The Ohio governor represents an important swing state. As a member of Congress, he chaired the House Budget Committee, where he was considered the architect of the deal that balanced the federal budget. And he was instrumental in the major welfare reform legislation of the 1990s.

He shies away from talking too much about social issues, the Republicans’ Achilles Heel. He even polls well in the general — the only Republican topping Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton. 

Yet, he’s struggled to matter in the race. His only primary victory so far has been his home state and he has relatively few delegates. In fact, he still hasn’t surpassed Marco Rubio’s delegate count, even though the Florida Senator has been out of the race since mid March.

However, recent polling in California, where 172 delegates are up for grabs, shows Kasich with 20 percent of support (just behind Texas Senator Ted Cruz, but way behind business tycoon Donald Trump). The overall goal, with an outright win out of reach, is to push the nomination to an open, national GOP convention this summer.

“The only adult in the room”

Assembly Republican Leader Chad Mayes offered the same praise that Kasich has drawn throughout the contest, that Kasich is “the only adult in the room.”

“Gov. Kasich is ready to be president on Day One,” Mayes said while introducing Kasich at the CAGOP convention Friday night. “He can unite the party and win the White House. Republicans, he is our best choice.”

Does he unite the party?

Electability matters to voters, but the supporters of every candidate believe their guy or gal is electable. 

Kasich’s biggest knock is his acceptance of the Medicaid expansion offered through Obamacare, which Republican governors refused largely rejected.

“‘Now, when you die and get to the meeting with St. Peter, he’s probably not going to ask you much about what you did about keeping government small,'” Kasich said to an Ohio legislator at the time who was making an anti-government expansion argument. “‘But he is going to ask you what you did for the poor. You better have a good answer.’ ”

However, that decision has haunted him, said Republican strategist Rob Stuzman, who is part of an effort to stop Trump from winning the nomination by trying to get either Kasich or Cruz over the top.

“The knock on him throughout the race are the things he’s down in Ohio in expanding the size government that have held him back from a lot of conservative support that he probably would have had earlier in his career,” Stutzman said. 

Heidi Leupp, from Hillsborough, said she supports Kasich because of both his executive and legislative experience. She sees a winner, someone who polls well against the likely Democratic nominee, but is also popular in his own state. 

“Although he’s an outsider now, he does know how Washington works,” Leupp said. 

In a contentious primary season that’s been dominated by “mud-slinging,” Kasich has stayed above the fray, which Leupp finds attractive. But, she concedes, that both limits the amount of media attention he receives and differs from the tone of much of the electorate. 

“He doesn’t call people names, he doesn’t get into the mud, and because of that, he might not get the media exposure the mud-slingers get,” Leupp said. “But for the thoughtful voter, who looks at issues and looks at experience and looks at electability — which might be the most important thing — he is the perfect candidate.”

Kasich

To reporters on Friday, Kasich admitted that “it isn’t working out right now,” but pointed to a recent string of second-place finishes as dramatic improvement. 

“I was invisible until about eight weeks ago,” Kasich said. He added he believed people ultimately want to be positive, unified and feel good about future. “That’s why I win in the general — it’s starting to resonate.”

Even when reporters tried to trip him up with questions on abortion, Kasich defended his pro-life position and record while saying “you have to respect people who don’t agree with you on this issue.”

“I don’t intend to spend a lot of time focusing on (social issues),” Kasich said. “I intend to talk about what I think is the greatest crisis we have today, which is the lack of economic growth.”

Unlike the House, where the strength is in building coalitions, individual senators have a lot of power — the place runs almost entirely on unanimous consent. Personal relationships matter and senators don’t respect those they don’t respect or those who can’t keep their promises.

Especially in an increasingly partisan world, the ability to make friends across the aisle is key in the Senate. For example, Boxer was successful on transportation legislation because she was able to find common ground with Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., with whom she disagreed with on almost everything else.

“Relationships are very important in a Senate that runs on consensus,” said Jim Manley, former spokesman for Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Sanchez, an Orange County congresswoman, is running against fellow Democrat Kamala Harris, the state Attorney General and frontrunner in both polling and fundraising, as well as two former state Republican party chairs, Duf Sundheim and Tom Del Beccaro.

