And that's a very good thing for Democrats, and a very bad thing for Republicans.
Here's why:
Yes, polls out indicate that a majority of Americans support the Arizona bill, by over 60%. Here's the thing about those polls, though: they all show a specific bias in the questioning. For example, here's the question in Gallup's poll:
"The Arizona law makes it a state crime to be in the U.S. illegally. It requires local and state law enforcement officers to question people about their immigration status if they have reason to suspect a person is in the country illegally, making it a crime for them to lack registration documents. Do you support or oppose this law? And do you strongly (support/oppose) or just somewhat (support/oppose) this law?"
Did you catch the bias at play in that question? To clarify, it's "if they have reason to suspect a person is in the country illegally." What the question doesn't clarify is the extremely low bar the bill states for a standard of reasonable suspicion. It sounds good on paper to say that cops will exercise reasonable suspicion, but the reality of what the Arizona bill constitutes as 'reason to suspect' is a standard that is not reasonable at all.
Here's the deal: in America, most people assume that the police have a high bar to meet for reasonable suspicion. For example, most of us know from watching crime drama that the amount of reasonable suspicion a police officer needs to enter a residence without a warrant is pretty high. If you have a teenager, the police can't enter your home without a warrant because they know your teenager is friends with a kid who was caught with marijuana at school. They have to go get a warrant for that. Heck, police can't enter your house without a warrant without some pretty clear and well defined evidence that entering your home is time-sensitive. The police may suspect that you've murdered someone in your living room, then cleaned it up-- and they still can't enter your house to take samples of the carpet for testing without a warrant. That's a pretty goddamn high bar for reasonable suspicion right there, and that's the way it SHOULD be.
What the Arizona bill lays out as 'reasonable suspicion' for whether or not a person is an illegal immigrant is pretty low. It does not rule out racial profiling; driving a car that is painted in the colors of Mexico could constitute reasonable suspicion under the Arizona law. Under the Arizona law, an officer has reasonable suspicion if the person they pull over does not speak Engilsh very well. Under the Arizona law, an officer may pull you over and demand your ID even if you aren't breaking the law in any way-- you could be driving the speed limit, in a fully registered vehicle, safely, and if the officer, by his or her own judgment believes that you may be an illegal immigrant, that officer has the right to pull you over and ask for your papers.
That's the specific problem with the Arizona bill-- that it sets a very low standard of reasonable suspicion. That the bill effectively leaves it to the officer on site to decide what constitutes reasonable suspicion, in terms of whatever judgment calls the officer wishes to make. That is not yet clearly understood by the American public; the poll question does not clarify the extremely low standard of reasonable suspicion at play here.
Let me be clear: if the Arizona bill set a higher standard of reasonable suspicion, it would not be an objectionable bill. The specific problem I have with this bill is that the standard for reasonable suspicion is so very low. If I knew nothing about the bill, and was asked the above question, it would sound good. The question-- none of the poll questions-- address the extremely low standard of reasonable suspicion laid out by the Arizona law; in other words, they do not address in any way the controversial issue at play. So it's more than understandable that given that the vast majority of Americans know little about the bill, a vague poll question will return majority support.
Proponents of immigration reform don't think that illegal immigration isn't a problem-- we just think that the system needs to be reformed, that the process of immigration in this country has grown too complex and bogged down with red tape and fees to be reasonable. Proponents of immigration reform think that reformation of the immigration laws is the best way to fight the problem of immigration reform. So, without the context of the low bar of reasonable suspicion included in the question, such a bill would sound good to an uninformed proponent of immigration reform. Most of the people answering these poll questions simply aren't well informed as to the real issue.
That will change the first time that the police pull over a natural born American citizen and arrests them because they happen to have forgotten their wallet in their other pair of pants, or forgot their purse at the restaurant they're leaving. That will be plastered all over the news. There WILL be a major law suit against the State of Arizona over the issue. Then, the public will turn on the bill. Proponents of the bill will not be able to say that 'this will never happen,' because it will have happened. The bill goes into effect in August-- that's two months before the election, two months where the GOP is betting that some racist yokel cop isn't going to take up his newly appointed powers up in some crusade against illegals and harass a full citizen of the United States for having forgot his ID.
As someone who has been pulled over several times while driving in rural America for no discernible reason (driving the speed limit, driving my own car, car in good repair) other than that I was 'driving while not white,' I think that's a bad, bad bet for the GOP to make. The fact is that in many places, racial profiling is real, and it does end up harassing a good number of law-abiding citizens. The probability that this bill will be abused in some fashion before the elections is very, very high. If I get pulled over while driving in rural Maryland, I can only imagine how much worse the problem is in Arizona.
More, many conservatives are taking up the immigration issue as a way to distinguish themselves from moderate Republicans. John McCain, who opposed the border fence when it was put into law, now wants them to 'Finish the darned fence.' A former Presidential candidate of the GOP feels so threatened by a potential primary challenge that he feels he must tow the party line of the far right.
