If you spend any time around Washington insiders, it is abundantly clear that the Democrats #1 target for 2006 is Rick Santorum, but the D’s have a problem: finding a candidate of their own. The rumors have been floating for weeks that Bob Casey Jr (yes, the son of the former governor) would be the Democratic candidate. For Rick this would be an utter disaster, because Casey has already proven the ability to raise big $$ and he’s pro-life and socially conservative, which would undercut Rick’s already despondent base.

Patrick Ruffini, has some good reasons for Santorum to be hopeful against Casey though. Ruffini notes that Casey proved to be a terrible campaigner, who gave Pennsylvanians little reason to vote for him over then Mayor Rendell.

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When one looks at the Republican Party there are two glaring examples of possible feuds inside the GOP: foreign policy and immigration. Now Bush has managed to cojole otherwise skeptical GOPers into his camp, for the most part on foreign policy, though many of us feel its a possible neccesary evil, but on immigration there is a tremendous split between the party upper levels (mainly run by business) and the party base.

The party base almost universally is vehemently against illegal immigration and largely skeptical of the benefits of wave after wave of immigrants, but the upper level is bankrolled by corporations that make large sums of money off of cheap illegal labor. So the schism continues. The upper levels also largely are not big supporters of gun rights or the pro-life planck, but since it doesn’t really affect their bottom line they are willing to give into the base, but on immigration don’t look for them to budge.

So future GOP leaders, and indeed, even this President risk totally destorying the broad party coalition by pushing for immigration growth. So while we aren’t as split as the Dems, we still have our cracks and President Bush would be wise to throw some bones to Rep. Tancredo and others who schilled for his re-election, but want real immigration reform.