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Just as Democrats were poised to deliver the 2010 elections to Republicans, Arizona’s ill-advised new immigration law exposed, once again, the Republican Party’s Achilles’ heel.
If Democratic majorities survive the backlash against big government in this election cycle, it will be because Republicans, the party of the right, became the Party of White.
The transformation is happening before our eyes. Whites, who are 65 percent of the U.S. population today, accounted for 89 percent of John McCain’s votes in the 2008 presidential election. That is based on exit polls showing that McCain won 55 percent of the white vote.
A party that alienates racial minorities will justly be made a political minority, so the Republican response to what’s happening in Arizona will be a defining moment.
While there are many policies that undercut the support of minorities for Republicans -- from opposition to affirmative action to regional support for the Confederate flag -- immigration is clearly the brewing Republican problem among Hispanic Americans. Republicans like Arizona Governor Jan Brewer have too often appeared hostile to immigrants.
Democrats, as expected, are helping whip up fears that Arizona’s new “reasonable suspicion” standard might be merely a front for racial profiling. President Barack Obama said the law creates a climate where, “suddenly, if you don’t have your papers and you took your kid out to get ice cream, you’re going to be harassed.”
Some Republicans haven’t helped their cause. Governor Jim Gibbons of Nevada seemed to come right out and endorse racial profiling. “If you look like and act like a terrorist, if you’re coming across as a bad person, you’re going to do harm to our citizens, whether it’s deal drugs, commit crime or commit a terrorist act,” he said. “Absolutely we ought to profile everybody that looks like a terrorist. I don’t have a problem with that.”
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<http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-02/arizona-republicans-push-party-far-to-the-white-kevin-hassett.html>
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