It seems that a look at dismal opinion polls and angry demonstrations have had an impact on the GOP leadership which is mulling over major changes to the proposed immigration bill:
Following huge nationwide protests, Republicans on Tuesday moved to possibly change two key provisions in a get-tough immigration bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives.
One would turn millions of illegal immigrants into felons and the other has raised concerns that people who provide them humanitarian relief would be punished. Top Republicans insisted that neither is their intent.
Their verbal commitments to revisit those provisions came a day after hundreds of thousands of people held demonstrations nationwide, provoked by the bill that would also erect a fence along much of the U.S.-Mexican border.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, and House Speaker Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican, issued a joint statement, saying: “It remains our intent to produce a strong border security bill that will not make unlawful presence in the United States a felony.”
Hastert and Frist blamed the fact that the bill was so tough in these areas on….get read for the surprise…Democrats:
They said an effort had been made earlier to change the bill to make “unlawful presence” a misdemeanor, but it was rejected mostly by Democrats in the Republican-led House.
They also blamed Democrats for stalled legislation in the Senate, which would bolster border security and provide most of the estimated 11.5 million to 12 illegal immigrants in the United States a path toward citizenship.
A spokeswoman for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, said, “clearly Speaker Hastert and Leader Frist are feeling the heat from the hundreds of thousands of people around the country rallying against the (House) bill that Republicans supported.”
Sen. Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, said, “Actions speak louder than words, and there’s no running away from the fact that the Republican House passed a bill and Senator Frist offered one that criminalizes immigrants.”
Indeed, it was assumed that the original versions would play well with the party’s hard-line base and also be appealing to the bulk of the American people and be a useful wedge issue. There seemed to also be an assumption behind this that was: “Well, let the House do what it wants because it’ll be quickly tempered by the Senate and it won’t matter to most people but we’ll get lots of support in the end.”
But it has proven to be a boomerang (see our earlier post on that HERE) that sparked huge demonstrations, inspired students to walk out of schools, riled up Hispanic voters and non-voting Hispanics, divided the GOP itself and made the party’s own President seem politically impotent because his advocacy of a softer line was summarily rejected and openly disdained by some GOPers in the House.
In the end, it’s unlikely that charges that the Democrats are to blame will stick. In fact, several reports say the demonstrations were a boost to Democrats — who took advantage of the crowds in some instances to sign up new voters.
So far there have been no news reports yet about Republicans sending operatives to mass demonstrations to sign up voters for their party to capitalize on the rage immigrants feel towards Democrats on the immigration issue.
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.