I hate to say I told you so, but [updated]

after watching and listening to the Republican debate this week, I want to revisit an issue on which I took some flak before.   After the Virginia elections I commented in a number of places, including one of my own diaries, that I expected we should expect to continue to see the Republicans attack on immigration.  In Some good news from Virginia, written on election night, I noted

Now the bad news.   It looks like the attacks on illegal immigration had some salience, especially in Prince William County.   Thus I expect to see Republicans across the country start trying to use this as a weapon.

This was on top of previous stories, such as that on the day after the election entitled Yup, immigration not the GOP's savior in which he quoted from Amy Gardner's front page Washington Post story entitled In the Ballot Booths, No Fixation on Immigration, and his election evening diary entitled Beaners in which he argued that the Virginia Republicans, despite basing a large part of their campaign on immigration, "got crushed."  In fairness, he updated that diary to point at the one I wrote and one by Andrew C. White entitled We lost in Stephentown because we both reported some evidence of the effects of the anti-immigration approach.

Let me reiterate what my concern was.   It was not that Corey Stewart won reelection as County Board Chair in Prince William County running almost solely on the issue of immigration.  It was that he increased his percentage margin over Sharon Panjak from what it had been in the special election when he took office.  I also saw what I thought was some evidence of the effect on Jay Donahue's attempt to unseat Rust in Herndon, the original ground zero in Virginia on immigration, and some possible spill over in the Senate race in Stafford and further south that Al Pollard narrowly lost.

I never argued that the anti-immmigrant approach was necessarily going to be all that effective.  Rather, I thought that there was enough success at which some Republicans could point that it would continue to be used as a cudgel, beating up on those who could be considered "other"  - because the Republicans had no other arrows in their campaign quiver.

Skip forward to the CNN YouTube debate.  Not only did we have the disgusting exchange between Giuliani and Romney on who presided over more sanctuaries, thereby attempting to turn a noble word into a pejorative, we had Tancredo bragging that everyone was trying to out-Tancredo Tancredo, we had Duncan Hunter bragging about his wall.

I hate to say I told you so. . .   actually, no I don't. Unless and until we see a massive rejection of this approach, some Republicans will continue to use it.  After all, Corey Stewart is making noises about the statewide Virginia Republican party, which effectively is now a toxic waste dump.   While he claims he is concerned about other issues, realistically does anyone doubt that given what he will view as his own success that one issue he will continue to push is that of immigration?  And today a Court rejected a law suit against the Prince William Police being able, solely on suspicion, to demand proof of immigration status from people - the judge said those suing had not demonstrated they had suffered any harm and thus lacked standing to sue (I am writing about this from a brief report on the radio as I drove home this evening).  And there are rumors now that Stewart might assay an attempt for a nomination for statewide office (most probably Lt. Governor, since George Allen and several others are positioning themselves to figh it out for the top spot).

While I think in general the overall positions of the Republican field are pretty noxious, I do think McCain and Huckabee deserve some credit for the positions they took on the issue, given the nature of the most activist segment of the Republican base.  It is unfortunate that even as he was legitimately defending the treatment of illegals in NYC while he was mayor Giuliani had to do a "so's your old man" routine on Romney on the issue of sanctuary - that diminished the real effect commenting about what he had done in the past could have had on the debate.   Think of it:  if 3 of the top four Republicans had been willing to reject the demagoguery associated with this issue, we might have had some hope that it would not continue to poison our political discourse, and we might be able to talk about meaningful solutions to the real problems we have.

We will unfortunately continue to have to deal with the issue.  It is not that I think that Republicans will win many races on this issue, but in some cases it might make a difference.  But the discussions about it will suck oxygen away from discussion of other more important, more salient issues.  Were those other issues - health care, bankruptcy, foreclosures due to subprime mortgages, education, etc - more prevalent, the Republicans would be in far deeper trouble than they already are.

They may not WIN on immigration, but there is some evidence that by using it as a distraction they might be able to lessen the otherwise overwhelming losses which currently loom on the horizon for next year.

I do not advocate our becoming Republican-lite, on this or any other issue.  That was never the intent of my remarks, on election night or subsequently.  I thought what I was doing was pointing out that we need to be prepared for this issue continuing to be part of the political discourse, and that we need to turn it back against those who use it, as I think was actually done somewhat effectively by Huckabee, although I would not make such large distinctions between adults and children as he did.   There is still the danger that the focus will become that these illegals are forcing wages down for good "American" workers -  and that might be used as an attempted wedge into the African-American community.

We should always be prepared, to anticipate what our opponents might do, so that we are not surprised.  

Peace.

UPDATE I just flipped on ABC Evening News, in time to catch a story about a day laborer from Honduras working on a job in Princeton NJ who got mauled by the homeowners' dog.  The laborer won a quarter million settlement, and the dog has been ordered put down (this part on appeal), but meanwhile it has turned into a nasty thing on immigration, because the day laborer is an illegal.  And we have this as news coverage, and Stephanopoulos led into the story with reference to spat among the Republicans on immigration during the debate. . .  

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