GOP beginning to understand political implications of immigration debate
Don't think for one second that the battle over immigration will be over until next year. According to the Monday morning edition of the New York Times, speechwriters have into an address Bush will give today:
Two weeks after the Senate walked away from its immigration debate,leaders of both parties are expressing a new sense of urgency to actbefore the November midterm elections. Mr. Bush, who has made animmigration bill a centerpiece of his legislative agenda and who coulduse a victory on Capitol Hill to revive his flagging second term, isexpected to address the issue again on Monday in an appearance inIrvine, Calif.
On the NBC Sunday show "Meet the Press", Massachusetts Democrat Ted Kennedy, who just released his book titled , :
"There's strong support for it," Sen. Edward Kennedy, a MassachusettsDemocrat, said of the bipartisan measure that he crafted largely withRepublican Sen. John McCain of Arizona.
"If the president were take on the right wing of his own politicalparty, we could get this legislation and pass it very, very quickly,"Kennedy told NBC's "Meet the Press."
This comes as others across the country pump up the volume on the debate. Over in California, Governor of the United States paying billions of dollars for a fence that illegal immigrants can just dig under.
This issue will not go away. Last month, Republican Congressman George Sensenbrenner ignited a flame that will not go out anytime soon, and years from now might be looked back at by historians as an ill-advised strategic mistake that burned the trust that a majority of Hispanics had towards the GOP when it came to moral issues after 9/11. What the GOP fails to realize is that while they consider immigration a security issue, Hispanics consider it a moral issue. Karl Rove seems to understand it, as does John McCain, while a clear majority of the GOP don't. Until all of the GOP can grapple with this reality, it will cost them politically.
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