Harris, Sundheim and Del Beccaro all lack prior legislative experience. Sanchez says she’s the only candidate who is “ready to hit the ground running on Day 1.” While her time in the House would give her a structural advantage (if elected) over other freshman, the issues any of them would be able to fight for would be largely determined by their committee assignments.

Committee Assignments

The Senate as an institution puts a lot of value in seniority — it’s how committee assignments and office space are doled out. It used to be culturally important too, when new senators were expected to stay quiet and learn for a year, although that’s waning in modern times.

Committees are where senators do the vast majority of their work. Bills usually go through committee before heading to the floor. So senators need to either usher their bills through committee themselves or have someone who sits on the committee usher it through for them.

While candidates talk about what they’ll do when they get to Washington, it really comes down to what committees they are assigned to. In fact, instead of going to Washington to change the world and push a laundry list of party priorities — as candidates often talk about on the campaign trail — the first few years are spent getting on the good side of their committee chairs and ranking members, rising in seniority, gaining clout by cosponsoring bills and working with others, becoming an expert in a policy and then finally starting to move legislation through committee.

The leadership determines assignments. Senators will request what committees they want to be assigned to, but the caucus leadership will decide assignments based on expertise and need.

Manley said that Reid, who is retiring, used to spend a great deal of time post-election working with the new senators to fill spots based on where the vacancies were, making sure committees were adequately represented by the different regions of the country, and of course taking into consideration what the new members want — although there were no guarantees.

Senators usually serve on at least three committees, and prior experience is a factor. There’s a good chance that a state attorney general like Harris would be assigned to the Judiciary Committee. And there’s a good chance Sanchez would be assigned to Armed Services or Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committees, since she currently serves on similar committees in the House.

With Boxer leaving, there will be an opening on the Environment and Public Works Committee, which is a prime spot for a Californian as this committee has jurisdiction over roads and environmental policy. So a Californian could make the case for this assignment based on regional representation. And a nod from Boxer could help too.

Boxer will also leave an opening on the Foreign Relations Committee, where senators can boost their foreign policy credentials — a nice launch pad for a presidential run, if any of them feel so inclined (as the saying goes: every senator sees a future president when they look in the mirror).

Former or current members of Foreign Relations are: President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.

History

In the old days, the motto was freshman should be seen and not heard. In fact, the maiden speech was a big deal — freshman wouldn’t speak on the floor for a year.

The tradition has eroded over the years. In 2015, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., waited just a few months into his term to deliver his maiden speech. And Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., made news by actually waiting a year — the only freshman in a class of 13 to do so.

How will experience help?

Besides Sanchez, none of the top candidates have legislative experience. But, according to Manley, Harris’ time as AG gives her other experience, like running a large department and being decisive.

Structurally, Sanchez’s 19 years in the House gives her an advantage over other freshman, since multiple senators are sworn in on the same day. Ties in seniority need to be broken somehow.

Priority is given to former senators, then former members of the House, then former presidents, vice presidents, cabinet members and governors. If none of those apply, then it falls on population of the state. And if that doesn’t work, it goes by alphabetical order.

Sanchez has served with many current senators over the years, since many were elected out of the House. She’s also served on conference committees (when the two chambers come together to work out the differences between the House version of a bill and the Senate version). She’s also served on the Joint Economic Committee, which has members of both chambers on it.

But her experience and existing relationships alone may not get her more respect on the other side of the Capitol. Sanchez would have to prove herself just like the others.

“You either demonstrate you have the chops or not,” said Manley.

Read more: “Sanchez: Don’t Touch the Filibuster“

The event, located in Indian Wells, boasted the largest group of attendees in its history — around 500, according to BuzzFeed News. Participants “were briefed behind closed doors on the 2016 landscape and on of each of the presidential candidates’ policy positions early Sunday morning by two of the top officials from the Koch network,” the website noted. “Although the seminar stuck to policy during the 2016 briefing, presidential politics and the future of the party were on the minds of a lot of the donors.”

