A poll by the Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg perhaps explains why the Republican leadership seems to be scrambling to reformulate its position on immigration reform.
The polls show the GOP-dominated House’s position on immigration reform is out of the American mainstream. The LAT‘s Ronald Brownstein reports:
Most Americans say the United States should confront the challenge of illegal immigration by both toughening border enforcement and creating a new guest worker program, instead of by cracking down on enforcement alone, a Times/Bloomberg poll has found.
By a solid 2 to 1 margin, those surveyed said they would prefer such a comprehensive approach, which a bipartisan group of senators has proposed, to an enforcement-only strategy, which the House of Representatives approved in December. Support for a comprehensive approach was about the same among Democrats, independents and Republicans, the poll found.
Another way of looking at it is to use a word that some consider a dirty one. The poll suggests that there is a center in American politics on this issue — and the House GOP stance is not where it is. MORE:
Do you remember 100 years ago when we were saying, ‘Give us your tired, give us your poor?'” asked David Wells, a Republican who works as a golf course groundskeeper in Plant City, Fla. “How come that doesn’t still stand? I don’t think it is right to send all the people back who have been here 15 or 20 years, who have families here, who have been good, who haven’t been in jail and have been productive.”
Still, Americans showed markedly less enthusiasm for allowing guest workers to continue to flow into the United States in the future than they did for proposals to permit the estimated 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants already in the U.S. to remain legally.
And even some of those who rejected efforts to remove the illegal immigrants already here made clear in interviews that their opposition was based more on practical than philosophical objections….
Here’s the key warning for the GOP:
These findings came in a poll filled with ominous findings for the Republican House and Senate majority as the 2006 midterm elections approach.
Although President Bush’s job approval rating rebounded slightly from his 38% showing last month — his lowest rating ever in a Times survey — the new poll found Democrats opening double-digit leads on the key measures of voters’ early preferences for the November balloting.
Democrats now lead Republicans by 50% to 35% among registered voters who were asked which party they intend to support in their congressional districts this fall. When registered voters were asked which party they hope will control the House and Senate after the midterm election, 51% picked the Democrats and just 38% the GOP.
On both questions, independent voters prefer Democrats by ratios of about 3 to 1 or more.
We have repeatedly noted in our posts on this site the constant erosion of this administration’s position among independent voters. There are a variety of reasons but one reason is the administration’s tendency to try to appeal at all costs to its activist conservative base and not build bridges to those who may disagree on either policies or parts of policies.
The Times also notes other ominous rumblings that the GOP might be wise to heed:
Republicans could be helped this fall because relatively few House districts are closely balanced between the parties, and many of the key Senate races are occurring in states that lean toward the GOP.
But the 14-percentage point lead for Democrats in the “generic” ballot test could represent an unusually formidable threat to those defenses: For example, the GOP advantage was only about one-third as large in the last Times poll before the GOP’s landslide gains in the 1994 congressional elections.
In these early soundings for 2006, Republicans face the potential reemergence of a gender gap that Bush narrowed in his 2004 reelection. While men split evenly when asked which party they intend to support in November, women prefer Democrats by 57% to 31%, the survey found. Democrats hold a commanding advantage not only among single women, a traditional Democratic constituency, but married women, a swing group that broke toward Bush and the GOP in 2004.
Project what’s going on in terms of 2006. The GOP apparently faces: (1) the reemergence of the gender gap, (2) the desertion of many independent voters who gave the GOP the benefit of the doubt (or were split), (3) the likely loss of recent gains among Hispanic voters. MORE:
The impasse in Washington over restructuring immigration laws has led many to predict that the issue could become a flashpoint in this year’s election. But the public does not yet seem impassioned about the controversy: While 84% of poll respondents agreed that illegal immigration was a problem, only 31% identified it as one of the country’s major problems.
The idea that drew the most support in the survey was allowing “undocumented immigrants who have been living and working in the United States” to obtain visas to work here legally, and to move toward citizenship if they meet a list of requirements.Two-thirds of those polled said they supported such a proposal, with support notably higher among independents (71%) and Republicans (67%) than Democrats (59%).
This issue poses a huge problem now for the GOP leadership. They can adjust their position on immigration so it’s more in line with what most Americans want but they will be accused of holding their fingers up to test the political winds. But if they hold firm on the present position — stressing border enforcement and legal retaliation against illegals without any provision to adjust the status of a least a portion of the illegals who are here — there’s a risk the base may not vote in sufficient numbers for the GOP in 2006.
Add to that the sheer emotion of this issue on both sides. Those who want a clampdown and essentially endorse the mass deportation of those who are here now illegally think legalizing any sends a bad message and will inspire a flood of others to slip across the border and wait for the next version of what would essentially be an amnesty. Those who want legal status to be normalized for some or all of the migrants who are here point to their contributions to American life and how traumatic it would be to uproot whole families who came to the U.S. to escape poverty and have been good citizens.
So the GOP appears to be caught in pincers. But if this poll is any indication, not changing its stance could mean worse consequences than changing it and risking losing the votes of some members of the party’s base. It’s the fundamental question: does the GOP stand for its base or does it stand for more than just its base?
And, if it repositions itself to ignore the clamor from part of its hard-line base is that admirable or cynical? If the GOP adjusts its stance you’ll be sure to hear arguments on both sides — with both sides of the argument being argued by differing parts of the GOP.
UPDATE: The LAT also offers this Q&A on immigration issues.
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.