I am constantly struck by the odd way that politics have turned and twisted all around in the last few years, but no where is this mangling more visible than with the question of Immigration Reform.

The Left seems utterly baffled by the entire thing, proving that many of us are more interested in fighting against The Right than in putting forth ideas. Sad but true, we even find Josh Marshall seeming to argue for border control. The trouble for The Left is that we have President Bush arguing for a guest worker program and at the same time Sensenbrenner and Tancredo arguing for some of the strictest anti-immigration policies that the country has ever seen. Both of these are collosally bad ideas by themselves for thier own reasons, so it’s tough to know where to begin arguing.

So I’ll punt. Instead, I’m inclinded for now to consider the political ramifications of this whole thing for the Republicans.

So what of it? Will this push towards isolationism help or hurt the Republicans in the coming elections? The question seems to teeter like a drunk on a carousel. On the one hand, massive demonstrations in protest to the current bill certainly don’t seem like good indicators for the Republicans, but on the other hand is the Republican base. . . and perhaps something else.

I’ve been watching our country slowly veer towards isolationism over the last year (or should I say, *back* towards isolationism), and I wonder how much effect it will have on this specific issue. The Dubai Ports World and other security outsourcing issues are making people very antsie and nervous about foreign threats in a way that perhaps 9-11 never did. People may not want to come down on Latinos quite so hard as the current bill does, but with the whole issue bookended between that and the guest worker program, they may be more inclined to opt for what seems to be discretion in the current context.

On the other hand, we’re not talking about Arabs, here. Like it or not, our culture currently holds a special hostility for Arabs and Muslims, one for which this issue is not reserved. These are Mexicans and other Latinos, so how does this hostile bill look to Americans as a voting group?

Ultimately, this question like all others in this modern political climate that the Republicans have wrought will be decided by the vulgar mathematics that are the worst face of democracy. The only question is: how many Latinos are there versus how many dyed-in-the-wool Conservatives in each voting district this year?

Well, here you go: according to Sabato’s Crystal Ball, there are 14 Senate seats which are or could be hotly contested in the upcoming elections. According to Census.gov, you will be astonished to know that - with the none-too-surprising exeptions of Texas, New Jersey and Florida - none of these races are in districts with Latino populations of above 10%. Rhode Island has 10.5%, but I think you see where I’m going with this. The Latino population of this country simply is not a factor in these races, or at least, not in enough of them to worry about.

“The Base” is, however. That’s what the Republicans are worried about, especially in those deeply red states like Montana. So they need to throw out a winner for The Base. Immigration reform is (your choice between ironically or predictably) popular in states where they have the least to worry about.

Any way you slice it, the Republicans win this point, even if it doesn’t turn them an election-day profit. If they need to cave, they will likely have a Senator from a heavily Latino state take the dive, saving themselves thier next election and the center state Senators the trouble of looking weak.

This is what is known as playing to win the inning and sacrificing the game, because even if Latinos are not a factor in the current round of elections, they will be in the presidential elections of ‘08 and beyond. Every last state I looked at on Census.gov had a noticably increasing Hispanic population.

And just so I’ve said it, the idea of building a wall across the southern United States is just assinine. Who’s going to maintain that wall? Keep it gaurded and prevent it from crumbling? Not to worry: when the bills start stacking up and Haliburton still hasn’t gotten around to building the wall, this may once again start to look like it might have been a bad idea.