Newt So Fast, Mr. Gingrich

Republicans are increasingly realizing that they have a serious problem with Latino voters.  The far right nationalist Tea Party has no problem with demonizing tens of millions of Latinos (or any minority for that matter) and wants to deport "all the illegals".  But the corporate wing of the party wants a steady supply of cheaper manual labor and has no problem with taking advantage of undocumented workers either.  The two goals are fundamentally incompatible.

That brings us to Newt Gingrich, trying to thread the needle while riding the rapids.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has a bold goal for the next decade: Overhaul the country's immigration system so that every worker in the United States is legal.

"We are not going to deport 11 million people," Gingrich said Thursday as he kicked off his first forum on Latino issues. "There has to be some zone between deportation and amnesty." 

The problem is of course that to the binary worldview Tea Party, there is no zone between deportation and amnesty.  That's illustrated best by Gingrich's own words.  In 2006:

Culturally we have shifted from an integrating, English-speaking American citizenship focused model of immigration to an acceptance of foreign habits (which are going to include corruption), foreign loyalties (illustrated by the waving of foreign flags by many of the marchers, some with attitudes of contempt) and the insistence (not necessarily by immigrants) on creating non-English speaking legal and educational structures.

In 2009:

What I said was that we should have a program to have a legal guest-worker system. We should be very clear that we want to increase legal immigration…I think symbolically, you know, the McCain-Kennedy bill said you have to pay a $5,000 fine to the U.S. government. You can fly home, get the visa, and come back for less than $5,000. So you’re asking me — is it possible over a 2-3 year period that every person at some point go home and get the guest-worker permit — because you couldn’t do this in week. This would have to be a transition of 2-3 years. I think virtually everybody would it if they knew we were serious…

Earlier this year:

“What I’m opposed to is the federal level passage of a single bill that pretends it does all the right things, but is actually designed to ensure that millions of people get to be American citizens in hopes that they will vote Democrat, which I think is the Obama plot,” Gingrich said.

And now he's back to wanting comprehensive reform and not deporting people.  He's been all over the map on this, jumping from deportation to cultural attacks on immigrants to turning processing immigrant labor into a lucrative corporate contract to now pandering to the Latino voter that there has to be a third way.

The bigger problem of course is that Newt Gingrich doesn't make any sense on immigration because the Republicans don't make any sense on immigration.  They're trying to demonize immigrants enough to keep their virulently bigoted base on board, and have to try to then pander enough to not lose too many Latino votes.  It's a train wreck either way.

It's finally dawning on some GOP hopefuls that a serious immigration policy is needed, one that consists of more than screaming "NO SHAMNESTY!" at the nearest TV camera.

The Tea Party will of course prevent any conversation on that.  Newt's going to get fried for even suggesting there's another option than the Tex-Mex version of Kristalnacht ahead for America.