the proceeds of those sales were then funneled to the contras fighting the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. And as the New York Times recalled, Reagan's fiasco started with an emissary bearing gifts from the Gipper himself, including "a Bible with a handwritten verse from President Reagan for Iranian leaders" and "and a key-shaped cake to symbolize the anticipated "'opening'" to Iran.'"

The rest, as they say, is history. After his initial denials, President Reagan was forced to address the nation on March 4, 1987 and acknowledge he indeed swapped arms for hostages (video here):
"A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not. As the Tower board reported, what began as a strategic opening to Iran deteriorated, in its implementation, into trading arms for hostages."

6. Reagan Sought to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons
In late 2010, hard-line Republicans opposed President Obama's new START treaty calling for joint reductions in the American and Russian nuclear stockpiles. Sadly for GOP hawks, it was Ronald Reagan and not Barack Obama who declared, "m]y dream...became a world free of nuclear weapons."

And as the Washington Monthly recalled in 2003, Reagan's idealism startled and shocked his advisers and allies:
Driven by this dream, Reagan embraced Mikhail Gorbachev and initiated a series of negotiations that ultimately alarmed everyone in his administration. Hardliners like Patrick Buchanan, Richard Perle, and Caspar Weinberger reacted in horror to the very idea of engaging the Soviets in such talks, warning against the "grand illusion" of peace. "Reagan is a weakened president, weakened in spirit as well as clout," echoed New Right leader Paul Weyrich in The Washington Post. Administration pragmatists like George Shultz and Robert McFarlane, who supported negotiations but believed in deterrence, were shocked by how far Reagan took them. At the Reykjavik summit, he and Gorbachev almost agreed to the "zero option" to eliminate both sides' thermonuclear arms. Reagan's unwillingness to give up his cherished missile-defense program doomed the agreement, though the talks did yield the signature arms-reduction pact of his presidency, the 1987 INF treaty.

7. Reagan Gave Amnesty to Millions of Illegal Immigrants
Codifying the growing xenophobia within the Republican Party, the 2008 GOP platform insisted:
"We oppose amnesty. The rule of law suffers if government policies encourage or reward illegal activity. The American people's rejection of en masse legalizations is especially appropriate given the federal government's past failures to enforce the law."
Which is why, as ThinkProgress again helpfully highlighted, conservatives are now so eager to hush up RINO Reagan's history on immigration:
Reagan signed into law a bill that made any immigrant who had entered the country before 1982 eligible for amnesty. The bill was sold as a crackdown, but its tough sanctions on employers who hired undocumented immigrants were removed before final passage. The bill helped 3 million people and millions more family members gain American residency. It has since become a source of major embarrassment for conservatives.

8. Reagan Approved Protectionist Trade Barriers
Ronald Reagan believed in free markets and free trade. Except when he didn't.

In 2004, Alan Tonelson praised what he called Reagan's "trade realism":
Reagan's tactics were flexible. In autos, machine tools, and steel, his administration subjected foreign producers to so-called voluntary export restraints. In semiconductors, Reagan officials negotiated an agreement to secure a specific share of the Japanese market for U.S. companies, and then imposed tariffs on Japanese electronics imports when Tokyo briefly refused to keep a promise to halt semiconductor dumping.
But it was Reagan's decisive intervention to save legendary American motorcycle maker Harley Davidson that drew the ire of conservatives at the time, if not now. The libertarian Cato Institute groused about the 49.4% import tariff on foreign motorcycles Reagan authorized in 1983:
Last spring, the import duties on large motorcycles were raised drastically. By any economic criterion, the new tariff is counterproductive, and the Reagan administration was fully aware of it. The decision is thus an interesting case study in the political economy of protectionism.

9. Reagan Signed Abortion Rights Law in California
Despite his paeans to the pro-life crowd, RINO Reagan did very little to advance their radical anti-abortion agenda. As ThinkProgress summarized his record on reproductive rights:
As governor of California in 1967, Reagan signed a bill to liberalize the state's abortion laws that "resulted in more than a million abortions." When Reagan ran for president, he advocated a constitutional amendment that would have prohibited all abortions except when necessary to save the life of the mother, but once in office, he "never seriously pursued" curbing choice.

