Eric Cantor and the leaders in the Republican party are on a massive outreach program, trying to get the votes of people they’ve actively tried to disenfranchised over the last few elections. Besides stealing a speech from President Obama where the President talked about different ways to help the middle class, Cantor went on television today and tried his best to convince Latinos that Republicans are for immigration, despite the fact that they unanimously voted against the last immigration bill called The Dream Act.
Representative Eric Cantor, the No. 2 Republican in the House of Representatives, said Congress could make quick progress on immigration if lawmakers agreed to give citizenship to children – an idea he opposed when it came up for a vote in 2010 as the DREAM Act.
“The best place to begin, I think, is with the children. Let’s go ahead and get that under our belt, put a win on the board,” Cantor said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Cantor is leading an effort to improve his party’s image as many Republicans worry they will be consigned to irrelevancy in coming years if they do not reach out to the fast-growing Latino electorate, which strongly supports immigration reform.
President Barack Obama has made immigration reform a top priority of his second term in office and a bipartisan group of senators is working to draft legislation that would tackle the issue in a comprehensive manner, rather than the piecemeal approach that Cantor suggested.
Republicans have successfully fooled their base for so long that they now think they can take one position today and change tomorrow. And no one will notice. But I think they’re in for a rude awakening come 2014.
