Boehner Is Hit From the Right on Overhaul for Immigration.

[elleng]

As House Republicans embarked late last month in luxury buses for their retreat on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, their ears were already ringing with angry phone calls. Heritage Action, the political arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation, was imploring its members to flood the Capitol with warnings to accept “no amnesty.”

The day before, the Tea Party Patriots group set in motion 900,000 automatic phone calls in 90 Republican House districts, connecting tens of thousands of voters to their members of Congress. The hashtag #NoAmnesty blazed across Twitter. About the same time, FreedomWorks, another anti-tax, limited-government group, was pulling in signatures on its “fire the speaker” petition against the House speaker, John A. Boehner.

When House Republicans gathered on Jan. 30 to actually read and discuss Mr. Boehner’s principles on immigration reform, his was already a losing battle.

“Why did we even put these out there?” asked Representative Tom Price, a respected conservative Republican from Georgia, urging leaders to set aside the issue until after the November elections.

A week later, Mr. Boehner shelved the issue, declaring Thursday that he could not move forward with a comprehensive overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws until President Obama won the trust of the Republican conference.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/08/us/politics/boehner-is-hit-from-the-right-on-immigration.html?hp&_r=0

[Rosa Luxemburg]

1. Immigration will kill the GOP

They don't know how to deal with it

[elleng]

2. or it will NEVER happen.

Democrats MUST figure out how to benefit from the idiot repugs' point of view, and I'm not at all confident that we/they can do it.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

3. I think we can - this is the GOP's Achille's heel

[elleng]

4. We surely COULD

if we handled it properly, but we often don't. Would like to see someone like Gov. Dean be designated to manage it.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

5. Yes there should be a special tactics unit on immigration

[elleng]

6. With authority

[mucifer]

7. GOP is Blowing-up Last Chance With Hispanic Voters, Article from Fernando Espuelas:

While conservative pooh-bahs are discouraging Speaker Boehner (R-Ohio) from action, saying that immigration reform will damage the GOP, the view from outside the right-wing bubble is quite different. Boehner undoubtedly gets it, but many Tea Party Republicans on the Hill and their enablers in the media, especially Tea Partyers who are rabidly opposed to reform, continue to live trapped in a time capsule somewhere in the past when Cokes sold for a nickel, new Chevys for $800 bucks and minorities were forcibly blocked from voting.

Invisible to these time travelers is the daily damage that Republicans are suffering as American Latino voters -- the fastest growing part of the electorate and the margin of victory or defeat in several big states -- are increasingly disgusted with the GOP's immigration blockade.

The reality is now upon us: Since President Bush's immigration reform was killed by his own Republican Party in 2007, and the latest GOP presidential candidate ran on a political suicide strategy of "self-deportation," many Hispanics in this country see Republicans as the immovable object that must be dislodged from power.

The only question that remains is whether Boehner will allow his party to commit electoral hara-kiri by listening to the Tea Party Republicans who think the GOP should appeal to a whiter voter base or save it by passing comprehensive immigration reform that makes America more prosperous, secure and true to American values. He might even successfully inoculate the GOP from Pete Wilson syndrome.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/fernando-espuelas/gop-is-about-to-blowup-la_b_4713629.html

Fernando Espuelas has a popular radio show in Spanish on Univision radio. He is very much middle of the road. He likes John McCain. He does not like Jimmy Carter. He HATES the teabaggers.

I love listening to his radio show. It helps my Spanish. Just about every day he bashes the teabaggers and in turn the republicans for following the teabaggers and he is telling everyone to vote. He goes on and on about how the republicans don't think Hispanics are listening to what they say in English in congress and that they believe they are only listening to the lies they say in Spanish. I hope he is right that more and more people are understanding what is going on.

[elleng]

8. If we can deal with voter registration properly,

and reach out, inform, and gotv, but those are all IFs, I'm afraid.