10. Reagan Eventually Debunked AIDS Myths Republicans Continued to Perpetuate
Not wanting to anger his allies on the Christian right when it came to what they deemed the "gay plague," Reagan remained silent on the exploding AIDS epidemic throughout most of his presidency. And when he did speak up in 1985 (as he did at the urging of staffer and future Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts), Reagan ignored both basic science and basic compassion in setting back the cause of truth and public health:
"I'm glad I'm not faced with that problem today [sending children to school where another student has AIDS] and I can well understand the plight of the parents and how they feel about it...And yet medicine has not come forth unequivocally and said 'This we know for a fact, that it is safe.' And until they do I think we have to do the best we can with this problem. I can understand both sides of it."
The next day, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and the chief scientists at the National Institutes of Health called a news conference to correct President Reagan's tragic error and confirm that AIDS was a blood-borne sexually transmitted disease not spread by casual contact. In what would be the first high-impact celebrity intervention among Republicans, it took a plea from Elizabeth Taylor to get Ronald Reagan to deliver a speech at the 1987 meeting of amfAR, the American Foundation for AIDS Research:
As dangerous and deadly as AIDS is, many of the fears surrounding it are unfounded. These fears are based on ignorance... The Public Health Service has stated that there's no medical reason for barring a person with the virus from any routine school or work activity. There's no reason for those who carry the AIDS virus to wear a scarlet A. AIDS is not a casually contagious disease. We're still learning about how AIDS is transmitted, but experts tell us you don't get it from telephones or swimming pools or drinking fountains. You don't get it from shaking hands or sitting on a bus or anywhere else, for that matter. And most important, you don't get AIDS by donating blood. Education is critical to clearing up the fears. Education is also crucial to stopping the transmission of the disease.
Five years later, future Arkansas Governor and current GOP White House frontrunner Mike Huckabee still hadn't gotten the message. As a Senate candidate in 1992, he called homosexuality "an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle, and we now know it can pose a dangerous public health risk." Huckabee then called for draconian—and discriminatory—action:
"If the federal government is truly serious about doing something with the AIDS virus, we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague.

It is difficult to understand the public policy towards AIDS. It is the first time in the history of civilization in which the carriers of a genuine plague have not been isolated from the general population, and in which this deadly disease for which there is no cure is being treated as a civil rights issue instead of the true health crisis it represents."
Fourteen years later, Senate Majority Leader and physician Bill Frist declined to say whether he thought HIV-AIDS could be transmitted through tears or sweat, as a disputed federal education program championed by some conservative groups had suggested.
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redux · Mar 18, 2013

They left out Reagan's greatest atrocity against US sovereignty -- conspiring with the UN on an environmental treaty.

I am pleased to sign the instrument of ratification for the Montreal protocol on substances that deplete the ozone layer. The protocol marks an important milestone for the future quality of the global environment and for the health and well-being of all peoples of the world. Unanimous approval of the protocol by the Senate (Republican senators were conspirators as well)...
...
I believe the Montreal protocol, negotiated under the auspices of the United Nations Environment Programme, is an extremely important environmental agreement. It provides for internationally coordinated control of ozone-depleting substances in order to protect a vital global resource...
...
...For our part, the United States will give the highest priority to analyzing and assessing the latest research findings to assure that the review process moves expeditiously.

The Montreal protocol is a model of cooperation. It is a product of the recognition and international consensus that ozone depletion is a global problem, both in terms of its causes and its effects. The protocol is the result of an extraordinary process of scientific study, negotiations among representatives of the business and environmental communities, and international diplomacy. It is a monumental achievement.
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Does anyone really believe even one Senate Republican today would ratify this UN agreement?

Baraka_Guru · Apr 3, 2013

So I guess states can make laws respecting an establishment of religion?

