Charles Krauthammer Calls for Immigration Amnesty: 'Everything Short of Citizenship'

There's video at RCP, "Krauthammer Gives Election Post-Mortem: GOP Needs to Be Open to Amnesty." The key segment:

I think Republicans can change their position, be a lot more open to actual amnesty with enforcement. Amnesty, everything short of citizenship. And to make a bold change in their policy. Enforcement and then immediately after, a guarantee of amnesty. That would change everything. If you had a Rubio arguing that it would completely up-end all the ethnic alignments.

I can see the attraction politically, but amnesty's such a loathsome thing, a complete capitulation to progressivism, it's repulsive. But see Krauthammer's Friday column, FWIW, at WaPo, "The way forward":

They lose and immediately the chorus begins. Republicans must change or die. A rump party of white America, it must adapt to evolving demographics or forever be the minority.

The only part of this that is even partially true regards Hispanics. They should be a natural Republican constituency: striving immigrant community, religious, Catholic, family-oriented and socially conservative (on abortion, for example).

The principal reason they go Democratic is the issue of illegal immigrants. In securing the Republican nomination, Mitt Romney made the strategic error of (unnecessarily) going to the right of Rick Perry. Romney could never successfully tack back.

For the party in general, however, the problem is hardly structural. It requires but a single policy change: Border fence plus amnesty. Yes, amnesty. Use the word. Shock and awe — full legal normalization (just short of citizenship) in return for full border enforcement.

More at the link.

Mark Krikorian is having none of it, "Amnesty Is the Best Revenge":

The Chicken Little amnesty panic is underway among the Republican establishment. Boehner, Hannity, the Wall Street Journal, Jeb Bush, Lindsey Graham, Norquist, Krauthammer, et al. are announcing that in the wake of Romney’s loss the GOP can’t survive unless it revisits the failed Bush/Kennedy amnesty.

Read it all.

Frankly, I'm not looking forward to four years of conservative infighting over facilitating the left's open borders agenda. But I doubt this issue is going away anytime soon. The soul searching's going to be deep on the right, and with the demographic shifts seen in the data, conservatives will keep coming back to the question of how to win the Hispanic vote. I'll have more on this topic, no doubt.