Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) has sent a thought-provoking new memorandum to his GOP colleagues, laying out how the Republican Party can turn the ongoing immigration debate in Congress around so conservatives win and liberals and Democrats lose.
“The GOP needs to flip the immigration debate on its head,” Sessions writes in the memo. “The same set of GOP strategists, lobbyists, and donors who have always favored a proposal like the Gang of Eight immigration bill argue that the great lesson of the 2012 election is that the GOP needs to push for immediate amnesty and a drastic surge in low-skill immigration. This is nonsense.”
Sessions challenges the conventional wisdom and long-held establishment misnomer that Republicans lost the 2012 election because of the Hispanic vote. “The GOP lost the election--as exit polls clearly show--because it hemorrhaged support from middle- and low-income Americans of all backgrounds,” he argues.
“In changing the terms of the immigration debate we will not only prevent the implementation of a disastrous policy, but begin a larger effort to broaden our appeal to working Americans of all backgrounds,” Sessions says Republicans should do to turn the immigration debate around. “Now is the time to speak directly to the real and legitimate concerns of millions of hurting Americans whose wages have declined and whose job prospects have grown only bleaker. This humble and honest populism--in contrast to the Administration’s cheap demagoguery--would open the ears of millions who have turned away from our party. Of course, such a clear and honest message would require saying ‘no’ to certain business demands and powerful interests who shaped the immigration bill in the Senate.”
Sessions argues that what Democrats did in the Senate to pass the “Gang of Eight” bill would “ordinarily” be an “act of political suicide” for them.
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