A last gasp of hate
by David Atkins
Speculation has been intense about the Supreme Court’s seemingly supportive reaction to AB1070, Arizona’s stringent immigration law. If oral arguments are any indication, the most conservative Supreme Court in history will probably uphold the core parts of the law. That in turn has been seen as a political setback for the Obama Administration in specific, and for progressives more broadly. And on its face, that may well be accurate.
But there’s another storyline here, too, reflected in the Arizona presidential polls. Two recent polls show a dead heat in Arizona between President Obama and Mitt Romney. While I wouldn’t bet money on Arizona going blue this presidential cycle, the trend is as clear in Arizona as it is across much of the rest of the West: the days of the current incarnation of Republican politics are nearing a point of no return. A more liberal youth and the influx of Latino voters make that a certainty. Arizona’s immigration law, far from being a harbinger of tougher restrictions down the road, is the last gasp of a dying and hateful demographic and ideology.
That’s not to say that the Republican Party won’t backtrack, reinvent itself, put forward more minority politicians to muddy the waters, and find other ways of dividing the population so that their rubes vote to give rich people even more money. And it’s not to say that the current incarnation of the Republican Party won’t have legs in many places across America for years, even a generation to come.
But it is important to note that conservatives can’t keep going down this road forever. The polling in Arizona is a far better indicator of that fact than anything the Supreme Court might do this summer.
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