cantor is stopping the plan to give illegal aliens amnesty. but it was the seventh district primary voters who stopped cantor s plan to return to congress next year. the question of whether immigration affected cantor s campaign drew this response. cantor s problem wasn t his position on immigration reform, it was his lack of a position. graham wrote and passed a bill and is winning big. the graham is republican senator lindsey graham of south carolina who ran on immigration, faced a tough primary and still won. now, as a political scientist, i m wary of analysis offered too swiftly in the wake of an election. it simply is going to take us more time to disentangle the complicated factors that caused tuesday s electoral outcome. but let me suggest this. figuring out whether cantor lost because of his stance on immigration is less consequential than determining what happens now to the ongoing stalemate in the national effort to bring about immigration reform.
out mailers like this, bragging about he was the one stopping the obama/reid plan to give illegal aliens amnesty. all of which suggest that opposition to comprehensive immigration reform played a big role in yesterday s surprise result. but here s a fascinating bit of data from public policy polling, which happened to poll cantor s district yesterday, on primary election day. and with only 21% of respondents in this poll as self-identified democrats, the poll found strong bipartisan support, 64%, for the contours of the senate immigration reform bill that has already passed. the one eric cantor helped kill in the house. which gets at a fundamental truth about the politics of immigration. opposition is intensely focused among people who will make it their cause in life to go to the polls to vote against it, while support is widespread and diffuse. this is true within the republican party itself. a fascinating survey by the brookings institution looked at views on immigration among repub
he s opening the borders. those kind of attacks prompted response from cantor, who insisted on his own immigration street cred, and put out mailers like this, bragging about he was the one stopping the obama/reid plan to give illegal aliens amnesty. all of which suggest that opposition to comprehensive immigration reform played a big role in yesterday s surprise result. but here s a fascinating bit of data from public policy polling, which happened to poll cantor s district yesterday, on primary election day. and with only 21% of respondents in this poll as self-identified democrats, the poll found strong bipartisan support, 64%, for the contours of the senate immigration reform bill that has already passed. the one eric cantor helped kill in the house. which gets at a fundamental truth about the politics of immigration. opposition is intensely focused among people who will make it their cause in life to go to the
it was only a matter of minutes, minutes, literally, until everyone started citing immigration as the cause of house majority eric cantor s downfall. in the last few days, images of undocumented, unaccompanied minors detained at the border and now being held in special facilities like this one in nogales, arizona, have created a media storm. it s a humanitarian crisis the drudge report has blown up into a full right-wing panic. and which david brat himself, citing drudge, used against cantor, right up to election day. drudge, it s at the top of the drudge news story right now. 100,000 kids, and the kids themselves have said, we ve heard there s a kids act. well, eric cantor is the author of the kids act. so if you want open borders, vote for eric cantor, because he s opening the borders. those kind of attacks prompted response from cantor, who insisted on his own immigration street cred, and put out mailers like this, bragging about he was the one stopping the obama/reid plan to
actually sent out by his campaign. conservative republican eric cantor is stopping the obama-reid plan to give illegal aliens amnesty. so which is it, mr. cantor? then speaker boehner reportedly told pro-imgags donors at a las vegas fund-raiser that is he hell-bent on getting immigration reform done. he also appears to be hell-bent on just the opposite in back in washington where the tea party caucus opposes amnesty. this is last week. the issue of immigration reform is an issue that i ve talk about for 18 months starting the day after the 2012 election. and the fact that congress needs to deal with this. and i made it clear we re not going to deal with the senate bill. a 1,300-page bill that no one has read. it is not clear who they think they are fooling but it is clear that duplicity is yet another symptom of a much larger problem that the gop is having. they re struggling to hold on to support of their grass root conservative activists as we saw