The Trump factor

Unsure who was going to place where in this week’s first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses, anxiety around Donald Trump’s prospects ran high. “Top supporters of Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas held private meetings to sway potential new recruits at the annual winter conference,” according to one participant, the New York Times’ Nicholas Confessore reported, adding that “officials with the Kochs’ political operation also began sounding out allied donors about a potential campaign” against Trump, “whose evolving views on issues like corporate subsidies put him at odds with the Koch network’s own policy priorities.”

Although Cruz managed to best Trump in Iowa, with Rubio coming in a surprisingly strong third, Trump had pulled into a substantial lead over the rest of the field in the run-up to Iowa, aggravating fears among donors and more traditional Republicans that the insurgent mogul could use a dominant first-place showing to break the spirits of his rivals and run the primary-season table. Instead, Cruz’s victory — which has deepened a different sort of anxiety among some established members of the donor class, who believe Trump to be more electable and open to influence than Cruz — wound up heartening many Koch attendees, who are inclined to view Cruz more favorably than Trump.

Still, the Trump factor left attendees cagey in Indian Wells. “Despite Trump rankling donors for months, the Kochs’ political network and its members were reluctant to do anything that might cause him to launch a third-party bid, sources said this weekend,” according to BuzzFeed News. “Also, there was concern that attacks from the Koch brothers and their allies could have potentially added to Trump’s momentum and his populist appeal with the GOP base.”

Lining up votes

Cruz and Trump, once willing to treat one another with relative kid gloves, have been drawn into an increasingly fierce competition as they bump up against each other at the top of the polls. “Cruz and Donald Trump are now knotted in a statistical dead heat for top support among California’s likely GOP voters five months before the state’s primary,” the San Jose Mercury News reported. “The poll may mark the end of the blustery billionaire businessman’s dominance in California. It shows Cruz probably has room to grow his Golden State support even further, while Trump’s already might be maxed out.”

But some pro-Republican analysts have cautioned that Cruz is too conventionally conservative to draw disaffected former Republicans and so-called Reagan Democrats into the fold — especially in states like California, where those sorts of likely voters are plentiful. “According to what one of the state’s most reputable voter list companies told me not too long ago, there are about 340,000 ‘decline-to-state’ voters in California who are former Republicans, and who have a reliable voting history,” wrote James Lacy at the Orange County Register. “This special, large group of voters should be a big focus of the Republican Party’s attention right now. And the best way for these voters to empower themselves is to re-register Republican.”

Reps. Jeff Denham, R-Turlock, and David Valadao, R-Hanford, expressed confidence that they can secure a vote on the so-called ENLIST Act, which has been stalled in committee for months. The Act, as the Los Angeles Times reported, “would allow people brought to the United States illegally as children before 2011 to become lawful alien residents if they complete a term of military service.”

Although Denham and Valadao, the Times added, rank “among the most outspoken members of their party pushing for comprehensive immigration overhaul,” their focus on ENLIST reflected a broader unwillingness among House Republicans to tackle the issue this election season — whether in pieces or as a whole.

Running out the clock

The hands-off position was freshly cemented by newly elected House Speaker Paul Ryan. To help secure the backing of the House Freedom Caucus, which has depicted comprehensive immigration reform as a concoction of big business and big government, “Ryan pledged he would not move an immigration reform overhaul to the floor unless it was backed by a majority of House Republicans,” as The Hill recalled.

Ryan, The Hill noted, “was loosely involved with talks about immigration reform in the House in 2013. At the time, a bipartisan group of House lawmakers was working to put together a comprehensive immigration overhaul. Ryan wasn’t part of the core group, but did have conversations with its members.” Leading Republicans have sometimes been burned by their support for that effort. Sen. Marco Rubio, for instance, has had to pivot away in order to shore up his right flank and seize an advantage against main primary season rival Gov. Jeb Bush.

Balance and blame

Ryan, for his part, did not disavow outright his preference for a so-called “pathway” to citizenship for many unlawful and undocumented immigrants. But in recent remarks on the CBS program Meet the Press, he tried to indicate that he actually preferred a path to “legal status” instead of outright citizenship, as the Associated Press noted:

“Legal status versus citizenship is an important distinction, partly because only citizenship confers the right to vote. His office said Ryan supports ‘earned legal status,’ noting that this could eventually lead to citizenship through existing channels.”

