Cruz Immigration Bid Has Republicans Fretting Over Backlash
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas wants to clamp down on illegal immigration, saying its a winning issue with many voters.
Some of his fellow Republicans fret that the party could end up losing big in Cruzs home state.
Cruz and his allies want to roll back President Barack Obamas November orders easing deportations. The U.S. House yesterday took the first step to undo Obamas plan and to start sending home children the president protected in a 2012 order as well.
Lawmakers and strategists from both parties say the campaign could feed an anti-immigrant narrative even in Republican-leaning states including Texas with swelling populations of Hispanics, who tend to vote Democratic.
U.S. Wrangles With Immigration Reform
The Democrats are betting on Republicans shooting themselves in the foot, said Hector Barajas, a Republican strategist. Even for Hispanics who arent in fear of being deported, the big question is: Why are they picking on us?
Barajas said the effort was reminiscent of former Republican California Governor Pete Wilsons support two decades ago for a ballot initiative barring undocumented immigrants from using state-funded social services. The backlash among Hispanics has helped Democrats dominate the state for a generation.
It could have some devastating effects for Republicans, said Barajas, who advised Republican Meg Whitman in her losing 2010 gubernatorial campaign in California and says Democrats still use Wilsons image in political advertising in that state.
Cruz, a 44-year-old freshman whose father was born in Cuba, rejects any suggestion that the campaign could backfire by electrifying Hispanic voters in states like Texas, which has been reliably Republican since the 1980s.
The Democrats said that before November as well, he said in an interview. It proved correct: It did mobilize voters -- and we saw a historic tidal wave of an election that was a referendum on executive amnesty.
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Cruz Immigration Bid Has Republicans Fretting Over Backlash