Quotes of the day

[T]he “Romney would have lost anyway” argument neglects the fact that his dismal performance among Hispanics made the race unwinnable. Even if we accept Krikorian’s view that the Hispanic vote only mattered in Florida and Nevada, when you add those states to the already solid blue states, it means spotting Democrats 236 electoral votes. All Obama or any Democratic candidate would need to get over the top at that point would be to win Michigan and Pennsylvania — two states that have gone Democratic every year since 1988. Failing that, Democrats would have multiple other combinations to get over 270. In contrast, a Republican who lost those states could still lose the election even if he or she won all of the reliably red states in addition to North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, New Hampshire, Colorado, Iowa and Wisconsin.

Again, this analysis is conservative. In 2004, Bush carried New Mexico with 44 percent of the Hispanic vote, but this year the state wasn’t even in play. Also, Hispanics made up 14 percent of the electorate in Colorado, providing Obama with his margin of victory there. Add Colorado to the Democratic fold, and the electoral math becomes even more daunting for Republicans.

Senate Democrats are planning to quickly revisit immigration reform after President Barack Obama’s inauguration, according to several Democratic sources.

What type of legislation they will end up pushing has yet to be discussed in detail. But the party feels emboldened by Tuesday’s election results, in which Republicans suffered a blistering defeat among Latinos. And there is a sense that the political landscape couldn’t be more ripe for a legislative topic that’s proved dicey in the past…

“I think [Republicans] are going to want to do it now,” Schumer said. “[It] is at the top of the list because the nation demands it and needs it. And, again, I think in the exit polls, two-thirds of Americans basically agreed with the concept of real immigration reform.”

He’s right: Americans in general, even Republicans, support immigration reform more than the congressional GOP would suggest. Sixty-five percent of voters support giving undocumented immigrants working in the U.S. a path to legal status, including 37 percent of Republicans, according to exit polls.

Via Pew.

Asked whether he will make another attempt to fully repeal the Affordable Care Act, Boehner said “the election changes that” and “Obamacare is the law of the land.”…

The speaker also revealed that comprehensive, bipartisan immigration overhaul would be a top priority of his agenda during the 113th Congress.

“This issue has been around far too long,” he said. “A comprehensive approach is long overdue, and I’m confident that the president, myself, others can find the common ground to take care of this issue once and for all.”

Immigrants should be a natural GOP constituency. Newcomers to the U.S.—legal or illegal—tend to be aspiring people who believe in the dignity of work and self-sufficiency, and they are cultural conservatives. They are not the 47%. Republicans are also supposed to be the folks who have figured out the law of unintended consequences, such as that imposing ever-tighter border controls discourages the millions of illegal immigrants living in this country from returning home…

We understand the law-and-order issues at stake, particularly along the border, as well as questions of fairness in allowing illegals to jump the immigration queue. But the right response isn’t mass deportation—as politically infeasible as it is morally repulsive. It’s a rational, humane, bipartisan reform that broadens the avenues to legal immigration, both for those abroad and those already here…

No doubt this editorial will provoke letters denouncing us for being soft on the issue. Now is an opportune time to ask those disapproving readers how many more Tuesdays like this one they’d care to repeat?

The principal reason they go Democratic is the issue of illegal immigrants. In securing the Republican nomination, Mitt Romney made the strategic error of (unnecessarily) going to the right of Rick Perry. Romney could never successfully tack back.

For the party in general, however, the problem is hardly structural. It requires but a single policy change: Border fence plus amnesty. Yes, amnesty. Use the word. Shock and awe — full legal normalization (just short of citizenship) in return for full border enforcement.

I’ve always been of the “enforcement first” school, with the subsequent promise of legalization. I still think it’s the better policy. But many Hispanics fear that there will be nothing beyond enforcement. So, promise amnesty right up front. Secure the border with guaranteed legalization to follow on the day the four border-state governors affirm that illegal immigration has slowed to a trickle.

If Republicans want to change their stance on immigration, they should do so on the merits, not out of a belief that only immigration policy stands between them and a Republican Hispanic majority. It is not immigration policy that creates the strong bond between Hispanics and the Democratic party, but the core Democratic principles of a more generous safety net, strong government intervention in the economy, and progressive taxation. Hispanics will prove to be even more decisive in the victory of Governor Jerry Brown’s Proposition 30, which raised upper-income taxes and the sales tax, than in the Obama election…

The idea of the “social issues” Hispanic voter is also a mirage. A majority of Hispanics now support gay marriage, a Pew Research Center poll from last month found. The Hispanic out-of-wedlock birth rate is 53 percent, about twice that of whites.

The demographic changes set into motion by official and de facto immigration policy favoring low-skilled over high-skilled immigrants mean that a Republican party that purports to stand for small government and free markets faces an uncertain future.

Some rounding error issues here, but young voters made up much larger share of black, Hispanic voters. twitter.com/baseballcrank/…

— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) November 8, 2012

“Unmarrieds” as a group are four times the size of Hispanics and growing faster. Why are latter getting four times the attention?

— Richard Starr (@richardsstarr) November 8, 2012

Fox News’ Sean Hannity told his radio listeners Thursday that he’s “evolved” on immigration and thinks undocumented immigrants without criminal records should have a “pathway to citizenship.”…

“We;ve got to get rid of the immigration issue altogether,” he said. “It’s simple to me to fix it. I think you control the border first. You create a pathway for those people that are here. You don’t say you’ve got to go home. And that is a position that I’ve evolved on. Because, you know what, it’s got to be resolved. The majority of people here, if some people have criminal records you can send them home, but if people are here, law-abiding, participating for years, their kids are born here, you know, it’s first secure the border, pathway to citizenship, done, whatever little penalties you want to put in there, if you want, and it’s done.”

• Chris Christie’s challenger is going for it with a million-dollar ad buy in New Jersey
• Kabuki: Dems yank phony amendment on gay spouses at last minute to help push Gang of Eight bill through committee
• New MSNBC theory: Maybe the IRS commissioner appointed by Bush targeted tea partiers because they’re a threat to the GOP

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