At the same time, Ryan blamed president Obama for his reluctance to proceed with immigration legislation. “Look, I think it would be a ridiculous notion to try and work on an issue like this with a president we simply cannot trust on this issue,” he said. “He tried to go it alone, circumventing the legislative process with his executive orders, so that is not in the cards.”

The response from the White House was swift. Press Secretary Josh Earnest “accused new House Speaker Paul Ryan of ‘pandering to the extreme right wing’ of his party on immigration,” the Associated Press reported, labeling his comments “preposterous.”

Bicoastal politics

Although the testy rhetoric suggested little room for lawmakers to maneuver, California Republicans like Denham and Valadao have taken advantage of unusual personal circumstances to pursue their agenda. Hispanics make up a significant percentage of voters in both representatives’ districts, as the Hill observed, while both currently lean Republican, the Cook Political Report determined.

In other words, although their districts remained competitive heading into 2016, both lawmakers boasted enough support at home to seek to expand their vote by sticking their neck out politically in Washington. Of late, California has racked up numerous and generous programs for unlawful immigrants. Measures passed this year, the AP noted, “to help immigrants in the U.S. illegally by improving their access to health care, opposing discrimination and enabling more people to apply for legal status. One measure aims to help immigrant crime victims apply for federal government visas.”

Gage Skidmore / flickr

Republican presidential candidates were drawn deeper into the immigration controversies centered on California, as Donald Trump’s leading opponents sought a way to blunt his apparent advantage among voters with his tough talk on birthright citizenship and deportation.

The numbers game

Clarifying his stance, Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski recently took to CNN to criticize the current population of so-called anchor babies.

“If you think of the term ‘anchor baby,’ which is those individuals coming to our country and having their children so their children can be U.S. citizens,” he said. “There’s 400,000 of those taking place on a yearly basis. To put this in perspective, that’s equivalent of the population of Tulsa, Okla.”

Those numbers were immediately disputed, but not entirely discounted. According to Politfact, the figure cited by Lewandowski was “slightly exaggerated,” taking into account dipping rates of illegal immigration in recent years, and the difficulty involved in proving intent among unlawful immigrant mothers giving birth on U.S. soil.

So-called birth tourists, who use travel visas with the secret intent to have a baby delivered in the U.S., contribute to a much smaller fraction of ‘anchor babies,’ Politifact added — “around 8,600, or 0.2 percent of all births, in 2013, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

A growing problem

Nevertheless, the anchor baby story has gained steam this summer, reaching a broader audience than GOP primary voters. In a significant new report at Rolling Stone, Benjamin Carlson investigated Rowland Heights, a Los Angeles-area community with a reputation as “the center of Chinese birth tourism in southern California, if not the whole United States.” 

Several years ago, Carlson noted, “the county of Los Angeles opened an investigation into maternity hotels after receiving a deluge of public complaints,” although in the end “no new ordinance targeting maternity hotels was passed in the area. The task force decided that ‘complaints beyond the scope of local zoning powers’ would be referred to state and federal agencies.” According to estimates cited by Carlson, California has become the epicenter for many of the 10,000-60,000 Chinese tourist births the U.S. hosts per year. 

Campaign controversy

With the anchor baby story gaining national traction, several of Trump’s leading competitors for the Republican nomination appeared to size up the issue as a way to toughen up on immigration without undermining their credibility with pro-immigration constituents. Asked by Bill O’Reilly whether “the anchor baby law” is “destructive to the country,” Marco Rubio called the issue a “legitimate” one, as RealClearPolitics recounted. “I of course have read about how that happens in California, wealthy Chinese people are hedging their bets, in case something goes wrong in China they can come here,” he explained. 

Jeb Bush, meanwhile, allowed the term — seen by many Democrats and others as at least implicitly derogatory — to escape his lips in an interview. “Given Bush’s close connections to the Latino community — his wife is from Mexico, he speaks fluent Spanish, he’s written a book on immigration and he lives in the Miami area — it was surprising to hear Bush use the phrase,” CNN suggested. “But he defended his word choice, telling reporters the following day that he didn’t regret it.”

“‘What I said is that it’s commonly referred to that. I didn’t use it as my own language,’ he said. ‘You want to get to the policy for a second? I think that people born in this country ought to be American citizens.'”

