It is pretty clear to me J’bush, onetime “sane” Republican, is not running to be the President. On Monday he flipped and stated that he does not support a “pathway to citizenship” for undocumented immigrants living in the U.S., a position other Republicans have taken, at this point, as a given.
So what’s the deal? J’bush knows that giving a path to legal permanent residency [AND THE VOTE] to 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country is a non-starter with the base, so he has cooked up this new thing.
The J’bush plan will not to deport undocumented immigrants BUT will also NEVER give them the chance to become fully American. It is American apartheid plain and simple. Brilliant! He gets to go out to Iowa and tell the nutbags, “No path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Period!”
So that’s the strategy for winning the primary, but how does that translate to the general? I’ll let a kos diarist delivery the bad news:
Except that someone must’ve reminded Jeb about those demographic realities. Remember, if everyone voted in 2016 exactly how they voted in 2012, the Democratic victory margin would go up from 3.9 points to 5.2. And Bush’s actions Monday did nothing to mitigate that 1.3-point demographic disadvantage that he would face. In fact, it exacerbated it.
So maybe J’bush buys into the “Etch-a-sketch” worldview of primaries versus general elections. Or maybe he thinks the Republican base will be so fired up to defeat Hillary, it doesn’t matter if he pisses on a huge demographic. Who knows?