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Immigration Is Not a Deal Breaker for Rubio
Sen. Marco Rubio’s involvement in the Gang of Eight attempt to pass comprehensive immigration reform has been one of his campaign’s biggest stumbling blocks. This, and and his refusal to disavow some form of “amnesty,” has left him vulnerable and at odds with the base. The only way for Rubio to win the nomination — so the theory goes — is to take a hardline on immigration.
This conventional wisdom sounds very logical and compelling. There’s only one problem with it: It’s completely wrong.
Exit polls from the first three nomination contests have revealed two interesting facts: Immigration is a top priority for only a small percentage of voters, and that 2) A majority of GOP voters so far actually support legal status for illegals working in the United States. Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina are all very different states in very different parts of the country, but immigration has consistently been the top priority of between only 13-15% of Republicans there in election night entrance/exit polls. What’s more, in New Hampshire, 56% of GOP voters said they support legal status for current illegals (go to the second page of results). And while one might chalk that up to the squishy nature of the average Granite State primary voter, the same question yielded almost the same result (53% favoring legal status) among staunchly-conservative South Carolinian GOP primary voters. CNN didn’t ask the same question to Iowa caucusers, but I doubt those voters are any more hawkish on “amnesty” than voters in the other two states.
Moreover, the same exit polls show that about a quarter of those who support “amnesty” for current illegals (22% in South Carolina; 24% in New Hampshire) actually support Trump. This indicates that immigration can’t account for Trump’s dominance in the race so far. His appeal is based on much more than the issue of immigration and, in fact, he is getting many votes despite his stance on immigration.
I’m going to submit that people shouting “Rubio supports amnesty!” and braying about the Gang of Eight are going to be sorely disappointed at their effectiveness in derailing a Rubio candidacy. They are probably also going to have to rethink what sort of compromise they are going to have to accept on immigration reform and legal status for immigrants. They are in a minority in their own party and are most certainly an even smaller minority among the general voting public.
Our immigration system needs a reformation and it needs to start with controlling our borders, tracking visas, and requiring verified legal status for employment. But anyone who thinks there is a silent majority looking to deport over ten million people is living in a bubble.
Published in Immigration, Politics
From what I’ve seen as an employer, “effective e-verify” is a contradiction in terms. It does not work. I don’t see how it could be modified so that it would work and it would take an army of government agents harassing businesses to try to make work and it still wouldn’t work. Unfortunately, the only solution that would work is a national ID. Then illegals wouldn’t be able to even buy beer or cash a check without their ID being checked. But not even socialist will vote for a national ID…yet.
Rubio’s position on immigration is more believable than Trump’s making Mexico pay for the fence.
Starting on Day One of his presidency, Marco will be focused on immigration security.
He will:
And if you believe any of that, I have some bottomland to sell you. Just don’t ask what it’s on the bottom of.
And regarding how Trump would get Mexico to pay for the fence, a 10% tax on remittances would pay for a chunk of it. A tariff on cars manufactured in Mexico would pay for the rest.
The interesting thing is that none of them — not Trump, not Cruz, not Rubio — have truly been building a case for their position. We’ve had “who said what” debates, but not much discussion of the actual policy itself.
I saw someone on Twitter use the phrase “internet bubble” to describe some of the outrage over immigration. It’s there, it’s real, but it’s hardly the #1 dominant issue.
Who’s collecting this tax, the IRS, how will they even find these “remittances” and how much will it cost to collect it? Won’t the tariff on cars be paid by the car buyer in higher car prices? Wouldn’t a Republican Congress be able to “encourage” Rubio to honor his promises? Congress’s job is to use their control the purse strings to get the results they want. Rubio wants to be the second coming of Reagan. He cannot afford to be obstinate.
The tax on remittances would be collected by the institutions transferring the money, in much the same way sales and excise taxes are collected. There is a limit on how much of a tax can be passed on to consumers when the consumer has any alternative choices. Any amount above that limit comes out of the company’s pockets, and by extension, the Mexican economy. Set the tariff high enough, and the entire amount comes out of the company’s pockets and Mexico’s economy, because no one will buy the cars.
With Ryan the Amnestymonger and McConnell the Corrupt running the House and Senate, I’d expect Rube to be able to get anything he really wanted, including a toothless amnesty bill.
So you support hiring more IRS agents to collect yet another tax?
Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics, p. 453
“Tariffs are taxes on imports which serve to raise the prices of those imports and thus enable domestic producers to charge higher prices for competing products…” Thus, Trump’s tariff will make cars more expensive for everyone buying a competing product.
So you’re ok with four more years with President Hillary Clinton?
A Republican Congress would fight Hillary on amnesty. Rube, not so much.
Rube + Ryan = 0*borders.
And yet Trump’s immigration policy is getting Mexico to pay for a wall. Talk about your “sham” border security! Why not just say that Santa is going to pick up all the illegals as he makes his rounds on Christmas eve. Apparently the yokels are easier to hoax than anyone thought. And you, Carey, have been hoaxed right out of your pants.
There’s more depth to that statement than you know.
This sounds about right. The analytic polling on Trump supporters indicates that a large percentage of them openly admit that he doesn’t represent their values. So amnesty supporters end up supporting Trump. This is weird. Why would voters vote for a candidate whose views they didn’t identify with? This seems, well, irrational. But that may be the point. The zig-zag, inconsistent, what-might-he-say-next quality of Trump could be the attraction rather than any view he holds (momentarily). The love of abrupt right and left turns has a kind of thrill attached to it. It is one of the reasons people fall in love with despots. Their arbitrariness is idolized. And with Trump it may be the same. People may not care at all about his policies as long as he comes up with endless twists and turns; the more implausibly or irrationally self-contradictory these are, the better.
