POLITICS - The "Whitemen's Club" GOP and Immigration

"Shields and Gerson on Immigration Reform, Gingrich's 2012 Bid" PBS Newshour Transcript 5/13/2011 (includes video)

Excerpt on Immigration

JIM LEHRER (Editor, Newshour): Well, as Mark pointed out, President Bush, for whom you have worked, he was in favor of immigration reform that had both parts, right, that it took care of -- or it dealt with the issue of illegal immigrants who are already in the country and also about sealing the border better, right?

MICHAEL GERSON, Washington Post columnist: And he made some of those arguments that Secretary Napolitano was making on this program...

JIM LEHRER: Yes.

MICHAEL GERSON: ... which is, if you want to get control of the border, you have to have some regular way to have guest workers come into the United States, and be registered, instead of, you know, crossing the border illegally. That's an important complement to controlling the problem at the border itself.

These are -- you know, it is a bipartisan issue. It has been in the past. But it has almost no chance in the current Congress.

JIM LEHRER: What -- in shorthand, what happened? Why -- where did the -- why did the consensus go away?

MICHAEL GERSON: Well, it's -- I think it's a tough question.

Some of it is, the Republican Party is not the Republican Party of George W. Bush. It doesn't have a leader that makes this case. It also -- you know, Bush failed within his own party. There was a revolt against it.

JIM LEHRER: He couldn't get it done. Yes.

MICHAEL GERSON: He couldn't get it done. And it was a talk radio issue all across the country within the conservative community. And they turned against the legislation strongly.

So, I think that that has burned a lot of Republicans. They know it is a tough thing among their own constituents. And, so...

MARK SHIELDS, syndicated columnist: Practically speaking, Jim, in an increasingly less white country, as -- which the United States is, the Republican Party has become an increasingly more white party. And that's a real political problem, just the arithmetic that works against them.

Today's GOP = White Old-men Party, Billionaires Club, anti-little guy, "compromise" is a dirty word, and kowtowing to Tea Party radicals. The party of Exclusiveness.

Today's GOP is NOT the party I belonged to for a long time, and the above reasons (4/5) is why I left the GOP in 2000.