Will schisms matter in 2008 elections?

Tom Curry National affairs writer • Profile • E-mail

WASHINGTON - Hard-core loyalists in both the Democratic and Republican parties are at odds with their leaders.

The base on each side is being forced to accept something they detest: For GOP loyalists, it is an immigration overhaul that would legalize millions of illegal workers; for Democrats, it is $100 billion more to pay for a war they thought they voted to end last November.

But will unhappiness in each party have any practical electoral effect on the 2008 elections?

Will the schisms in each party hurt Republican candidates in next year’s elections more than Democrats — or vice versa?

Will left-of-center groups such as Moveon.org back anti-war challengers in primaries to try to defeat any of the Democrats who voted for the Iraq funding?

As with President Clinton’s push for congressional approval of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993, President Bush runs the risk of souring GOP voters on the issue of immigration, perhaps so much so that they stay home on Election Day.

According to former House Democratic Whip David Bonior, a large number of labor union members sat out the 1994 elections after Clinton’s push for NAFTA. He believes a demoralized Democratic base led to the election of a GOP-controlled Congress.

Bush Senate ally becomes foe
Personifying the Republican loyalists who’ve split with Bush on immigration is Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama.

In 2005 and 2006, few Republicans were more faithful allies of the president. According to Congressional Quarterly’s annual vote tally, Sessions supported Bush on 90 percent of roll call votes in 2005 and on 91 percent in 2006.

But Bush has alienated Sessions and other conservatives by pushing for an immigration bill that will allow illegal immigrants to become legal permanent residents.

Coming out of a meeting Tuesday with Bush who had trekked to Capitol Hill to urge GOP senators to back the immigration bill, Sessions told reporters he was chagrined that the president referred to immigration as “a highly emotional issue.”

“I don’t like him saying people are very emotional about this,” the Alabama Republican said.

“That’s a way to dismiss some of the concerns we have. I get a little tired of people saying ‘it is a very emotional subject’ as if to say, ‘people who don’t agree with me are emotional and irrational.’”

“The question is, ‘do the Republicans support their own president’s immigration bill?’ The answer is a resounding ‘no,’” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D- Nev., told reporters Tuesday after Bush left his huddle with Republican senators.

Reid pointed out that 38 of the Senate’s 49 Republican members voted last week to block a final vote on the immigration measure.

But some of those Republicans only voted to block a vote as a tactic to force Democrats to allow more amendments to the bill.

Bush position no surprise
What’s remarkable is the virtual unanimity of GOP anxiety or outright opposition to Bush on immigration.

There’s evidence in the new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll of just how much the GOP base rejects Bush’s immigration proposals.

Nearly two-thirds of self-described conservatives and “strong Republicans” in the poll oppose the idea of allowing illegal workers who arrived in the U.S. before Jan. 1, 2007 to get a work visa as long as they pay a $5000 fine.

But it is not as if Republicans did not know who they were nominating in 2000 when they chose Bush. He made a point of reaching out to Latinos in that campaign and arguing that “family values do not stop at the Rio Grande” — explaining, if not condoning, illegal immigrants who cross the border to work in the United States.

But Republican opposition to Bush’s immigration push is broad and deep and not just in conservative-voting states such as Alabama.

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