This morning, Politico published a story aptly pointing out that “all is not lost” for Democrats following the election of Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate. However, one issue which Politico did identify as “toxic” is immigration reform. According to Politico, the issue’s death is signaled by the fact that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) “isn’t playing ball” which means there are “fewer Republican crossover votes.” Yet, not only is Politico’s reasoning unrelated to the election of Brown, it’s also based on a superficial and inaccurate analysis.

To begin with, last night’s election results don’t represent a referendum on President Obama’s legislative agenda, which includes immigration. Exit polls show that only 38% of Massachusetts voters indicated that their vote was grounded in opposition to Obama’s policies. In fact, independent voters largely accounted for Brown’s victory. Those voters also support comprehensive immigration reform by a wide margin and overwhelmingly voted for Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) — an avid champion of immigrant rights — year after year. If anything, Scott’s win represents a frustration with partisan-driven inaction. It also encompasses a collective sense of impatience with the lack of economic recovery. Immigration reform could speak to both.

Immigration reform and the economy are not mutually exclusive. Furthermore, the prospects for immigration reform have always been tied to its capacity to attract bipartisan support. McCain “isn’t playing ball” because the ball isn’t in his court this time around. While McCain co-sponsored the failed immigration reform bill of 2006, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is taking the lead in partnering with Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) in crafting a bill that will have to avoid the major pitfalls of past failed pieces of legislation. Rather than drawing a line in the sand between Republicans and Democrats, immigration reform signals an opportunity for both parties to show voters they can work together to get something done in Congress.

Ultimately, it’s both in McCain’s and Brown’s interest to support comprehensive immigration reform. Almost 30% of Arizona’s immigrants (or 294,541 people) were naturalized U.S. citizens as of 2007 — meaning they are eligible voters with a close connection to the immigrant experience. Meanwhile, the Massachusetts foreign born population represents over 14 percent of state’s total population and 17 percent of the state’s workforce. They also make up about 12.7 percent (403,915) of registered voters. Neither Martha Coakley nor Brown campaigned heavily in Latino and immigrant communities. However, during a press call today, president of the National Council of La Raza Janet Murguía noted that ignoring the Latino community and the immigration issue could have devastating consequences:

Promises have been made on both sides on this issue…inaction means there will be consequences. That’s true not just for Latinos, but for swing voters…Campaigns need to engage the Latino community pro-actively if they want their support. We certainly didn’t see the outreach [from the Coakley campaign] to the Latino community that you would’ve expected in order to generate the support needed to make a difference…

SEIU Executive Vice President Eliseo Medina further pointed out that “we lost one vote that will make our job more difficult — but not impossible.” While the viability of reforming U.S. immigration laws doesn’t ride on Brown’s seat, Brown might find himself in a position in which he needs immigration reform more than it needs him.

I actually agree with the approach to Iran that Robert Kaplan advocates in this article, it’s just a real shame that, in order to get to it, one has to wander through a farrago of bad history, question-begging and bald assertion of the benefits of regime change:

It would have a positive, pivotal influence on both the political and the security situation in Iraq — pushing Syria towards authentic moderation, and helping undermine Hezbollah and ease the path toward an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord. More broadly, it would unleash democratic tendencies throughout the Middle East, from North Africa to the Indus, forcing regimes and populations to focus more on their internal problems, thereby undermining radicalism.

An Iran that is both democratic and Shiite would tip the balance against the Sunni Wahabi extremism emanating from Saudi Arabia. And, in a globally networked world, where news of such regime change could not easily be suppressed, leaders in similarly autocratic countries like Venezuela and China would have cause for concern.

If this litany of promises of many colorful ponies to come sounds familiar, it should, as all of this (minus the Venezuela angle, which is new) is exactly what was supposed to result from regime change in Iraq. Indeed, here’s Kaplan himself in November 2002 explaining how “dismantling the Iraqi regime would concentrate the minds of Iran’s leaders as little else could.” And so it did! Just not in the way he or any of the war’s advocates predicted.

As I’ve written before, I think an Iranian Green movement victory would be good thing. There are still, however, a lot of important questions to be asked. How much better would it be than the current Iranian government? I’m not sure. How would such a government consolidate its power after achieving “victory”? I’m not sure. How much more amenable would such a government be toward the international community’s demands on Iran’s nuclear program? I’m not sure. What I am sure of is that it’s deeply irresponsible to confidently predict the benefits of Iranian regime change, especially when one’s previous confident predictions about the benefits of regime change in neighboring Iraq have been drowned in a sea of blood.

Having said that, I think that what Kaplan calls a “Reaganite approach” is correct:

[B]e open to far-reaching talks, as President Ronald Reagan was with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, but do nothing to legitimize the Iranian system. And, throughout any discussions, adopt the rhetoric of democracy. Make it clear that Washington is on the same side of history as the demonstrators, but also make it clear that the door is open to negotiations with those in power. And to avoid the risk of undermining the demonstrators by overt American support of them (thus catering to regime’s basest conspiracy theories), Obama should talk about democracy only in general, albeit pointed, terms, without directly referring to Iran. That is, he should get the language of universal values out over Iranian air waves as much as possible: encouraging the demonstrators without specifically backing them.

This is an approach that more Iranian dissidents have been calling for, and, according to recent reporting, is also the approach that the Obama administration has been moving toward.