North Carolina May Declare Official State Religion Under New Bill
The Huffington Post | By John Celock
Posted: 04/03/2013 12:22 am EDT | Updated: 04/03/2013 9:20 am EDT

Republican North Carolina state legislators have proposed allowing an official state religion in a measure that would declare the state exempt from the Constitution and court rulings.

The bill, filed Monday by two GOP lawmakers from Rowan County and backed by nine other Republicans, says each state "is sovereign" and courts cannot block a state "from making laws respecting an establishment of religion." The legislation was filed in response to a lawsuit to stop county commissioners in Rowan County from opening meetings with a Christian prayer, wral.com reported.

The religion bill comes as some Republican-led states seek to separate themselves from the federal government, primarily on the issues of guns and Obamacare. This includes a proposal in Mississippi to establish a state board with the power to nullify federal laws.

The North Carolina bill's main sponsors, state Reps. Carl Ford (R-China Grove) and Harry Warren (R-Salisbury), could not be reached for comment on Tuesday, The Salisbury Post reported. Co-sponsors include House Majority Leader Edgar Starnes (R-Hickory). Another is state Rep. Larry Pittman (R-Concord), who in February introduced a state constitutional amendment that would allow for carrying concealed weapons to fight federal "tyranny."

The bill says the First Amendment only applies to the federal government and does not stop state governments, local governments and school districts from adopting measures that defy the Constitution. The legislation also says that the Tenth Amendment, which says powers not reserved for the federal government belong to the states, prohibits court rulings that would seek to apply the First Amendment to state and local officials.

The bill reads:

SECTION 1. The North Carolina General Assembly asserts that the Constitution of the United States of America does not prohibit states or their subsidiaries from making laws respecting an establishment of religion.
SECTION 2. The North Carolina General Assembly does not recognize federal court rulings which prohibit and otherwise regulate the State of North Carolina, its public schools, or any political subdivisions of the State from making laws respecting an establishment of religion.

The North Carolina state constitution disqualifies those who do not believe in God from public office. The provision has been unenforcible since the 1961 Supreme Court decision in Torcaso v. Watkins, which prohibited such bans.
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North Carolina May Declare Official State Religion Under New Bill

Charlatan · Apr 3, 2013

Passive agressive governance. If they are so upset why beat about the bush. Go for the whole hog and try to sucede.

Baraka_Guru · Apr 3, 2013

Charlatan said: ↑

Passive agressive governance. If they are so upset why beat about the bush. Go for the whole hog and try to sucede.
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They really should. They're totally being repressed.

Charlatan · Apr 3, 2013

Totally.

rogue49 · Apr 4, 2013

hmm...I wonder how fast SCOTUS will flip this? Bets anyone??

It amazes me the amount of crazy in the world sometimes.
So much for being a civilized society...

Aceventura · Apr 15, 2013

Baraka_Guru said: ↑

So I guess states can make laws respecting an establishment of religion?

North Carolina May Declare Official State Religion Under New Bill
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I am surprised that no one has ever challenged Article VI, Section 8 of the NC Constitution. I have lived in the State since 2006 and I am not aware of any religious tests being administered for elected office or enforcement of the other provisions. Article VI was added in 1899, over 100 years ago. The article is also sexist and racist, restricting the right to vote to males, establishes a poll tax and literacy test except for those who voted prior to 1867. The Article should be removed and attempts to enforce the provisions will back-fire and the publicity will result in a call for its removal. Most people don't know it is there.
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redux said: ↑

They left out Reagan's greatest atrocity against US sovereignty -- conspiring with the UN on an environmental treaty.

Does anyone really believe even one Senate Republican today would ratify this UN agreement?
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Reagan was President 25 years ago. Circumstances are different today. Would JFK win the Democrat Party primaries today? Again, circumstances are different today - what would his views be on abortion, gay marriage, pre-emptive military action, tax rates, treating women as equals?

