GOP Crackup Gains Momentum

Republican blogger and radio host Hugh Hewitt has a post discussing whether in fact the Republican party will be split by immigration. "Peel split the Tories over corn. Gladstone split the Liberals over Ireland. The Democrats split over the Civil War, and a hundred years later over civil rights, Vietnam and the Soviet threat. Will the GOP split over border security? The answer will be in tonight's speech, which could be a huge boon for the president and the GOP, but could also be a disaster if the Adminsitration and Beltway experts refuse to take the base seriously," he says. "If the president gives a nationwide, prime time speech and doesn't embrace fencing when a vast number of his party's regulars demand fencing, that will not only be ignoring them, it will be to reject them and their agenda. It will be a gift to Tom Tancredo and other anti-illegal immigration absolutists, an invitation to the Minutemen and their supporters to immediately dismiss the speech as window dressing."

And the Washington Post has a story on the growing GOP divide today as well. "From immigration policy to energy to emergency spending, House Republican leaders are publicly breaking rank with their counterparts in the Senate, fearing that Senate efforts at compromise are jeopardizing the party's standing with conservative voters. The breach in congressional leadership has been especially stark in the past two weeks. As the Senate returns to the immigration issue this week, House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said House Republicans will not agree to any plan granting illegal immigrants a path to citizenship that does not require them first to return to their home countries."

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