Later, Bush attempted to clarify that his concern was closer to Rubio’s than Trump’s. “Frankly it’s more Asian people,” he suggested, urging critics to “chill out” about his phrasing, according to NBC News.

Choosing agendas

Conservatives have grappled over whether to frame birthright citizenship primarily as a question of immigrants’ potential upward mobility or the potential downward mobility they often believe government dependency fosters. “Inflation-adjusted figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture projected that a child born in 2013 would cost his parents $304,480 from birth to his eighteenth birthday,” as National Review’s Ian Tuttle noted. “Given that illegal-alien households are normally low-income households (three out of five illegal aliens and their U.S.-born children live at or near the poverty line), one would expect that a significant portion of that cost will fall on the government.”

At stake was nearly $890 million in funds to be allocated through the end of next year, according to the Associated Press. Although much of that sum was expected to flow into the coffers of the eventual Republican candidate for president, a potent irony pervaded the proceedings, relating to Jeb Bush. “The Kochs began their donor gatherings in 2003, a reaction to what they saw as out-of-control government growth when his brother George W. Bush was president,” as AP noted.

The confab took place at a scenic and secluded oceanfront hotel in Dana Point. A certain amount of privacy has long been standard operating procedure, with the Kochs themselves playing more of a behind-the-scenes role. “The Koch operation is not expected to formally back any candidate in the GOP primary,” as Kenneth Vogel observed at Politico. “But the Koch brothers and many of their donors can still play kingmaker roles. In addition to the massive checks many are expected to write to the super PACs aligned with specific candidates, they also serve as bellwethers for other donors.”

Jockeying candidates

Even before the event, scuttlebutt surrounded the field of Republican candidates. Not all were present. Rand Paul, who “underwhelmed donors” at a prior event, declined this time around, as Eliana Johnson reported for National Review. One Koch official told Johnson “that Chris Christie wasn’t invited because the powers that be in Koch world think he has a crummy fiscal record in New Jersey.”

Nor did Donald Trump receive an invitation. (Trump would later mock the meeting on Twitter as an assemblage of would-be “puppets” lacking his own money muscle.)

That left the Koch brothers to sit down with Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Marco Rubio and Scott Walker.

Although the attendees each had their chance to speak, few were out to make headlines. Marco Rubio, known for his hawkish approach to foreign policy, did use California’s sometimes idyllic isolation from the east coast political establishment to sharpen his rhetoric on Iran’s nuclear program. “Iran will be not just a nuclear weapon power, but will have the capability to deliver that weapon to the continental United States in less than a decade,” he said, according to Time. “I don’t think any of us wants to live in a country where a radical Shiite cleric in Tehran can have a nuclear weapon and an ICBM that can hit where we are sitting right now.”

Policy over politics

But the weekend was not restricted to presidential politics. “Koch network leaders briefed some 450 donors, who pledge six-figure sums to become members of the Freedom Partners organization, on their policy and philanthropic goals for the 2016 cycle,” CNN reported.

The itinerary reflected an agenda more variegated than the Koch organization is often given credit for. “While the network has become arguably the most powerful force in Republican politics today, Charles Koch, in his welcoming speech, called out both parties for big spending, reckless foreign policy and corporate welfare,” Politico noted.

Sessions were varied. One, drawing hundreds, “focused on legislation that would limit mandatory minimum sentencing, as well as other forms of criminal justice reform,” according to CNN. “At an evening reception, the featured speaker was Dr. Michael Lomax, president of the United Negro College Fund.”

In fact, some present at the meeting suggested that too much attention had been paid to the relatively glitzy and competitive race for the GOP nomination. Longtime donor Art Pope told Politico that the spotlight belonged a bit deeper in the weeds. “The main point of this weekend’s seminar is not the elected officials or the candidates. In fact, it’s not about candidates at all. It is more about policies and issues,” he said.