Baraka_Guru · Apr 8, 2013

Aceventura said: ↑

I am surprised that no one has ever challenged Article VI, Section 8 of the NC Constitution. I have lived in the State since 2006 and I am not aware of any religious tests being administered for elected office or enforcement of the other provisions. Article VI was added in 1899, over 100 years ago. The article is also sexist and racist, restricting the right to vote to males, establishes a poll tax and literacy test except for those who voted prior to 1867. The Article should be removed and attempts to enforce the provisions will back-fire and the publicity will result in a call for its removal. Most people don't know it is there.
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Wow. It just sits there because it's infeasible?

I know that changing a constitution can result in opening a can of worms. This is the argument people have regarding whether constitutional monarchies such as Canada and Australia should reform into proper republics. It rarely goes anywhere because it's not like these constitutional monarchies are harmful to day-to-day parliamentary governance; however, with something like Article VI in the NC Constitution, it just might be worth the trouble.

redux · Apr 8, 2013

Last week, the UN approved a global arms treaty to help keep the flow of arms out of the hands of the bad guys.

The vote was 154 votes in favor including the US, 3 against and 23 abstentions. The three opposed - Iran, North Korea and Syria.

Also opposed and will not ratify the treaty (2/3 of Senate needed), every Republican senator who are crying about Second Amendment rights...presumably the rights of US gun dealers to sell to despots, drug kingpins, terrorists....

Aceventura · Apr 8, 2013

Baraka_Guru said: ↑

Wow. It just sits there because it's infeasible?
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They call it the Bible Belt for a reason. I think most Atheist interested in political office in NC would most likely avoid the subject. When I lived in Illinois in casual conversation the issue of one's religion never came up because your religion was assumed based on your ethnicity, last name or neighborhood. In California in casual conversation the issue of one's religion would come up maybe once in every hundred interactions with different people you casually meet. In North Carolina the issue of one's religion comes up about once in every ten interactions with different people you casually meet. Usually a casual mention of - what church do you go to? If your answer is "I don't go to any church" - the immediate response is "oh you poor heathen (they don't actually say that they just think it) you should come to my church Sunday... Your best bet is to change the subject - how do you think Junior is going to do next week (Junior as in Dale Earnhardt Jr. - NASCAR)? Which is a good think to ask anytime you are at a loss of words in North Carolina.

Other than some odd things like the above North Carolina is actually a nice place to live, even for Atheists - assuming they don't want to hold political office or not keep silent on the issue.

rogue49 · Apr 23, 2013

The GOP are in a sticky situation...perhaps even lose-lose.

The Hispanic population is catching up with them...and their anti-immigrant and xenophobic portion of their membership is starting to hurt them.
Can they change it??

If they do immigration reform, the new citizens could be more Dems.
If they don't do immigration reform, the current Hispanic citizens (and growing) could hold it against them.

Can a leopard change its spots??

Immigration reform could be bonanza for Democrats
By: Emily Schultheis - April 22, 2013

The immigration proposal pending in Congress would transform the nation’s political landscape for a generation or more — pumping as many as 11 million new Hispanic voters into the electorate a decade from now in ways that, if current trends hold, would produce an electoral bonanza for Democrats and cripple Republican prospects in many states they now win easily.

Beneath the philosophical debates about amnesty and border security, there are brass-tacks partisan calculations driving the thinking of lawmakers in both parties over comprehensive immigration reform, which in its current form offers a pathway to citizenship — and full voting rights — for a group of undocumented residents that roughly equals the population of Ohio, the nation’s seventh-largest state.

If these people had been on the voting rolls in 2012 and voted along the same lines as other Hispanic voters did last fall, President Barack Obama’s relatively narrow victory last fall would have been considerably wider, a POLITICO analysis showed.

Key swing states that Obama fought tooth and nail to win — like Florida, Colorado and Nevada — would have been comfortably in his column. And the president would have come very close to winning Arizona.

Republican Mitt Romney, by contrast, would have lost the national popular vote by 7 percentage points, 53 percent to 46 percent, instead of the 4-point margin he lost by in 2012, and would have struggled even to stay competitive in GOP strongholds like Texas, which he won with 57 percent of the vote.