It’s interesting, though, that Kaplan terms this a “Reaganite” approach. It’s important to remember that when Reagan adopted a strategy of engagement with the Soviets, he was excoriated as a “traitor to anti-Communism” by conservative hardliners. A 1988 New York Times article on conservative opposition to Reagan’s Soviet “appeasement” quoted Howard Phillips, chairman of the Conservative Caucus, charging Reagan with “fronting as a useful idiot for Soviet propaganda.” The fact that most conservatives now prefer to remember Reagan’s negotiations with the Soviets as a brilliant display of diplomatic jiu-jitsu probably won’t stop them from condemning every Obama administration meeting with the Iranians as another Munich.

The “four horsemen” were back today. Former Secretaries of State George Schultz (Reagan) and Henry Kissinger (Nixon and Ford), former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry (Clinton), and former Senator Sam Nunn (Sen. D-GA) have an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal reaffirming their past calls to eliminate nuclear weapons. They write today:

The four of us have come together, now joined by many others, to support a global effort to reduce reliance on nuclear weapons, to prevent their spread into potentially dangerous hands, and ultimately to end them as a threat to the world.

These four national security leaders – two Republicans and two Democrats – have been four of the most prominent and vocal advocates of eliminating nuclear weapons and their efforts have significantly influenced President Obama and the global nuclear debate.

Their op-ed today importantly does not support one of the key arguments made by conservatives like Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ), that the US needs to build new nuclear warheads because existing ones are “deteriorating.” The four statesmen conclude that:

Our recommendations for maintaining a safe, secure and reliable nuclear arsenal are consistent with the findings of a recently completed technical study commissioned by the National Nuclear Security Administration in the Department of Energy. This study was performed by JASON, an independent defense advisory group of senior scientists who had full access to the pertinent classified information. The JASON study found that the “[l]ifetimes of today’s nuclear warheads could be extended for decades, with no anticipated loss in confidence, by using approaches similar to those employed in Life Extension Programs to date.”

By supporting the findings of the JASON study, Schultz, Perry, Kissinger, and Nunn are in no way supporting the construction of a new nuclear warhead, since the study found that as long as current maintenance programs are in place, building a new nuclear warhead is simply unnecessary. While the op-ed calls for maintaining the efficacy of nuclear labs and for ensuring proper funding for nuclear programs relevant to maintaining the nuclear force, this is something that the Administration and arms-control advocates support as well and in no way conflicts with the effort to work toward eliminating nuclear weapons.

The op-ed also notably rejects Senator Kyl’s clamoring for testing new nuclear weapons. Kyl wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in October titled “why we need to test nuclear weapons” that also opposed the effort to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The four statesmen pour cold water on Kyl’s desire to explode more nuclear weapons, noting that work at US nuclear labs have:

led to important advances in the scientific understanding of nuclear explosions and obviated the need for underground nuclear explosive tests.

The tea-partyization of the conservative movement has extended to foreign and security policy as well. In two recent Iran reports from the Heritage Foundation they argue that the US would be wise to both launch a preventive strike against Iran and to forward-deploy US nuclear weapons to the Persian Gulf. Steps that together could quite easily lead to nuclear war. Jim Phillips of Heritage argues in a recent report on the implications of an Israeli preventive attack on Iran:

Given that the United States is likely to be attacked by Iran in the aftermath of an Israeli strike anyway, it may be logical to consider joining Israel in a preven­tive war against Iran.

Ariel Cohen in a companion report released the same day also goes on to recommend that:

The U.S. should deploy a visible deterrent, deploying overwhelming nuclear forces near Iran, including on surface ships, aircraft, or permanent bases. These offensive forces should be designed to hold at risk the facilities that Iran would need to launch a strategic attack, thereby making any such attack by Iran likely to fail.

So Heritage is not only saying that the US would be smart to join a preventive attack with Israel – an attack they acknowledge would lead to an Iranian response against US forces and installations in the Middle East – but that the US should equip these bases with nuclear weapons – the very bases that they just acknowledged Iran would attack. Patrick Disney at NIAC notes:

He [Cohen] is suggesting that we wave these missiles in front of Iran’s face, knowing full well that Tehran and its proxy allies will not sit idly by as the US makes such a thoroughly provocative move. And he makes the ludicrous suggestion that the thing the Middle East needs more than anything else right now is more Weapons of Mass Destruction.

By the right’s own logic these steps would lead to nuclear war. The right has consistently argued that the Iranian regime is not rational and therefore cannot be deterred – hence the need in their minds for the US or Israel to strike at Iran before they develop and use a nuclear weapon. Dick Cheney when he was the sitting Vice President said that Iran could not be deterred: “mutual assured destruction in the hands of Ahmadinejad may just be an incentive.”

So, assuming that they agree with the Vice President, Heritage is advocating the forward-deployment of nuclear weapons and threatening to use them against an apparently suicidal and undeterrable regime. If you threaten a regime with nuclear war that you don’t believe is rational, doesn’t that mean that you are in fact expecting to use these weapons, since it is likely that the regime’s reaction won’t be capitulation, but defiance?

This would then put the US in a situation in which it threatened a country with nuclear war and was rebuffed. What would the right’s reaction be to that? Based on past history it is pretty obvious that Heritage would advocate following through on the threat to show America’s “resolve.” Once making the threat the US would look “weak” not following through, thereby undermining the credibility of the US nuclear deterrent by demonstrating an unwillingness to use nukes – or so the logic would go. Hence, the recommendations from Heritage – by conservatives’ own logic – put the US on a slippery slope to a nuclear war with Iran.

Now the chances are that there isn’t that much logic behind Heritage’s recommendations, but the logical conclusion of what they are advocating is really really scary.