Efforts to reform the system began in the U.S. Senate. Republican Sens. Jeff Flake, John McCain, Marco Rubio, and Lindsey Graham worked with four Democratic Senators to draft immigration legislation. Ultimately, the 844 page bill could be summarized thusly:

The Gang of Eight bill would essentially revamp every corner of U.S. immigration law, establishing a 13-year pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants, with several security benchmarks that have to be met before they can obtain a green card. The measure would not only increases security along the border, but requires a mandatory workplace verification system for employers, trying to ensure no jobs are given to immigrants who are not authorized to work in the United States.

It also includes a new visa program for lesser-skilled workers – the product of negotiations between the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and labor unions. And it shifts the country’s immigration policies away from a family-based system to one that is focused on more on work skills.

It passed the Senate in June 68-32, with 14 Republicans going every Democrat in supporting the bill. The compromise was such an accomplishment that the New Yorker even wrote a long piece describing how it came about. Then all eyes turned to the Republican-controlled House.

Most, if not all, Democrats have supported immigration reform that includes pathway to citizenship provisions. House Republicans also showed a relatively strong amount of support for reform. Last month, CalWatchdog wrote about some California Republicans moving to the left on immigration reform, despite the small likelihood of any legislative action actually occurring:

Although Issa, Valadao and Denham all would like to see some form of immigration reform happen soon, it’s unlikely to occur this year. House leadership has indicated that their focus will be on passing fiscal reforms over immigration, and the recent government shutdown left many Republicans unenthusiastic about compromising with their Democratic colleagues.

Now it appears as though reform is all but certain to fail this year:

House Speaker John Boehner signaled Wednesday that comprehensive US immigration reform was dead this year, saying the existing Senate measure offering a pathway to citizenship would not get a vote.

And although it’s dead for 2013, advocates say that they will continue to pester Republican lawmakers in the House until they take up some form of immigration reform legislation. But those hoping for reform next year shouldn’t hold their breath.

Consider the Republican Party’s bargaining position. If problems with Obamacare continue, then it will almost certainly result in losses for Democrats in the House and Senate. Vulnerable red-state Democrats in the Senate—swept into office during Obama’s wave election of 2008—are particularly vulnerable because of their previous support for the law. Why would Republicans take up immigration reform—a politically fraught issue to begin with—when they can simple move on the legislation in 2015, when they have more politically sound ground to negotiate from.

Immigration reform in 2013? Not happening. In 2014? Doubtful. In 2015? It might just go down. Keep your eyes on the midterm results.

By John Seiler

Obviously, the Republican Party needs to do more to attract Latino voters. But it’s getting bad advice from many quarters on what to do. I have some good advice at the end of the article

The latest bad advice is in The Atlantic on line by Gerald L. Cadava, “a professor of history at Northwestern University professor of history and author of the forthcoming ‘Standing on Common Ground: The Making of a Sunbelt Borderland.'”

His article is titled, “The GOP Doesn’t Need Hispanic Outreach — It Needs a Hispanic Takeover.” But Latinos currently are about 13 percent of the U.S. population. And about two-thirds of Latinos are Democratic. Which means Republicans are only about 7 percent Latino. So how can 7 percent take over 93 percent?

Cadava writes:

“The debate over an immigration-reform bill has given us a glimpse into the emerging war within the Republican Party. On one side are those sensitive to the party’s demographics problem, who support a compromise. On the other are those who continue to oppose any bill that includes tens of thousands of work visas and a pathway to citizenship for immigrants.”

Actually, the real situation, as I have written, is that the immigration bill is pages of governmentese. Nobody knows what’s really in it, especially the Gang of 8 authors, which include four Republican U.S. senators. If the senators produce a 10-page bill written in plain language, then the conversation could begin. Otherwise, it’s just rhetoric.

The professor writes:

“Since Mitt Romney’s defeat in November, Republicans have worried about how to woo Latino voters. In a postmortem analysis of the election, the RNC concluded that the Republican Party needed to be more “inclusive and welcoming.” Many conservatives looked nostalgically back to 2004, when more than 40 percent of Latinos voted for George W. Bush, compared to Romney’s 27 percent. They believe that Latinos are naturally conservative, and are sure to line up in the ‘R’ column if the party can just fix its image with them.”