The analysis is based on U.S. Census and Pew Research Center estimates of illegal immigrant populations by state, and presidential exit polls showing how Obama and Romney performed among Latinos.

Extrapolating 2012 voting trends to the 2028 presidential election — the first in which previously undocumented Hispanics could exercise their voting rights after a 13-year path to citizenship — is an inherently speculative exercise. But it is one that highlights the political sword hanging over Republicans as they consider immigration reform with a path to citizenship, an idea that is already deeply unpopular with many red-state constituencies.

To support the measure virtually guarantees millions of new Democratic voters. But for Republicans to oppose immigration reform invites hostility among Hispanic-Americans who already are punishing the GOP and imperiling its electoral prospects.

This reality, say many Republican strategists, gives the party no long-term alternative but to welcome the new voters and hope this allows the party to compete for Hispanic voters in ways that are closer to how President George W. Bush performed in 2004. National exit polls that year showed he won 44 percent of the Hispanic vote. Some analysts have questioned this data, but there is little doubt that Bush performed significantly better with this group than Romney, who got just 27 percent.

If Republicans do nothing to repair their relationships with current and future Latino voters, “we certainly won’t be a national political party anymore,” said GOP strategist Steve Schmidt, a top adviser to John McCain in 2008.

If one adds 11 million new Hispanic voters after immigration reform but applies 2004 percentages, the damage to Republicans is real but much less severe: Romney would have still won border states Texas and Arizona, albeit by smaller margins, while Obama would have held other Latino-heavy swing states like Nevada and Florida by slightly larger margins than the ones he did win by.

The POLITICO analysis is intended to reflect the GOP’s broader dilemma on immigration issues; it is not meant to be specifically predictive. There is no way of knowing how many of the estimated 11 million undocumented workers would ultimately succeed in gaining citizenship, nor any certainty of what their turnout percentages would be once they gain voting rights.

Republican strategists say many Hispanics have characteristics — strong Catholicism, and small-business backgrounds — that could make them natural targets for GOP messaging if the party can get past the immigration issue. Historically, however, there is no mistaking the reality that most Hispanics trend Democratic during their early years of voting.

To realize those gains, Democrats would have to succeed at the colossal challenge of registering and turning out newly naturalized citizens.

While there’s still little research specifically about Latin American immigrants’ voting behavior once they become citizens, research on other immigrant groups shows that they tend to turn out and vote at much lower rates than U.S.-born citizens.

“It’s one thing to register these people, and it’s another to turn them out to vote,” said Jill Hanauer, president of the Democratic group Project New America. “Newly registered, newly eligible Hispanic voters have much lower turnout propensity.”

At least at first, recently naturalized voters tend to vote Democratic — though more and more of them identify as independents or aren’t registering with either party.

“When you look at any immigrant group that’s lower on the socioeconomic ladder, they’ve traditionally voted Democratic,” said Schmidt. “But we can certainly win a percentage of them … that needs to be higher than 30 percent.”

To illustrate the potential voting shifts once immigrants are able to vote, look at Texas, Arizona and Georgia. The total undocumented immigrant population in each of those states exceeds Romney’s margin of victory.

Texas, where the unauthorized immigrant population is second only to California’s, had an estimated 1.65 million undocumented immigrants in 2010, according to statistics from the Pew Hispanic Center. Romney won the state in 2012 by just under 1.3 million votes.

In Arizona, Romney won by 212,000 votes — and there are an estimated 400,000 undocumented immigrants in the state as of 2010.

Even Georgia, which isn’t a border state and doesn’t immediately come to mind when thinking of immigrant-heavy states, would be affected: Georgia had an estimated 425,000 undocumented immigrants in 2010, per Pew Hispanic Center’s estimates, and Romney won there by 308,000 votes.

