Paul Waldman''s Unhelpful Piece About the GOP and Immigration

     The big news flash is that, according to him, some of these GOP candidates aren't as anti immigration as they are campaigning. This is true of some of them like Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, particularly.

      "In 2008, John McCain, straight-talking principled maverick that he was, got into a Republican primary and saw that a position in favor of comprehensive immigration reform was causing him problems, so he disavowed the reform bill he had co-authored not long before, going so far as to say that if it came up again in the Senate, he'd vote against it. And now Marco Rubio, who like McCain attempted to pass a bipartisan comprehensive reform bill, is doing something similar. When the "Gang of Eight" bill Rubio championed passedthe Senate in 2013 but died in the House, Rubio was skewered by tea partiers as a sellout and a traitor. So he changed his position, saying that he now advocates "securing the border first, " just like every other Republican."

     "But there may be less of a flip-flop here than meets the eye. In fact, I'd argue that many of the Republican contenders are less conservative on immigration than they're pretending to be. Here's what happened when Rubio got asked yesterday on "Face the Nation" about whether he'd vote for his own bill:"

     "That's a hypothetical that will never happen," he says, which is probably true, even if it's a way of dodging the question. But when you listen to him outline his actual position on immigration, it doesn't seem to have changed from the Gang of Eight bill, and indeed, it doesn't sound all that different from what many Democrats advocate. Rubio may not like the term, but he advocates a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants: he describes a lengthy process that goes from a provisional status to a legalized status including a work permit to eventual citizenship, and involves things like paying back taxes, but that's what Democrats want too."

     "Rubio could frame an answer to the question in a reasonable way if he wanted; he could say, "We tried to pass comprehensive reform and we couldn't, so what I'm proposing now accomplishes the same goals piece by piece and therefore has a better chance of satisfying my party's right wing because the 'tough'-sounding stuff comes first." Of course he wouldn't put it that way, because all the incentives in the primaries encourage candidates to say, "Grr, no amnesty, border security first!" There's a premium put on channeling the emotions of the Republican electorate on this issue, including anger, resentment, and fear. But the details of what Rubio is advocating are pretty moderate."

      "And it isn't just him. Jeb Bush has aroused conservatives' ire by talking about undocumented immigrants like human beings, and though he too now stresses the "tough" parts of his immigration plan, he has long supported a path to citizenship. Scott Walker has been a bit muddy on the question, but he has allowed that there could be a way to give the undocumented citizenship (after the border is secure, of course). He says he's against "amnesty," but doesn't say that he opposes any path to citizenship ever. Rand Paul supports a path to citizenship, even if he doesn't want to call it that. Bobby Jindal supports a path to citizenship. Mike Huckabee wants citizenship for DREAMers. In fact, the only major candidate I could find who has unequivocally ruled out any path to citizenship is Ted Cruz, and even he advocates some kind of legal status that would allow undocumented immigrants to stay in the country and work."

     "So what we have here seems to be a bunch of candidates who want to convince Republican primary voters that they're more conservative on immigration than they actually are."

     https://prospect.org/waldman/republican-candidates-pretending-be-more-conservative-immigration-they-actually-are

     Is it actually 'a bunch' or just two-Jeb and Rubio? Ok, so these two are among the most likely candidates for the GOP, but it's besides the point. My worry is capsulized by something that Bill Clinton had advised the Obama campaign on back in 2012. 

     Obama had shown how serious he was about being re-elected by brining in the big gun-Bill Clinton.  The former President made a crucual point: by calling Mitt Romney a 'flip flopper' it might actually help him as people would think that he was just taking such hard line positions to please the Right but that he'd flip back to a more reasonable moderate stance after he was elected. 

    This is why Krugman is so right about the media's silly focus on personality driven politics. As Krugman says, 'it takes a party.'

     "In any case, there has never been a time in American history when the alleged personal traits of candidates mattered less. As we head into 2016, each party is quite unified on major policy issues — and these unified positions are very far from each other. The huge, substantive gulf between the parties will be reflected in the policy positions of whomever they nominate, and will almost surely be reflected in the actual policies adopted by whoever wins."

     "So Hillary Clinton is officially running, to nobody’s surprise. And you know what’s coming: endless attempts to psychoanalyze the candidate, endless attempts to read significance into what she says or doesn't say about President Obama, endless thumb-sucking about her “positioning” on this or that issue."

      "Please pay no attention. Personality-based political analysis is always a dubious venture — in my experience, pundits are terrible judges of character. Those old enough to remember the 2000 election may also remember how we were assured that George W. Bush was a nice, affable fellow who would pursue moderate, bipartisan policies."

      "For example, any Democrat would, if elected, seek to maintain the basic U.S. social insurance programs — Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid — in essentially their current form, while also preserving and extending the Affordable Care Act. Any Republican would seek to destroy Obamacare, make deep cuts in Medicaid, and probably try to convert Medicare into avoucher system."

      "Any Democrat would retain the tax hikes on high-income Americans that went into effect in 2013, and possibly seek more. Any Republican would try to cut taxes on the wealthy — House Republicans plan to vote next week to repeal the estate tax — while slashing programs that aid low-income families."

       "Any Democrat would try to preserve the 2010 financial reform, which has recently been looking much more effective than critics suggested. Any Republican would seek to roll it back, eliminating both consumer protection and the extra regulation applied to large, “systemically important” financial institutions."

     "And any Democrat would try to move forward on climate policy, through executive action if necessary, while any Republican — whether or not he is an outright climate-science denialist — would block efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions."

      http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/13/opinion/it-takes-a-party.html

      Over at Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight, Harry Enten had interesting piece yesterday about how 'UK elections are boring.' Enten's point was that there is a lot less volatility in UK polls than US polls at least in the early part of elections. The reason for this relates to the same point Krugman was making-that the coverage of US elections is too personality focused rather than party focused:

      A year out from an American presidential election, we basically have no idea who is going to win. The error rate in the U.S. drops rapidly, though — from 13 percentage points 365 days out to about 7 points with 150 days left in the campaign. During that same period, the U.K. error rate drops from 9 percentage points to 7. Why are the U.K. election polls initially more accurate?

     "Presidential polls in the U.S. more often ask about the individual candidates than the parties. So U.S. polls early on are really tied to name recognition and less so to fundamental factors that affect election outcomes (such as the economy). Polls in the U.S. tend to converge with the fundamentals as the election approaches. But early on, the polls are especially unstable for candidates who suffer from a lack of name recognition. Both Michael Dukakis and Bill Clinton were down by over 30 percentage points to the much-better-known George H.W. Bush a year out from the 1988 and 1992 presidential elections, respectively."

     "Polls in the U.K., on the other hand, ask mostly about parties, not candidates. If there were a large difference between how voters ended up feeling about the candidates versus the parties, polls asking only about parties could be wildly inaccurate. In reality, election day preferences for parties and individual candidates don’t differ by much."

     http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/uk-polls-are-boring/

     My problem with Waldman''s post here is that it can lead someone to make this error of thinking that if Jeb Bush is elected we'll get immigration reform when that's not remotely true. It doesn't matter who you elect as Republican we won't get immigration reform whether or not that person meant what they said or not during the campaign. 

     P.S. As I've pointed out numerous times, the GOP is a party of process not policy. This is something that 'liberal policy wonks' seem to miss. While Jeb or Rubio may not mean what they are saying about building a fence, if either are elected we still won't have immigration reform. It's the party not the individual that matters here.