One Month

The Republican Party has chosen immigration as its method of suicide. All eight mourners will be found at a Tea Party rally in Wichita Falls, dehydrated and badly sunburned. Survivors will include the Conservative and the Libertarian parties.

To explain: the Arizona Senate has approved SB 1070, a state law which criminalizes undocumented immigration. There seems to be a better than likely possibility that Governor Jan Brewer will either sign the law or it will be left to become law without her signature. And then it will be open season on Latino residents of Arizona, particularly for Joe Arpaio’s Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.

That will last about thirty days, until every legal mechanism in the state of Arizona pancakes. There will be video, probably of a particularly gratuitous violation of civil rights, upon an American citizen of Latin ancestry. The civil rights violation may be of a photogenic young woman.

In the short term, this is a disaster for the latino citizens of Arizona. In the long term, this is the calving of the Bigot Glacier from the Republican Party. It is not Montgomery on a cold December evening in 1955. This is very likely immigration reform’s Pettus Bridge, its Bloody Sunday.

The difference is that this is 2010. How many violations of civil rights will be captured on video-equipped cell phones? The first half-dozen will be on YouTube within 72 hours. Meanwhile, law enforcement resources will be concentrated upon this onerous enactment.

After a couple of hundred erroneous arrests of American citizens, the dockets of Arizona’s courts will clog like the arteries of a fried food enthusiast.

Note to Citizens and legal residents arrested erroneously: DEMAND JURY TRIALS! Nothing will gum up the works like jury trials. Nothing will work in favor of reform like a justice system full of fertilizer, either, particularly when greater infractions against humanity are going unpunished.

Every improper arrest deserves a big honking Federal lawsuit over civil rights, too. The symbol will be, again, a Citizen, female, preferably a young mother. Video will be involved. (Rule 1 again, this is 2010, fool, there is video everywhere.) Put the feds in the mix.

Arizona is bankrupt. They really cannot afford this kind of publicity. The sales tax is 12% in some places. The real estate market has collapsed. A law that has the potential to generate billions in lawsuits is not going to be a real incentive for businesses to locate in Phoenix, Tucson, Flagstaff, Kingman or Yuma.

Businesses in Yuma could find it advantageous to relocate across the river in Winter Haven, California. In Phoenix’s dubious downtown, where newcomers frequently ask “where’s downtown?” only to be informed that they’re in it, office rental rates will plummet. Large national and international businesses are not going to hang around to pay for the enforcement end of this debacle. They may well find Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Albuquerque, or El Paso to be much more hospitable.

The stereotypical goat-roping, oversize pickup-driving, sunglasses on a cord-wearing middle-aged-frat-boy Tea Partier is ginning up to celebrate his pyrrhic victory. He will be elated about how “we sure stood up to bring about the rule of law in Arizona.”

Note to Tea Party Traitors: When did anything that y’all supported work out anywhere but in Tea Party Utopia? Do you really think you deserve the country back? The Bush administration turned a budget on a path to zero deficits by now into something like 14 trillion dollars of debt. Nah, screw that. Even when Democrats screw up, they manage to occasionally get something right. A 30% average is still better than nothing.

The crystal ball says that this is the beginning of the very shank of the Tea Party Movement. Most large companies who had an interest in financing Tea Party Rallies against Health Care Reform have no interest in financing rallies against comprehensive immigration reform. The short answer is quite easy: No large national business besides Fox News has an economic interest in enraging 15% of the population of the United States.

With the 15% of the population which is latino, count another 14% of the market which is African-American and sensitive to overt bigotry. Beyond that, about 45% of whites are disinclined to agree with any bigoted manifestation. In other words, any business backing an anti-immigration Tea Party Rally is going to alienate 65% or so of the population instantly.

Whether or not one likes the mentality of some businesspeople, they aren’t STUPID.

Timeline:

Any minute, SB 1070 will become law. Within 72 hours an obvious violation of Civil Rights will appear on YouTube. Within 2 weeks, The Obama Administration will back a Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill. Within 24 hours of that, Hannity, Beck, and a few of the other Hitler Youth will proclaim a Tea Party on Fox News. Corporate backing will not exist, leaving the group an eclectic mix of white and whiter.

At thirty days, Comprehensive Immigration Reform will be on President Obama’s desk for his signature, a codicil of which will void all non-federal legislation regarding immigration restrictions. Republicans like Mitch (The Chinless Wonder) McConnell will be left to screech, showing racist tendencies.

Oh yeah, one other thing. The Latino vote can turn an election in several Senate races, particularly California, Illinois, Florida, New York, and Arizona.

Stay tuned. This may be a lot of fun for progressives in November.