Why Won’t the GOP Make This Election a Referendum on Immigration?

Everyone is on tenterhooks wondering what the Republicans’ national strategy for the November elections will be. {snip}

Let’s see, what would make a good national issue?

Democrats are far savvier than Republicans when it comes to winning elections, and I note that Obama has decided to put off his “executive amnesty” until after the elections. Does that ping any neurons in your tired “Diversity Is a Strength” synapses, Republicans?

Another obvious place to look for a good national issue is the polls. According to months of polling, the No. 1 most important issue to voters is immigration–by a landslide. In Gallup polls in July and then again in August, Republican and Republican-leaning Independent voters chose immigration as the “biggest problem” facing the nation.

Commenting on its July poll, Gallup noted that more than twice as many Republicans as Democrats called immigration the nation’s No. 1 problem, suggesting that by “problem” they mean illegal immigration, not the failure to pass “comprehensive immigration reform.”

In Gallup’s August poll, immigration was again voted a bigger problem among Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents than either the economy or even Obamacare. It was the third “biggest problem” for Democrats and Democratic-leaning Independents, after dysfunctional government and unemployment/the economy.

The magnificent Republican Tom Cotton, running for the Senateagainst amnesty-supporting Democrat Mark Pryor in Arkansas, says he’s gotten more questions about immigration than any other issue. He says voters keep asking: “What can we do to stop the border crisis. … What can we do to stop Obama issuing another unilateral amnesty?”

That sounds like a terrific opening for the GOP to shout: Vote Republican!

But while individual Republicans are talking like Tom Tancredo, the national GOP seems strangely reluctant to make this election a referendum on immigration. If there is a single Democrat running for office this year who isn’t forced to take a position on Obama’s coming amnesty, Republicans aren’t doing their job.

Which they aren’t. How about some national ads denouncing Obama’s executive amnesty?

Democrat Mickey Kaus suggests that Republicans’ insistence on keeping immigration an isolated issue raised only by individual candidates is a warm-up to the big GOP sell-out on amnesty.

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Republicans might also wait to see if Marco Rubio gets re-elected before concluding his “screw-the-voters-on-amnesty” was a good strategy. {snip}

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In Arkansas, Louisiana, West Virginia, Montana and South Dakota, the Republican Senate candidates are crushing their Democratic opponents in the polls. {snip}

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Republicans can win a Senate majority, take back the presidency, repeal Obamacare, build the Keystone pipeline, slash oppressive government regulations, end special tax deals and government contracts for the Democrats’ big donors, restore an honest IRS and nominate serious people to the federal bench.

But they’ll never do any of those things if they can’t learn that mass immigration from the Third World is wildly unpopular with voters.