Florida Senator Mario Rubio, whose name even sounds Spanish, is the self-anointed leader who plans to lead the GOP into the promised land. But I’m wondering if it’s going to be so easy. The President and Senate Democrats are more than happy to speak bi-partisan, but the bill that comes out of the Senate is going to be a Democratic bill, and one can wonder, a lot, if House Republicans are going to be able to swallow it.
It was on the issue of immigration alone that the Republican base rebelled against the Bush Administration, not earmarks, or the war in Iraq, or the prescription drug plan, or anything else, and that rebellion was devastatingly effective. The Republican leaders in Congress had already silently abandoned their use of the debt ceiling as a weapon against the Obama Administration, supposedly their sharpest sword in the fight against “Big Government.” Now they’re opening the door to the foreign hordes!
This is, obviously, a double capitulation to the lords of Wall Street, who clearly have decided that these Tea Party hicks have had their fun and shot their wad, and now it’s time to get back to “normal.” But the Tea Party is the larger half of the Republican Party now. I disagreed with the Tea Party on almost every issue, but it was a genuine expression of popular emotion. These people aren’t going to start voting Democratic, but they may start staying home.
Afterwords
At Salon, Alex Pareene picks up on the members of the right wing media, like Mark Krikorian and Michelle Malkin, who didn’t get the memo telling them that all the cool kids are pro-immo this year. And now the supreme right-wing talking head, El Rushbo, has erupted as well. Furthermore, one can wonder if all the Republicans dreaming of being the party’s nominee in 2016 who are not named Mario Rubio are all that happy about seeing Mario being portrayed as the GOP’s savior. Establishment Republicans like Charles Krauthammer and Mary Matalin have been accusing President Obama of trying to engineer a Republican Civil War. It looks like the GOP has started one all on its own.
