Putting immigration spin in perspective

While Republicans run radio commercials blaming Sen. Harry Reid and the Democrats for the immigration mess, the Louisville Courier-Journal reminds us of the facts:

Immigration spin
The immigration debate has been, from the very start, a red-meat feast for the wedge-issue lions of the Republican right.

It was a previously unknown Colorado Republican, Rep. Tom Tancredo, who barn-stormed the nation giving vent to send-'em-back anger.

It was one of the GOP's "movement conservatives," Rep. J. D. Hayworth of Arizona, who hailed the rise of the anti-immigrant vigilantes called Minutemen and who gave the menacing title Whatever It Takes to his own book advocating a military deployment along the border and a suspension of even legal immigration from Mexico.

It was the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, James Sensenbrenner Jr., who eagerly piled on, producing the shameful bill that declares illegal immigrants (and anybody kind enough to help one) to be felons and that fails to establish either a sensible guest worker program or any humane options for the millions of hard-working immigrant families already here.

And it was 203 House Republicans (including Kentucky's) who passed that abominable bill in December, with the help of just 38 Democrats (including Kentucky's Ben "Hey, I'm conservative too" Chandler).

All of which needs to be remembered now that the wedge has turned on its makers, and Republican spinmeisters are trying to shift blame to the Democrats for the House's felony atrocity and for the Senate's failure to pass a better, compromise bill backed by Democrats, moderate Republicans and President Bush.

It needs to be remembered not for the sake of Democrats, who are playing their own brand of immigration politics, but for the sake of truth.

It's true that Rep. Sensenbrenner tried at the last minute to reduce the felony designations to misdemeanors, and that Democrats wouldn't go along. But the reasons was that most opposed any criminal penalties at all, and Mr. Sensenbrenner had explained that the result of the change would be to make convictions easier and deportations quicker.

It's also true that Democrats stalled passage of the Senate's compromise measure by refusing to allow votes on amendments to it. But it was the Republican nativists who wanted to push those gutting amendments and help strengthen the hand of the House firebrands in later negotiations.

What's blocking immigration reform isn't partisanship. It's a deep, bitter split between the GOP's moderate and conservative wings. They can't say so without making things worse, so they are desperately blaming Democrats for, in effect, refusing to save them from themselves.

It's unlikely they'll succeed.

UPDATE: Media Matters sets the record straight.