Liberal columnist Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post makes a very good point in today’s column, which I found at realclearpolitics.com. Core issues to the Republican Party have become so unpopular, the Democrats are becoming dangerously complacent.
On immigration, for instance, everyone talks about how the Republican tough party line drove Latino voters to Democrats by a three-to-one margin.
“What the GOP seems not to grasp is that the party’s “send-’em-all-home” stance is way out of line with much of the rest of the electorate as well,” Robinson writes.
“A Politico-George Washington University poll released Monday asked voters whether they favored ‘an immigration reform proposal that allows illegal or undocumented immigrants to earn citizenship over a period of several years.’ That would be amnesty, pure and simple — and a whopping 62 percent said they were in favor, compared to 35 percent who said they were opposed.
“You might expect Democrats, then, to be pushing hard for a straightforward amnesty bill. But they don’t have to. Because Republicans are so far out in right field on the issue, Democrats haven’t actually had to do anything to reap substantial political benefits. They’ve just had to sound more reasonable, and less hostile, than Republicans, which has not required breaking a sweat.”
He extends the arguments to the so-called “fiscal cliff” debate, which has the Republican Party twisting in the wind over tax rates for a small minority while Democrats get a free ride on putting together a workable budget — which is the responsibility of the president, after all.
“Republicans get this stuff so wrong that Democrats aren’t even forced to go to the trouble of getting it right,” he writes.
Recommended reading; You don’t have to extend Robinson’s logic far to ask yourself why Democrats should actually solve problems like immigration.