What's worse for the GOP is that it's almost impossible to say that the Party does not put forward a number of xenophobic candidates, who in some cases do win the seat. With the current conservative media atmosphere, it's the far right which is controlling this debate within the Republican Party. There is a definite and pronounced movement within the GOP to purge moderates-- a movement that is playing out in primary races across the country as we speak. Long standing GOP moderates are losing their seats, not by being defeated by Democrats, but from militant Tea Party activists who demand the GOP candidate represent a standard of conservatism that Reagan, Nixon, or even George W. Bush wouldn't meet. The Tea Partiers are convinced the reason the voters rejected them in 2006 and 2008 was that they weren't conservative ENOUGH, that the path back to a majority seat is to become MORE conservative, to become even MORE hyper-partisain.
The fact of the matter is that this just isn't true, and especially on the issue of Immigration Reform, this will come to bite the GOP in the ass. The seats Republicans most need to take in order to build an expansive victory in 2010 are not conservative seats-- they are swing seats, districts where party divide is pretty even. In other words, pretty moderate districts. The hard right line plays to the conservative base-- certainly, if Republicans were worried about keeping seats they already have, this would be a way of holding those rural seats, especially rural southern seats.
Strategically-- those aren't the seats the GOP needs to win though. They need to win big in suburbia, and in some urban districts. They need to win outside of the south. In those areas, increasingly xenophobic stances on immigration reform as the rhetoric of the conservative press becomes ever more inflammatory is not going to help them.
In moderate districts, neither is a groundswell of Tea Party activism going to help them in the ground game, in fact it could work against them. Tea Party activists are not going to be effective door-knockers. The rhetoric around which the movement as organized is not moderate-- it's fairly politically extreme. A Tea Party activist who believes strongly that racial profiling should be allowed in the identification of illegal immigrants is not going to be an effective agent of change when knocking on the door of a second-generation Hispanic family. By the rhetoric and philosophy that motivates such activists, they will not adapt a conversational tone which allows for compromise on the issues they are activist about. The rhetoric which motivates the movement does not allow for compromise, in fact it strongly opposes compromise on it's key issues. For people who occupy the political middle ground of these issues, unwillingness to compromise will not win votes, in fact it will turn them away.
The thing is that Tea Party activists are the most energized to participate on the GOP side of elections this year; moderate Republicans are in decline and disincentivized by their own party from participation in the process. If you're a moderate Republican, you probably don't want to volunteer for a campaign heavily populated by people who will call you a RINO or deny your conservative credentials because you don't think Barak Obama fits the definition of a Socialist. If you're a well-informed moderate Republican who supports the kind of immigration reform enacted by Ronald Reagan, you're probably not going to take too kindly to the suggestion that these policies are intolerable amnesty. Especially if you are a moderate Republican of color, or a moderate Republican who happens to be an immigrant yourself, or the child or grandchild of an immigrant. If you or your family immigrated to this country in the past 10 years, you have first hand experience at just how out of control the immigration system in this country has become, and the proposal that increasing barriers to immigration is the way to fix the problem of illegal immigration is not going to fly with someone who's gone through the tortuous and costly process of getting a greencard or even a VISA in the past 10 years.
Immigration will only continue to escalate as an important issue in this campaign. It's fairly clear that the House will attempt to do something on Immigration Reform, and that the far right will take opposition to immigration reform up as their next major crusade. That means that a lot of candidates will go on record with some rather inflammatory rhetoric. The kind of rhetoric that makes for easy, and effective, soundbites to be used in campaigning.
That's only good news for Democrats looking to hold seats in moderate districts, and especially good news for Democrats looking to hold or take seats in districts with large immigrant populations. It gives the Democratic Party as a whole to say that if Republicans win control of any House of Congress, this rhetoric will only escalate, and the GOP's own record of opposition on every front will make the strong case that even increasing the size of the GOP minority will only deadlock Congress further. It makes the case that if you believe the country should be pursuing and accomplishing a moderate agenda of reform, the GOP is not the party which can accomplish this, and that empowering them further will hamper needed change and progress.
The GOP has to this point controlled much of the debate because it has gone on an all out opposition offensive from day one. It has been spending the money it raises nearly as quickly as it brings it in. Democrats, on the other hand, have been raising more money, and spending less of it. They've been saving it for election season. Once they start opening up those war chests, narrative control will be far less dominated by the aggressive far right.
The GOP has gambled on the idea that controlling the narrative before the elections ramp up will prove to have been more effective than controlling the narrative while the elections are in progress. But they're losing control of the narrative by the force of the support this activism has raised, and immigration is the perfect example. It's strategically stupid for the GOP to be fighting within it's own ranks over the issue of immigration, especially when the far right is winning that argument in the party. It alienates moderates, and will for generations alienate immigrant families, votes the GOP will need if it hopes to win the raw demographics game in vote share. Even Karl Rove understood this, but it's a battle the Bush Administration lost with the base.
Making immigration the issue about which this election pivots was perhaps the dumbest move the GOP could have made, but they've made it all the same.