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Rove/Bush have so fucked this one up, it could be the biggest political mistake in our lifetimes.
Rove thought he was coming up with a grand scheme to counteract the demographic trends which were the subject of the popular book "The Coming Democratic Majority," which predicted democratic majorities on into the future primarily because of an exploding hispanic population which tends to vote democratic.
Rove probably thought he was being cute, he was going to devise a guest worker program that allows even more immigrants to come take jobs, drive down wages, and destroy the unions, and gain the affection and votes of the hispanic community for basically legalizing the current status quo. He figured the average Bush voter would be bamboozled by the fact they were going to call it "immigration reform" and go along, while the whole thing was really meant to buy hispanic votes and legitimize the businesses who use low paid immigrant labor.
But he just didn't understand the public mood. He completely miscalculated. This has blown up in his face in a major disaster.
He failed to gauge the depth and severity of anti-illegal immigrant sentiment(by the way, so did the legal immigrants rallying in support of the illegals, their interests would be best served by not being associated with the illegals). I shoudl first note that we should not blame the anti-illegal immigrant people, or call the racists, or reject them. These are people who see unauthorized immigrants taking jobs and driving down wages, its a real threat to them. They have seen the Bush administration tolerate this for years,a llowing this because it benefits the businesses that employee the illegals.
These american workers might not understand outsourcing and globalization, you cannot see the chinese worker who took your job walking down your street, after all, out of sight, out of mind. But they can see the hispanics in their neighborhood, and really, it is the same thing as outsourcing and globalization, except the business is importing workers, instead of exporting jobs. And what is sticking in the craw of the american workers is ITS ILLEGAL, and the american workers have caught on to the fact that the government tolerates it on purpose because Bush doesn't care about american jobs.
So the people see Bush's proposal for what it is, Bullshit with a capital B. "Guest worker" means letting even more people in who will work for less and undercut them.
So there is a genuine, and emormous, populist backlash againmst Bush's plan. But because he raised the issue, Bush is now trapped, because if he listens to popular opinion now, which is to keep the law as it is and clamp down on illegal immigration, he will completely alienate the hispanic voters, and the Coming Democratic Majority will become fact. But if he does what business wants, let in a flood of "guest workers," he will enrage the average people who make up this "anti-immigration" popular wave of opinion.
Last night he made a futile effort to find a way to have it both ways. he is sticking to the plan to pay off business and buy the hispanic vote with his guest worker proposal, but the people are not buying it, not at all, and the democrats have responded perfectly by saying "no bill is better than a bad bill." We have nothing to gain by "reforming" immigration if that means legitmizing illegals.
Rove has lost his touch, this was a huge, huge mistake. And there is no way out.
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