In the Democrats’ rush to pass HR1, a serious snag emerged for Nancy Pelosi and the rest of her party’s leadership. Republicans were able to force a vote on adding language to the supposed voting rights bill condemning the idea of illegal aliens voting in any elections. It simply read, “allowing illegal immigrants the right to vote devalues the franchise and diminishes the voting power of United States citizens.”

Sounds fairly basic, right? It’s already against the law for illegal aliens to vote in federal elections, though a few liberal municipalities have moved to allow them to cast ballots on the local level, such as in school board elections. Surely this is one area where we can generate some bipartisan consensus, yes? Apparently not. Out of the Democrats’ significant majority in the House, they only managed to find six people who were willing to support the measure and it went down in flames. (Fox News)

Nearly every House Democrat on Friday opposed a measure condemning voting in U.S. elections by illegal immigrants, as part of a sweeping election reform bill… The motion was voted down 228-197. All but six Democrats in the House voted against it. Just one Republican opposed it. Lauren Fine, a spokeswoman for House GOP Whip Steve Scalise, pointed out that an identical resolution was adopted by the House last September. But on Friday, 41 Democrats flipped to oppose the latest measure. “These 41 Democrats must now answer to voters why they were against illegal immigrants voting in elections six months ago, but are suddenly in favor of it now,” Fine said.

With a presidential primary kicking into high gear, you’d expect the Democrats to toss a few bones to the furthest left reaches of their base. But this is one of those issues that’s going to come back to bite them in the general election. This idea is so far out of the mainstream that it would be funny if it wasn’t so insulting to the United States Constitution. In a 2018 poll conducted by The Hill and the HarrisX polling company, it was found that Americans reject this idea by overwhelming margins. The idea of illegal (or “undocumented”) immigrants voting in any elections was opposed by 71% of all voters, including 91% of Republicans and even 54% of Democrats

I realize this theme gets beaten to death in the early days of any primary, as the numerous candidates race to shore up their support with the base, but just how far left can they go? Opposing the idea of allowing non-citizens, particularly those in the country illegally, to cast votes in American elections is not a fringe or even particularly right-wing idea. It’s baked into the fabric of the national consciousness. Even beyond the folks who will eventually wind up running for president, each of these Democratic House members is going to have to answer for this vote when they come up for reelection themselves. (And particularly in the more purple districts, you can rest assured that their Republican opponents will make sure they do.)

Tack on their votes in favor of infanticide recently and you’ve got a large chunk of the party – not just their POTUS hopefuls – who are veering so far to the left that the GOP may end up having a much better season than anyone is anticipating. What’s up next for the donkey party? Shutting down all Christian churces as “hate groups?”