When All You Have Is a Hammer

Via Pat Dollard, a Washington Post story you can’t afford to miss:

President Obama and his political aides privately acknowledge that the government’s decision to sue Arizona over its new immigration law is helping to fuel an anti-immigration fervor that could benefit some Republicans in elections this fall.

But White House officials have concluded that, over the long term, the Republicans’ get-tough message is a major political miscalculation. They predict it will ultimately alienate millions of Latinos, the fastest-growing minority group in the nation.

I’m not sure this will work out the way Obama expects — unless he and the Democrats (and a few select Republicans) get amnesty-plus-citizenship for millions and millions of illegals. I’m also not sure this is the best week for the Administration to be playing the race card, especially so explicitly and provocatively in a lead story in one of the nation’s most important newspapers.

And further along in the story:

“Look: The Republicans, if you do the math, cannot be successful as a national party if they continue to alienate Latinos,” said one Democratic strategist familiar with White House thinking on the issue.

The Democrats, if you do the math, cannot be successful as a national party if they continue with policies that have Latinos unemployed at a rate nearly 30% higher than the national average.