Politico has shown some signs of degenerating into a conventional Inside-the Beltway echo chamber, so it is important to note when it acknowledges that that community’s deep desire to ignore the problems of immigration is not practical.

Immigration poses problem for Rick Perry By Jonathan Martin 10/2/11 goes beyond discussing the deep hole Rick Perry has dug for himself on the issue:

"..immigration is going to be a serious problem here…over two days of events, those Granite State Republicans who didn’t get to address the issue with Perry brought it up to him afterword or, without prompting, raised it in interviews after he was gone.

“It’s what all my friends keep talking about,” said Katherine Prudhomme-O’Brien, a Derry Republican activist, of the tuition rates. “It’s the thing they say they’re not voting on him on.”…" "If the GOP was divided over immigration in the Bush era, there is now little question about where the center of gravity is on the issue. Even among New Hampshire Republicans, traditionally less culturally conservative than their Iowa and South Carolina counterparts, a hard-line on the border is the only acceptable position. And in difficult financial times, it’s especially hard for conservatives to swallow anything that even resembles a special break for undocumented aliens."



This is an important recognition. Maybe it will even filter through to New Hampshire’s cowardly Senator Ayotte.

Perry and his people, meanwhile, are clearly out of their depth. Braying that he has a good record otherwise on immigration manifestly has no basis in reality given the Texan employment and demographic disasters on his watch, and trying to hide behind State’s Rights as an excuse for giving college subsidies to illegals while charging non-Texan Americans much more is not going to sooth. Especially as at some point one of his opponents (or more likely, some well informed patriotic questioner) will point out it is a flagrant breach of an explicit federal Statute as Heather MacDonald has demonstrated. Of course the Obamacrats are not defending the Federal law, but what else is new?

Perry’s dogmatic open Borderism is going to cause him further problems

An interesting discussion of why Perry and his kind are so comfortable with Treason Lobby beliefs is here:

"To put it simply, the Texan plutocracy is on the forefront of the Brazilification of America – our transformation into a land with a fabulously wealthy white elite living in walled enclaves, a mass of poor brown serfs scrambling for servant jobs and engaged in organized crime, and a tiny middle class struggling to hold on. They are enemies of the American people."



(H/T Mangan’s)