Republican leaders will huddle to plot strategy with their members Wednesday afternoon. | House GOP Flickr Immigration reform heads for slow death

Republicans walked away from their 2012 debacle hell-bent on fixing their problems with Hispanics. Now, they appear hell-bent on making them worse.

In private conversations, top Republicans on Capitol Hill now predict comprehensive immigration reform will die a slow, months-long death in the House. Like with background checks for gun buyers, the conventional wisdom that the party would never kill immigration reform, and risk further alienating Hispanic voters, was always wrong — and ignored the reality that most House Republicans are white conservatives representing mostly white districts.


These members, and the vast majority of their voters, couldn’t care less whether Marco Rubio, Bill O’Reilly and Karl Rove say this is smart politics and policy.

( PHOTOS: 10 wild immigration quotes)

Republican leaders will huddle with their members Wednesday afternoon to plot their public strategy. But after holding countless listening sessions, it is clear to these leaders that getting even smaller, popular pieces of reform will be a tough sell. The House plans a piecemeal approach: a border-security bill this month, maybe one or two items a month in the fall.

Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) held a town meeting last week where 25 of the 100 people spoke out on immigration — and every single one of them argued for staying clear of anything remotely resembling the Senate-passed bill.

( Also on POLITICO: Obama's immigration strategy in limbo)

“Our constituents don’t trust our government,” Cotton said. And he is reluctant to pass even pieces of immigration reform that he thinks are needed — like a better tracking system for people in the country on visas — because he is concerned they could become “a Trojan horse in a conference committee for a package that puts legalization first and enforcement later.”

Top Republican and Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill see the momentum swinging decidedly against getting a deal this Congress. Rubio persuaded only 13 fellow Republican senators to back the bill; the editors of the National Review and Weekly Standard offered a rare, joint editorial in opposition to it this week; and private GOP headcounts show only a small fraction of House Republicans would ever vote for anything approximating the Senate deal.

( PHOTOS: Pols react to immigration deal)

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), a leader of the House’s hell-no-on-immigration-reform caucus, held a jam-packed meeting Monday night to walk through why his party should proudly defeat the bipartisan bill. King said the Senate’s immigration plan would help “elites who want cheap labor, Democratic power brokers, and those who hire illegal labor.”

“It would hurt Republicans, and I don’t think you can make an argument otherwise,” King said. “Two out of every three of the new citizens would be Democrats.” Some might dismiss this as the rantings of a bombastic right-winger — but his take is mainstream theology among House Republicans.

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It’s possible Republicans will change their minds, listen to Rubio and Paul Ryan, and ultimately agree to something Democrats could live with. But, even if they do, the weeks ahead will show they did it kicking and screaming, undermining much of the credit they might have gotten from Hispanic voters.

This drives the Rubio and Roves of the world nuts. A large number of establishment Republicans think their party will seal defeat in 2016 if it cannot move beyond this issue.

“Republicans would remain stuck in a defensive, reactionary posture with persuadable Latino voters,” said Luke Frans, executive director of Resurgent Republic, a conservative research group that did extensive polling and focus groups with Hispanic voters in 2012. Mitt Romney lost Hispanics by better than 40 points, and polls consistently show Republicans won’t do much better absent progress on issues Hispanics care most about, starting with immigration laws.

( CARTOONS: Matt Wuerker on immigration)

Most House Republicans quite frankly don’t care.

First, most represent districts with scant Hispanic populations. They will win or lose based on the views of whites, especially older ones, since that is who votes in their districts in off-year elections.

“The belief among House Republicans is that they’re going to do well in the midterms, and that instead of negotiating now from a position of weakness, they should wait until 2015,” said a lobbyist close to House GOP leaders. “They’ll be stronger in the House and maybe control the Senate.”

Second, most Republicans in the House and Senate just don’t believe Hispanics will vote for them in 2014, 2016 and perhaps ever — simply because they backed immigration reform.

( WATCH: Obama says ‘now is the time’ for immigration)

“You don’t change demographic support by passing legislation in Washington,” a Senate GOP leadership aide said. “The [George W. Bush] prescription drug plan was supposed to fundamentally alter the way seniors related to us. The only way you get that is with the candidate, like Ronald Reagan with blue-collar voters.”

Third, Republicans think they will look like fools with voters who would seriously think about voting for them if they backed a law predicated on trusting President Barack Obama to carry out tough border security measures.

With even the most modest measures facing an uphill fight, getting to a pathway to citizenship — which Democrats will demand be part of any eventual deal — looks like a pipe-dream.

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