A Virginia Reader Says GOP Leadership Should Have Heeded Rahm Emanuel’s Warning: AMNESTY Is The Real Third Rail Of American Politics
02/10/2014
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Re: John Derbyshire’s blog item Boehner's Ceaus,escu Moment: "We May Permit Ourselves A Brief Period Of Jubilation"

From: Virginia Paleoconservative [Email him]

Now that Republicans John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan et al., have backed down (for the moment) from pushing immigration reform in 2014 due the vitriolic reaction of their own conservative base in retrospect they should have paid heed to what a prominent Democratic strategist said about it some time earlier.  This was, believe it or not, Rahm Emanuel, former chief of staff to Obama! 

Many times throughout his career he was very wary of the negative political consequences for Democrats if they took up immigration reform thus riling up the immigration patriots and suffering their wrath at the elections.  Emanuel called immigration reform the “third rail” of politics.  [Why Didn’t Obama Present Immigration Reform in His First Term? Rahm Emanuel Answers, Interview with Jorge Ramos, November 6, 2013]The point is that even though Emanuel was of the left he was also was a political realist and knew enough to steer Obama away from fully proposing comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) as an unnecessary political risk before the 2012 election.

And Ruben Navarrette along with other “professional” Hispanics still despise him for that reason even though Emanuel is currently endorsing immigration reform as the mayor of Chicago!

Emanuel could have never imagined the Republican leadership would be so stupid and corrupt not to be in opposition to CIR as a differentiator to the Democrats but instead attack their own conservative base for not supporting it! 

These treasonous Republicans were so blinded by greed and power that their political careers have been permanently damaged for doing so.  It serves them right!

See previous letters from the same reader.

James Fulford writes: Just for the record, I’d like to remind readers once again Navarrette is nominally a Republican. You know, like Linda Chavez and Raul Lowery Contreras. His column runs on Townhall.com.

If the Bush/McCain Hispanic outreach had ever succeeded in corralling a Hispanic voter, he would look like Ruben.

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