America's Voice Reviews Drubbing of Restrictionist Candidates in 2008

by Dave Bennion

Published November 14, 2008 @ 07:00AM PT

America's Voice has the definitive post-election wrap-up (pdf) on competitive House and Senate races in 2008 where the Republican candidate tried to use illegal immigration as a wedge issue against a Democratic challenger.  The analysis focused on the "swing districts" that the Cook Political Report identified a month before the elections.  Greg Siskind summarizes:

10 of 13 incumbent Republicans who lost seats last week were members of the notoriously anti-immigrant Immigration Reform Caucus.

In 19 or 21 House races where immigration was a major issue, the more pro-immigration candidate won.

In the Senate, 5 pros beat 5 antis in races where immigration was an issue.

From the AV report:

In 2005 a new wedge issue-immigration-was born. That year, the Republican-led House of Representatives approved a sweeping bill that would have turned all undocumented immigrants into felons. In 2006, the Senate passed a version of the McCain-Kennedy bill that would have turned all undocumented immigrants into taxpayers. House Republicans renamed the Senate bill the "Reid-Kennedy Amnesty," thus solidifying illegal immigration as the latest "wedge" issue in American politics. House Republicans took the issue and ran hard with it in the 2006 elections. That summer they launched a series of "field hearings" promoting their crackdown on illegal immigration, and deriding the Senate's more practical approach. These hearings became thinly-veiled campaign commercials for Republicans, held at taxpayer expense in the districts of the Party's most vulnerable Members.

Despite the Republican Party's best efforts to distract voters from the issues that beset the party at the time-such as corruption and two unpopular wars-the illegal immigration wedge issue failed to protect incumbent Republicans in 2006. The Democrats took control of the House and Senate for the first time since 1994.

. . .

Rather than learn their lesson, the GOP reprised this failed strategy in time for the 2008 elections. Candidates and the Party spent millions of dollars and ran hundreds of ads in scores of races across the nation, charging Democrats with supporting amnesty and opposing immigration enforcement. Once again, the GOP immigration strategy went down in flames, and the Party was handed another major setback at the ballot box, from Congress to the Presidency.

The GOP will have a third bite at the apple in 2010 ... maybe the restrictionist wing of the party can convince them to have another go at it and further solidify the Democratic majority.