This was a great informative article that you scuttled at the very end with the inane "And then, presumably, vote Democratic," comment.

Did Michelle Malkin help you write that?

Michael Scherer asserts that the Rove/Mehlman tactic to garner the Hispanic vote is/was to promise Latinos "economic opportunity in exchange for hard work", but that their pleadings have been undermined by Congressional members of their own party and other "conservative" hardliners.

While bigots and demagogues like Tancredo (CO), and J. D. Hayworth and Kyl (AZ) appeal to the false fears among their fellow extremists, they are at least not acting as hypocrites in this instance.

Rove and his Republican political plotters are even worse, cynically spreading the lies that they honestly support Hispanic immigrants, legal and illegal, promising them a foothold toward the American dream. If Rove is anything (and it's quite evident that he has not much else to offer besides dirty political tricks) he is a serial liar and a scoundrel who will say anything so long as his positions will bring in votes - - until just after the election. Then, behind closed doors, and under the radar of the moribund mainstream media, he will immediately advise his fellow Party members and elected officials to abandon totally those earlier positions after the Hispanic votes are in the can. The fact that Latinos are finally catching on is only partially a result of the immigration debate. Our fellow immigrants and their descendants now know that the current breed of Republican office holders are either bigots or liars, neither of whom support their interests.

It is sad that the democratic party has been debased to seek the votes of those here in the country illegally. I am now concerned that my pary is just as ready to sell me out. The immigration bebate has brought out the worst in both parties at the expense of democracy.

As a Democrat, I'm watching with glee at what the Republicans are doing to themselves. Give them enough rope, and they were bound to hang themselves on some deep-seeded need to punish anyone not like themselves. What I hadn't anticipated was how punitive they were willing to get and the magnitude of the force they would haplessly unleash as a result.

As an immigrant and naturalized U.S. citizen, I'm astonished at politicians who don't understand that legal immigrants (and their children) take attacks on illegal immigrants as attacks on themselves. Legal immigrants emphathize with illegals, with whom they share many common struggles and experiences. Legal immigrants also often feel that those who attack illegals are anti-immigrant in general and that their anger is rooted in prejudice. Because legal immigrants don't distinguish between themselves and illegal immigrants, they don't think the white people do either.

If Karl Rove himself were working on behalf of the Democrats, he couldn't come up with a better move to push the Latino vote into the Democratic camp. Welcome, amigos!

It is not true that Bush got 40% of the Latino vote in 2004. Exit polls under counted the urban Latino vote and thus gave a scewed result.

Latinos voted for Kerry 68 percent to 31 percent.

http://www.pww.org/article/view/6081/1//

Well, it's official that both parties have completely abandoned the (legally) American working class. Who's standing up for the poor, uneducated black man who can no longer get a decent wage doing manual labor when there are a dozen illegal Mexicans willing to do it for $2/hr? The rich will do fine no matter what happens to the illegal immigrants. The middle class will probably make it through. But the poor are the ones who are truly hurt by the wave of illegal immigrants, and the Democrats and Republicans alike have made it clear that they simply do not care. They are too busy salivating over the prospect of all those brand new naturalized votes.

No wonder so many Americans feel completely disenfranchised.

The only way to attack the illegal immigrant problem is by penalizing the businesses that use their labor, either by huge fines or jail terms, which Republicans are not going to do to their friends. As long as the GOP and moderate Dems refuse to address this issue it will cause a huge problem. Poor and working class Americans are the ones suffering, while the rich get richer using cheap labor.

Yeah, everybody wants a good life, but this flood of illegal immigrants is hurting our underclass. I sympathize with them, but also with our working class who is ending up out in the cold.

This issue can hurt both parties.

The Democratic party is not seeking the votes of those here illegally. Those here illegally have no votes. They're showing their understanding that this is a nation made of immigrants and that these people become part of communities and help build the USA. They are doing their best to ensure these people become citizens, get better wages, are working in safe environments and continue to contribute to society. Over time, if reforms are put in place without criminalizing immigrants, wages will rise and the problem of illegals will fall.

As a protester in the crowd on the mall yesterday, I can tell you Kennedy's words rang true. The GOP was rightly ripped by many of the speakers.

Everybody in the crowd knew it was a GOP-led House of Representatives that passed HR 4437, a bill of hateful overkill. Since when is it a crime for a church to feed to a starving family? Since some GOPer added a provision to HR 4437 making it a crime to help illegal immigrants, even by offering them a simple meal, that's when!

Everybody in the crowd was keenly aware it's the GOP that wants to build walls of isolationism and pass laws that rip families apart. And everybody in the crowd knows America is a nation of immigrants. From African Americans like Congressman Al Wynn to Irish Americans like Congressman Jim Moran, we all add our flavor to the melting pot that is America. The fact that the GOP is so eager to criminalize immigrants and those who help them is a fact many Hispanic voters will long remember at the polls.