If all those immigrants had voted in 2012 and President Obama had won 71 percent of them — the percentage he won among Latinos nationally — he would have come in less than 50,000 votes short in Arizona, within about a half-million votes of winning Texas and 125,000 votes shy in Georgia.

In competitive states that went for Obama in 2012 — such as Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico — additional Latino voters would have increased his margins significantly.

Still, there may be reason to hope for Republicans down the line, particularly if they’re perceived as proactively working to reform the immigration system.

“Undocumented immigrants are aware of politics, but they don’t really have any party allegiance yet, because they’re not in the regular system,” said Matt Barreto, pollster at Latino Decisions. “When asked [about their political party] in surveys, huge majorities just say independent, none or other.”

Polling by Latino Decisions found Latino voters would be willing to vote for a Republican candidate if the party had taken a leading role in the immigration reform process — a trend that could translate to new Latino citizens as well.

Of currently registered Latino voters who voted for Obama in 2012, almost half of them — 43 percent — said they’d be willing to vote for a GOP candidate if the party takes a “leadership role” in passing immigration reform.

“Past analysis suggested that immigrants are more likely to be Democrats, but that’s because the Republican Party has been spewing anti-immigrant rhetoric,” Barreto said. “So I would say everything in the past is not relevant if the Republican Party decides to change its image and its rhetoric.”

Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) agreed, saying Republicans can improve their standing among Latinos if they actively participate in the reform process.

“Immigration has been used by Democrats as a very effective tool to try to brand Republicans as anti-immigrant,” he said. “I think we have to take it off the table so that the Republican Party can start talking about the issues where we do very, very well and I’m convinced that we will do very, very well.”

And, as some Republicans have argued repeatedly, the GOP message is one that should, at its core, appeal to Latino voters.

“It’s always been the case with immigrant groups that when, they move into their second and third generations, when they have the chance to move up the socioeconomic ladder to become more entrepreneurial … that should open them, and has opened past immigrant groups, to the Republican message,” said Schmidt.

These changes are far in the future: Newly naturalized citizens won’t even start phasing into the electorate for several more election cycles. The discussions about a path to citizenship call for a 13-year process, which would mean both parties have a very long time to prepare for the influx of new voters.

“These voters are going to enter the electorate a very, very long time from now,” Barreto said. “So that means nothing is going to be immediate.”

© 2013 POLITICO LLC
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redux · Apr 23, 2013

Their heads say they should support immigration reform, including provisions to fully integrate current undocumented workers into the country, as the only practical solution, but their hearts say NO fucking way, relying on baseless arguments like connections to terrorism, taking jobs from real Americans....

roachboy · Apr 24, 2013

the right has been particularly appalling since the boston bombing.
few signs indicate an abatement in the gale of stupidity.

redux · May 1, 2013

I would say that not all Republicans/conservatives are xenophobes but all of the xenophobic responses to the Boston bombing have come from Republicans/conservatives (particularly blaming immigration and/or gun control).

I particularly like Ted Nugent's calling for a public hanging on July 4th and several Republican members of Congress calling for "enemy combatant" status, regardless of constitutionality.
--- merged: Apr 24, 2013 1:36 PM ---
Editor of World Net daily is calling for 9/11/13 as a national day of prayer and fasting needed to stop comprehensive immigration reform, the government’s supposed plans to stockpile weapons to “impose de facto firearms restrictions on citizens” and gay rights advocates who seek to “make the citizenry of Sodom and Gomorrah blush.”

9/11/13: A CALL FOR A NATIONAL DAY OF PRAYER AND FASTING

rogue49 · Apr 24, 2013

Yes, when one group in particular represents the predominate negative response...that group is under some onus to correct that attitude.

Otherwise, you can't complain being held in relation or responsible for reactions to those attitudes.

This is analogous to Islam's current predicament with it's radicals and less than equal/contemporary habits.

While not ALL of a certain group's membership are to blame or have that mindset...a certain portion does.
So if you don't want to be lumped together...then act on correcting it.

