Jen is right on both the substance and politics of a GOP move to revoke birthright citizenship from children born to illegal aliens. As I’ve written here and here , the 14th Amendment was carefully drawn and debated to exclude only two categories of persons: the children of diplomats and children born on Indian reservations that were deemed sovereign territories at the time.
But the political objections are even greater. Republicans lost two Senate seats — in Nevada and Colorado — that they should have won on Election Day, largely because of the nasty tenor of debate on illegal immigration. Sharron Angle ran ads depicting illegal immigrants as gang members and criminals and accused them of stealing jobs from Nevadans in a state in which nearly one in five voters were Hispanic. Ken Buck lost in Colorado in part because former Republican congressman and anti-immigrant stalwart Tom Tancredo was on the ticket as an independent running for governor, a race that turned out Hispanic voters who do not normally vote in non-presidential years.
Bashing illegal immigrants may work in districts where Hispanics don’t vote, but it’s a loser nationally and in states that the GOP has to win in 2012 if it has any hope of replacing the current occupant in the White House.
