Is Rush Limbaugh right?

Ken Mehlman, immediate past chairman of the Republican National Committee, rejects the notion that the 1986 reform is a proper analog to the current proposal. He says it differs significantly from what happened under Reagan and constitutes "progress from a conservative perspective" because it conforms immigration "with the laws of supply and demand," tracks who is in the country, secures the border, and penalizes illegal behavior. "I think it's legitimate that a lot of conservatives are worried about the 1986 precedent," Mehlman, now a partner at Akin Gump law firm in Washington, said Tuesday in a phone interview. "But this bill avoids two of the 1986 pitfalls: First, back then there was no meaningful increase in legal immigration; and second, anyone who was here illegally we simply waved the wand and they automatically became citizens. This bill does neither."

As for the none-too-subtle complaints by dittoheads about the perils that immigrants pose to American culture and moral standards, Mehlman has a response for that, too. "What I would say in response to that is that this law requires people to learn English, learn about American history, and thus encourages assimilation. American culture is not based on national origin or race. It's e pluribus unum. When we celebrate St. Patrick's Day, do we view it as a foreign holiday? Do we eat a hot dog at a baseball game and think of it as a non-kosher food? No, we don't."

Immigration reform is clearly just part of the Hispanic outreach that Mehlman and the rest of the party's elite see as crucial to the party's survival. When Mehlman stepped down as national GOP chair after the 2006 electoral rout, the party had to make a choice. Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, an African-American, expressed interest in the job. But after witnessing Al Gore receive an even higher share of the African-American vote than Bill "first black president" Clinton, followed by Hurricane Katrina's final drowning of Republican outreach efforts to the black community, at this point GOP efforts to make inroads with black voters makes about as much sense as the Democrats targeting gun-toting yacht owners who preset the radio in their Lexus to James Dobson's radio program.

Hispanic votes are another matter entirely. The Republicans believe they can arrest the erosion of the 2006 election, and they know they must. Mehlman's job eventually went to Cuban-born Mel Martinez, the senator from Florida. Although paid staff do most of the day-to-day work of running a national party, it's increasingly unusual in the modern era to pick an incumbent elected official like a sitting U.S. senator to pull double-duty as national chair. That the White House wanted Martinez is thus revealing and, with respect to the party's base, a risky move. On May 18, Martinez gave a 5,000-word speech in Columbia, S.C., to assembled Republican state party chairs, of which more than 40 percent was dedicated to immigration. "I'm an immigrant to America," he proudly declared. "I understand what the American dream is about. I have an understanding of what it means to become an American, to stand there one day and raise your right hand and abhor and abjure, which is what the oath says, any allegiance to any other foreign land and become an American. I respect what that means."

That message is not selling well with Limbaugh and his minions. And the corporate wing's squishiness on immigration is already creating enormous problems for the GOP in the next election. Among the party's 2008 presidential front-runners, John McCain has borne the brunt of the backlash, since he is the hated reform bill's chief GOP cheerleader in the Senate and was the coauthor of its 2005 forerunner. On the conservative blog Red State, Hunter Baker wondered if McCain's immigration stance has effectively neutralized any advantage he might otherwise have been able to establish over Giuliani and Romney on abortion and other social issues. Perhaps showing the stress, during a contentious mark-up meeting on the reform bill, McCain said "fuck you" to fellow Republican Sen. John Cornyn and called Cornyn's objections to the legislation "chickenshit." On a conference call with a group of conservative bloggers, McCain then accused rival Mitt Romney of flip-flopping on immigration: "Maybe I should wait a couple weeks and see if [Romney's position] changes. Maybe he can get out his small varmint gun and drive those Guatemalans off his yard."

Rudy Giuliani is also feeling the heat. He was the mayor of a city of immigrants, where he championed many see-no-evil policies unpopular with the dittoheads, and has endorsed the immigration bill. One commenter at Free Republic Photoshopped the former New York mayor's face atop the cartoon image of a sombrero-wearing bandito, along with a caption reading, "Borders? Borders? We don' need no steenking borders!"

Only marginal candidates like Duncan Hunter, Ron Paul, and Tom Tancredo, who has made it his signature issue, had sided explicitly with the populist base prior to the recent unpleasantness. Now Giuliani is dancing away from his own overtly pro-immigrant past, and the ever-elastic Romney has positioned himself as McCain's worst enemy on immigration. Sam Brownback, who cosponsored John McCain's original reform bill, decided in April to renounce Satan and recast himself as a nativist.

No matter what the 2008 candidates say or do, however, and regardless of how they fare in the primaries or the general election, the party's elite seems to know what it wants for the long term. The nation's Hispanic population continues to grow at more than 3 percent per year. The party's power players have decided that it is better to act now rather than later, even if Main Street rebels, because later the consequences can only be more dire. Their actions, including their support for the immigration reform bill, will either pull the GOP back from the brink, or push the party over it.

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