Christianity had that problem once with violence, the Catholic church is currently dealing with the pedophilia issue.
Democrats had to deal with corruption...or "big government"...etc.
GOP is dealing with a racial stereotype...nationalistic, uncaring of the public, etc. ...

You don't like it, do something about it.

rogue49 · Apr 25, 2013

And continuing the discussion of the attempted makeover...

House Majority Leader’s Quest to Soften G.O.P.’s Image Hits a Wall Within

By JONATHAN WEISMAN - April 24, 2013

WASHINGTON — Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader, has been trying for months to remake the image of the Republican Party, from one of uncompromising conservatism to something kinder and gentler.
It isn’t working so well.

On Wednesday, Republican leaders abruptly shelved one of the centerpieces of Mr. Cantor’s “Making Life Work” agenda — a bill to extend insurance coverage to people with pre-existing medical conditions — in the face of a conservative revolt. Last month, legislation to streamline worker retraining programs barely squeaked through. In May, Republican leaders will try again with legislation, pitched as family-friendly, to allow employers to offer comp time or “flex time” instead of overtime. But it has little prospect for Senate passage.

So it has gone. Items that Mr. Cantor had hoped would change the Republican Party’s look, if not its priorities, have been ignored, have been greeted with yawns or have only worsened Republican divisions.

“We need to look at these issues through a more human lens and realize government has a role here, especially on some of these pocketbook issues,” said Representative Shelley Moore Capito, Republican of West Virginia, who expressed frustration with the lock-step opposition of the House’s fiercest conservatives. “Have we been successful? No. We’re still trying to find our way.”

The debacle on Wednesday was the worst moment yet. The Helping Sick Americans Now Act sounded like solid middle ground — a measure to actually expand the part of President Obama’s health care law that created a federal “high-risk pool” in which people with pre-existing conditions could band together to buy subsidized insurance coverage. The provision was to be paid for by siphoning money from another part of Mr. Obama’s health care law, the Prevention and Public Health Fund.

But these days, those who linger in the middle of the road end up flattened. The White House issued a stern veto threat to keep the money in the fund, which chased away Democratic votes from the Helping Sick Americans Now Act. The Club for Growth, a conservative political action committee, warned that Republicans who voted in favor of the act would have their scorecards marked down for supporting part of the health care law. L. Brent Bozell III, a conservative activist, labeled the bill “Cantorcare” — and not as a compliment.

“We often say we don’t need this Democrat big-government program, we need this Republican big-government program,” said Representative Trey Radel, Republican of Florida. “It’s time to say enough is enough.”

In the end, the votes were not there — not even close, House vote counters conceded.

“We absolutely intend to bring this legislation back up,” said Doug Heye, a spokesman for Mr. Cantor.

When Mr. Cantor delivered a “Making Life Work” speech at the American Enterprise Institute in February, his message to his party was urgent and well received. The party, he said, needs to get beyond its single-minded, green-eyeshaded message of fiscal austerity and look to the problems of ordinary struggling Americans. Education, work-force training, health care and medical research have to augment the central issue of fiscal discipline and balanced budgets, he said.

“It was meaningful and good advice to all of us,” said Representative Charlie Dent, a moderate Republican from Pennsylvania. “I wish more of our members would have heeded it.”

The decision to call off the vote on the health care bill on Wednesday — a rare occurrence in the House — set off a round of recriminations. Some Republicans complained that Mr. Cantor had not vetted his proposals before presenting them publicly as the party’s salvation, then forcing them to the House floor. Others said a large core of the House Republican conference had simply proved unwilling to move beyond the austerity message.

The Republicans’ embrace of such austerity was evident as the House Ways and Means Committee was drafting a bill on Wednesday to ensure that the federal government’s creditors would be the first paid with incoming tax revenues, should Congress refuse this summer to raise the government’s borrowing limit.

“We can talk about flex time, we can talk about bills on Obamacare that are going nowhere in the Senate, we can talk about messaging all we want, but at the end of the day, in August, we’re hitting the debt ceiling,” said Representative Tim Huelskamp, Republican of Kansas and an ardent believer in the austerity agenda that Mr. Cantor wants to move beyond. “As Republicans, we have to get ready for that now.”

