Republicans to Hispanics: Hell yes we love you! Just not right now!

Did I predict this? Well, probably not, but, anyway, Bill Kristol and Rich Lowry, two of the biggest DC dicks going, have joined forces to take out the immigration-reform bill, which was likely 99.44% dead in the House of Representatives already. As about a million people have pointed out, Kristol is playing the same game with immigration as he did with health care back in 1992: if it helps the country, it will help the Democrats, so we should be against it—basically Engine Charlie’s aphorism turned upside down.* Another million, including Andrew Sullivan, have pointed out that what Bill and Rich are essentially saying is that they don’t give a shit about Hispanics, they just want to win a damn election.

I’m hoping that this new-found faith in the “hidden cracker vote” that is clearly burgeoning among Republican operatives will prove misplaced. I’m putting my hope in a surprisingly neglected minority—the rich bastards’ vote, and, of course, more importantly, the rich bastards’ checkbook. I would like to think that the Wall Street big shots who largely turned on Obama because he failed to master the art of kissing both their ass-cheeks at the same time all the time, will decide that they’ve squeezed as much juice out this Tea Party lemon as they’re going to get, and come back to the party that doesn’t want to abolish the Federal Reserve Board and bring back the gold standard. As for the Hispanics, I think they’ve already figured out that there are two kinds of Republicans: those who hate Hispanics on principle, and those who hate them because it’s politically convenient to do so.

Afterwords
I confess that I didn’t predict that the internecine Republican war over immigration reform would end the way it has, with essentially a total victory for the immigrant-hating base. I thought the Wall Street wing, emboldened with the post-election conventional wisdom that the GOP faces demographic disaster if it fails to court the Hispanic vote, would be able to muscle through a decent compromise with the Democrats. But it appears that House Republicans have told House Speaker Boehner that, unless he wants his head, ass, and testicles handed to him on a platter, he will never let the Gang of Eight bill, which passed the Senate with such a bipartisan flurry only a few weeks ago, see the light of day.