Posted on June 18, 2013

Rubio Stares Down the Right over ‘Undocumented Democrats’

Tim Alberta, Yahoo! News, June 18, 2013

Marco Rubio was not amused.

The senator from Florida had listened patiently as a panel of hand-picked conservatives, lined up across a long table at the front of the room, took turns speaking about the prospects of immigration reform. When discussion finally opened to the anxious, overflowing crowd of lawmakers at the Republican Study Committee’s immigration summit, several were quick to critique their pro-reform colleagues — Rubio the headliner among them.

Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., argued they should be discussing a report by the Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector on the costs of amnesty. Rep. Scott Garrett, R-N.J., raised concerns about implementing an e-Verify system. But it was Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas, who got under Rubio’s skin.

Referencing a Jay Leno one-liner, Burgess questioned fellow conservatives about the wisdom of giving citizenship to “11 million undocumented Democrats.” Laughter, some of it nervous, spread throughout the room. But not everyone found Burgess’s crack funny. According to several people who attended the June 5 gathering, Rubio glared at Burgess.

This account, confirmed by multiple members and staffers, sheds light on what is perhaps the most politically obvious — and perpetually underplayed — conservative argument against providing citizenship to the nation’s illegal immigrants. With all the noise surrounding the debate over policy specifics — security measures, enforcement triggers, future flow, interior oversight — there is still an underlying political argument whispered among some of Congress’s most conservative members: After 71 percent of Hispanics voted for President Obama in 2012, why should Republicans add millions more to the voting rolls?

Not everyone feels the need to whisper. At this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, Rep.Steve King of Iowa — the leading immigration hard-liner in the House GOP — earned laughter and applause during an immigration panel when he quipped: “Even Republicans seem to think that these undocumented Democrats could be made voters and somehow we’re going to win in that equation. And what happens is that two out of every three that would be legalized become Democrats.”

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Burgess explained his quip as “an effort to tamp down some of the tension in the room,” but said there is a serious conversation being had about the subject of his joke. “I live in a state that has voted Republican in statewide elections for a long time. And yet you cannot pick up a Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle, Fort Worth Star-Telegram without reading an article about how ‘Texas is going to be a Democratic state, it’s just a matter of time,'” Burgess told National Journal. “What’s going on here, is people think if we get a larger and larger immigrant population, they will be obligated to vote Democratic.”

Burgess was quick to point out that he doesn’t agree with that assessment. But King does. And the Iowa lawmaker seems to smell blood in the water, suggesting the “undocumented Democrat” argument, long peddled by radio host Rush Limbaugh, who first used the term in 2010, is “starting to emerge” as a point of contention among conservatives.

If King is right, and this political argument is gaining steam, it could thanks to a trickle-down dynamic — the national conversation influencing conservatives in Congress. There are no shortage of conservative activists, media personalities, and elected officials who have taken tough stances outside of Washington in an attempt to influence what happens within the Beltway.

One of these hard-liners, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, has repeatedly warned about what happened after Ronald Reagan signed an “amnesty package” in 1986: Republicans won a significantly smaller percentage of the Hispanic vote in 1988 (30 percent) than they had in 1980 (35 percent) or 1984 (37 percent). For that reason, Kobach told National Journal earlier this year, the “law and order” stance continues to be “the most advantageous position” for the GOP. “We can improve our outreach and expand and amplify our message … without embracing amnesty,” he said.

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King can barely mask his contempt for Republicans who subscribe to this theory [that Hispanic support will follow amnesty]. “They believe that somehow if we grant amnesty that Hispanics are going to come vote for Republicans. I think that’s not going to happen whether or not we pass amnesty,” King said. “If [Hispanics] vote, they’re going to be voting in the patterns that they have shown up to this point. And it’s clear, 75 percent or more of them are for more government, which means more taxes, and more dependability. And that means more undocumented Democrats.”

With both chambers of Congress considering immigration measures this month, the stakes couldn’t be higher, nor the contrast clearer. Conservatives on both sides of the “path to citizenship” question are convinced that their plan will save the Republican Party — and that the alternative will destroy it. The difference, King warned, is that those Republicans advocating legalization are abandoning their principles in an attempt to win millions of votes they’ll never receive.

“Their excuse is, ‘We’re never going to win another presidency unless we pass amnesty,’ ” King said. “I’ll tell you it’s the exact opposite. If you want to lock it in — that Republicans will never win the presidency again — pass the Gang of Eight bill.”