Actually, Bush’s 40 percent in 2004 wasn’t all that great, and was a fluke anyway. It was the first general election after 9/11. He won a large number of Latinos in Texas, where he was governor; and in Florida, where his brother Jeb was governor, and where most Latinos were Cuban exiles who long had been part of the GOP’s anti-communist coalition. But Cuban-Americans now are moving toward the Democratic Party.

Cadava mentions Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. Let’s face it, Rubio is a lightweight. He’s not going to be nominated.

Cruz, on the other hand, is a serious presidential contender. He obviously would win his Lone Star State. And his appeal would extend to Latinos outside of Texas, especially in such “swing” states as Colorado and Ohio. But probably not near enough to win Democratic states with a lot of Latinos, especially New York, Illinois and California.

Real problem

The real problem for Republicans is one the professor doesn’t bring up: Although sometimes good at the local level, at the national level the party really isn’t all that attractive to anybody, in any group. And it hasn’t been since Reagan left office. That’s because it keeps sending out mixed messages.

The GOP’s basic message now is: “We want less government and lower taxes — except we don’t.” On Jan. 1, the Republican leadership in Congress, House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, brokered a tax increase deal with President Obama that hit middle-class families with a higher tax bill of $1,000 a year. They boosted the top income tax rate to 39 percent from 35 percent. Many Republicans in Congress now are backing an Internet tax, dividing their party.

And of course, Republicans controlling the House have not kept their pledge do repeal Obamacare, which now is digging in and destroying jobs.

Immigration policy

This is where immigration comes in. When President Reagan signed the last immigration reform bill in 1986, the economy was booming. That year he cut the top income tax rate from 50 percent to 28 percent — 11 points less than the percentage Boehner and McConnell agreed to four months ago. Reagan increased the economic pie so the slices were bigger for everyone, including immigrants.

By contrast, the economy has declined or stagnated for more than five years now. That means more people are struggling for ever-shrinking pieces of the pie. The national unemployment rate of 7.6 percent in March remains stubbornly high for this period in a “recovery.”

Republicans now are saying they’ll support immigration reform once it’s clear the system won’t be abused again, as after the 1986 reform, requiring an even bigger amnesty in the future. But giving amnesty now to 11 million illegal immigrants means more competition for scarce jobs — just as a new recession might hit. Economic growth was 0.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012; and 2.5 percent in the first quarter of 2013.

Reaganomics redux

If Republicans want to matter again, including to Latinos, they need to bring back the policies of the Reagan era.

First, enough with the tax increases! That’s what Democrats are for. (Yes, I know Reagan increased some taxes. But overall, everybody got tax cuts from him. The top income tax rate dropped from 70 percent to 28 percent.)

Second, Republicans running the House need to insist on cutting government programs, beginning with Obamacare. What if Obama shuts down the government? Declare it a national holiday of joy!

Third, Republicans should tie immigration reform to economic growth.  Say, unemployment would be below 5 percent and average incomes going up at least 2 percent a year. Make sure the pie is growing again before more slices are handed out.

Such a program would attract Latinos — and everybody else.

By Chris Reed

Mickey Kaus, the Los Angeles journalist and author who ran against Sen. Barbara Boxer in the 2010 Democratic primary, has emerged as the sharpest critic of the immigration overhaul expected to emerge this week in the U.S. Senate:

“Rubio repeatedly said it would be ‘cheaper, faster and easier’ for illegal immigrants to go back home, wait 10 years, and apply for a green card (under current law) than to go through the longer ‘alternative’ green card path created by his amnesty bill. That’s absurd. If Rubio’s bill passes, how many illegal immigrants are going to go home and wait 10 years versus accepting the bill’s more-or-less immediate legalization and then waiting to get their green cards?  The answer is a number approaching zero. Why? Because under Rubio’s bill they will get to do the waiting while living and working legally in the United States. That’s certainly easier than ‘self-deporting’ for ten years under current law.”

Kaus opposes legalizing the illegal immigrants in this nation not on Pat Buchanan nativist grounds, or on the grounds that they shouldn’t be rewarded for breaking the law. Instead, the author of “The End of Equality” primarily objects to legalization because of the negative effects it would have on adult Americans with few job skills. It’s an interesting take and one that not many Democrats share.

Republicans, of course, have their own dilemma with immigration. But Kaus believes Democrats should do some soul-searching as well on the topic.