Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who was lead pollster for John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign, surveyed the political terrain this morning in a discussion with Charlie Cook of the National Journal, Democratic pollster Fred Yang, and Hotline editor Amy Walter. McInturff predicted that congressional Democrats, exhausted with the Obama agenda, will have little enthusiasm for immigration reform bills in the near future.
Said McInturff: "There's only a certain number of profile-of-courage votes you can take in any one election. The House Democrats have been asked to vote for the stimulus, the Cap and Trade, the health care bill, and then had the president go to Mexico in October and say, 'And then we're looking forward, we're going to take on immigration!' Oh my God! To tell these members, 'Your reward for dealing with the stimulus vote, health care, Cap and Trade is to deal with immigration'? My guess is that if the health care (bill) gets done, they would beg to be left alone and say, 'Can we just do small-bore stuff that looks like were dealing with jobs and the economy?'"