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Yesterday’s Primaries and Immigration

Posted August 25, 2010 by Patrick Young, Esq.
Categories: Hate Watch

Last night’s surprising win by Rick Scott in the Florida Republican Gubernatorial Primary marks a further consolidation of power by tea party elements in the Republican grassroots. As recently as a week ago, Scott trailed the mainstream candidate by nearly 10%.

Scott was the first serious political candidate to mine electoral gold with opposition to the Islamic center in downtown Manhattan.

Scott also attracted a lot of national attention when he endorsed Arizona’s SB 1070 anti-immigrant bill, pushing the normally Latino-friendly Florida GOP to scramble to adopt similar restrictionist proposals. This may jeopardize the party in November. Florida Latinos have historically given a slight edge to Republicans in elections, but they have been moving away from them since 2006.

Joe Miller’s primary victory in Alaska over a sitting Republican senator is another win for the tea party forces. The state has no appreciable Latino electorate, and so his restrictionist views will not rebound against him. He supports SB 1070, and says he questions whether the children of undocumented immigrants are citizens.

The tea party candidate lost in an effort to unseat John McCain, but McCain moved so far to the right to beat J.D. Hayworth that he could be seen boiling up the Earl Grey himself.

Tags : , joe miller, republicans, rick scott, tea party

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