Carson, Cruz and Kasich or Rubio/Cruz (and multiple permutations and combinations of the same) could Voltron together and have enough support to defeat Trump.
I think we’ve seen the natural ceiling of Trump’s support: There are about 30% (+/- 4%) of people in both parties who are aggrieved, and they each have their demagogue to carry their grievance-water for them.
Because they tend to be more motivated than the remaining 2/3rds of the party bases they can occasionally show up and over-perform in limited turnout situations.
The end is nigh, Trump supporters.
67% of the field is against Teflon Don, and when the last stragglers retire from the field, defeated, a single, mighty colossus of Anti-Trump will remain and thoroughly vanquish him.
I can’t wait to watch the Twitter-tantrump which will erupt when Rubio puts the finishing touches on his historic, comeback victory.
Hi all,
This editor’s note was left early this morning, and, as of now, the last use of such epithets on this thread was last night. I hope that clears up some confusion.
Isn’t it time to get over the gang of 8. Rubio’s crime was to be naive and allow himself to be pulled into a political upstart shredder by the establishments of both parties, so those who can’t get over it are working with McCain, Graham and Shummer. He, unlike Trump has made his position clear. Some don’t trust him, because, well he changed positions, and he is, after all a Latino and we all know you can’t trust Latinos. Trump on the other hand can almost certainly be counted on to cut a deal that will lead to legalization and without new legislation that means a path to citizenship.
Why do democrats and progressives accept defects in their candidates, particularly those who have the best chance of winning a general election, but our side wants absolute purity….Not trying to sound like mike Murphy, but we have lost the last presidential elections by significant margins and it was not because of conservatives or immigration Hawks staying home.
This is a fantasy. Rubio is far more well liked among the right than Cruz. I’ve linked their respective favorability ratings numerous times on this site. Rubio is the second choice of far more Republicans than Cruz is.
The Dems will make mincemeat out of him. They know he’s weak. Christie did us this one great service — he proved to people like you that this electability fiction for Rubio is just that: made up stuff.
Editor: “Amnesty demagogue” is OK, though.
I noticed this too.
If so, where do the poll numbers Soto cites come from?
It’s not that I can’t see why Rubio might come across as “weak”. It’s just that it still seems true that “electability” would have more to do with favorability ratings than with “strength”.
We might think “strong” people should be the most electable, but evidence gathered from the population doing the electing should count for something, too.
I think you underestimate the degree to which Cruz supporters mistrust and dislike Rubio. Many view Rubio as ‘more of the same’ republican leadership that has agitated them to the point of near revolt. They also believe that a Rubio/Ryan alliance will assure a “Gang of 8” style immigration ‘reform’ – which is to say legalization with only the whiff of enforcement.
No, the most electable person is not known this early. It’s a cheap shot for the experts to weigh in on this with any gravitas at all. It’s simply unknowable. Rubio looks like Romney to me — the Dems will destroy him and/or he will cave in like Romney.
Did you read Melissa’s comment #11? That whole story shows that Rubio doesn’t have any horsepower and didn’t have enough character to withdraw his support when he saw how bad the bill was.
Larry, You are a smart guy, but I think you need to keep in mind that the term “most electable” is a comparative term. The GOP started this primary with as strong and deep a field as I have ever seen. Marco (and Ted) pulled away from that field. (Leaving Trump aside, of course – he is completely unelectable.) Both Marco and Ted have problems, but if you are going to challenge their electability, then I think you are obliged to state who you think would be better.
Let me just grant you this for a moment. I don’t take it seriously, but for the sake of argument, sure.
Is the position that the Cruz people are taking seriously that somehow, the Democrat position is more appealing? Given that a majority of the party doesn’t take the hard-line tack on immigration, why does insisting that they should (and pretending that they can implement hard-line policies even if their candidate does somehow win) beat the fat zeroes they know they’ll get from a Clinton Administration?
If the game is up and Ryan and McConnell are truly just shills, (protip: they aren’t) it doesn’t matter whether a Clinton or non-Cruz Republican is elected. Heck, for that matter, why won’t these evil forces steamroll a President Cruz? Because they will, eventually if they really are what you say they are.
Compromise on this topic is inevitable. Rubio can be the velvet hammer – the stealth conservative we’ve been hoping to elect for a long time.
Are they lying to pollsters? Because something to the tune of 70% of Cruz supporters list Rubio as their second choice if Cruz drops.
If those numbers reflect reality, the game is up. Rubio will start winning states where Donald was previously going to limp over the finish line because of the fractured field opposing him and that will be that.
There’s a very good chance the 30% of Cruz supporters who wouldn’t go to Rubio are also over-represented online, consistently extolling their hatred of Rubio, Jeb, the establishment, etc.
I’m hoping Trump starts to hit Rubio hard on immigration, and then Cruz slips past both of them.
If immigration is not actually a major issue, I guess this won’t work.
I cannot fathom how this is so. Romney, as Jonah Goldberg put it, spoke conservatism as a second language. Rubio speaks it as his primary language.
Gosh. It’s not the major issue that it appears to be because there is violent agreement on the right that border security is a mandatory first step.
After that, how you deal with the people who are here seems to be the rub. For his part, Romney accidentally spoke an unwelcome truth when he talked about “Self-Deportation.” The reality is that this is the only viable path to getting people to leave our country en masse. Making it marginally more difficult to get work as an illegal will have that effect.