Conservatives say they agree with Mr. Cantor in principle. It is the details that have tripped them up.

“I think Eric is right in trying to focus on how you communicate more than anything else,” said Representative Marlin Stutzman, Republican of Indiana. “People are just frustrated at the cost of life, period.”

But, he added, “more federal government is not going to help the problem,” and too many of the recent prescriptions fall in that category.
In the end, the problem may be the failure of Mr. Cantor’s operation to do the basic work of building support, reaching out to Democrats and conservatives, and looking toward the Senate.

This week, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House whip, took the unusual step of inviting a group of reporters to discuss a bill being unveiled by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce that would change existing law to allow private-sector employers to offer comp time in lieu of overtime pay. The idea has been repeatedly rejected by labor unions.

During the meeting, Representative John Kline of Minnesota, the chairman of the committee, conceded that there was no Senate counterpart to the measure, and that he and his colleagues had not tried to engage members of the Senate in either party on the issue, or lobby for support from labor groups.
“I haven’t been making a full-court press,” he said.

Aides to Mr. Cantor said that despite the hiccups, he was making progress.

The Supporting Knowledge and Investing in Lifelong Skills Act — the job training program that passed 215 to 202, despite 14 Republican defections — may not have grabbed headlines, but it has given lawmakers something to talk about at home.

Next month, the House will vote on the flex time bill, as well as a bill that would eliminate voluntary financing of federal elections and shift the money to pediatric medical research.

“We in the House remain committed to putting our conservative principles first to help people first,” Mr. Cantor said on Wednesday.

But in the meantime, the House will turn for the rest of the week to the Responsible Helium Administration and Stewardship Act, which would prevent the scheduled closing of the Federal Helium Reserve later this year.
Click to expand...

I agree MORE government isn't the answer...but it isn't really the issue.
But taxes and debt aren't the issues either.

There are 3 problems that people are feeling burdened with.

Keeping a decent job...and being paid decently for it.

Healthcare costs

Being FEE'D to death by everyone and their mother.

The last they haven't become aware of...the fact that EVERY entity in the world now, corporate and government,
has decided that making a fee for EVERYTHING...things you cannot account for very well in a budget. (this means knowing the price ahead of time)
And now they think it's a great idea to pay for everything continuously monthly forever...a lease for ALL services.

This is not like it was...back then, you bought something, you judged the cost, it was bought.
A service had a set rate...you could control it more.

And lately, you are penalized for EVERYTHING...and a fee for that too.

So the public can never keep up...or if they do, sooner or later...something happens...and then you're fucked catching up.
It's like running a treadmill with weights on.

Until the powers that be figure this out...and how to restrain it...it's just going to get worse & worse.
Both parties need to realize this one.

roachboy · Apr 25, 2013

the republicans have nothing to say. the have no vision; they offer no solutions. the assumptions that had worked for them since the thatcher-reagan period no longer obtain. so they have a problem. their approach seems to be: continue working the identity politics horseshit in order to shore up what remains of their demographic and hope for the best. somehow, they remain a coherent-seeming option to folk. personally, i think the best thing that could happen to the us at the moment is for the right to entirely implode....

roachboy · Apr 25, 2013

o, and this is kinda interesting:

Secret Tape: Top GOP Consultant Luntz Calls Limbaugh "Problematic" | Mother Jones

rogue49 · Apr 25, 2013

roachboy said: ↑

o, and this is kinda interesting:

Secret Tape: Top GOP Consultant Luntz Calls Limbaugh "Problematic" | Mother Jones
Click to expand...

The problem is the conservative media is in the biz for the hype,
whereas the politicians truly need to be solving the issue.

So one needs to fire up the gang, get the audience, get the ratings, get the ads, to get their income...with no consequences.
The other needs to moderate...to satisfy the general population...and their words & choices have long-term impact.

Totally opposite agendas.

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