In a way, if you follow American politics and the way anything is seized on and very quickly to either score political points or polarize, you KNEW this was coming. Our political Quote of the Day comes from The Washington Post’s Greg Sergant who notes how immigration reform foes are pouncing on the news about the Boston Bombing suspects to use it to battle immigration reform:
There’s still a lot we don’t know, but it’s being widely reported that the two suspects in the Boston bombing — one of whom has been killed by police — are brothers of Chechen origin. According to law enforcement sources, the brothers entered the U.S. in 2002 or 2003, and at least one of them has been a legal permanent resident since 2007.
Some on the right are already pouncing on the news to cast doubt on the desirability of immigration reform….
…It’s unclear thus far how widespread the effort among conservatives will be to connect the Boston bombing suspects to the immigration reform debate. But it’s certainly something that bears watching. If this argument picks up steam, it will be another indication of how ferocious the resistance on the right to immigration reform is going to get.
I’m not in the group of pundits who think that immgration reform is a slam dunk to receive GOP support in the end because it’s in the party’s interest. Bit by bit, all the things many (including an RNC report) said the Republican Party needed to do to rebrand is falling by the wayside.
And I believe immigration reform that won’t be so watered down that it is considered an insult by politicians and groups seeking immigration reform is doomed for another reason:
Rush Limbaugh is now against it.
h/T on Sergant’s remarks to Andrew Sullivan.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.