On the Right: Immigration "Misfires" and "Fizzles"

Immigration Misfire
By Rosa Rosales
Wall Street Journal, February 5, 2008

Political pundits used to maintain that the American electorate was galvanized around the issue of illegal immigration. Voters, they claimed, would punish any candidate who failed to take a tough stance on immigrants and did not adamantly oppose the "A" word--Amnesty--in all its tortured definitions.

Yet a funny thing happened in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida. The most anti-immigrant candidates performed below expectations, and those accused of supporting amnesty and in-state tuition for undocumented immigrants won. [...]

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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120217267552142823.html?mod=Letters

Immigration--The Big Fizzle
By Markos Moulitsas
The Hill, February 5, 2008

The irony is superb. In an election cycle that has seen many Republicans pin their fading hopes on a last-ditch effort to demonize immigrants, their party appears well on its way to nominating the candidate least hostile to immigration.

By the time you read this, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) may or may not have effectively secured his party’s nomination; in either case, it’s clear that both establishment and rank-and-file Republicans are coalescing around his candidacy. And McCain has consolidated his grip on the nomination in the face of his conservative opponents’ desperate efforts to destroy his candidacy by scapegoating McCain’s sponsorship of the even-handed McCain-Kennedy immigration legislation--a bill he would still sign into law today if here were president, as he recently told Tim Russert. [...]

Read the full article:
http://thehill.com/markos-moulitsas/immigration-the-big-fizzle-2008-02-05.html