Following Meg Whitman’s (R-CA) victory last night in the Republican primary race for California governor, it’s worth reviewing her shift to the right on immigration before she gets the chance to move back to the center as she will likely have to if she wants to win the general election. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who is cited as one of Whitman’s earliest supporters, has stated “You can’t get there in the general without 30 percent of Hispanics.” Whitman seems confident that she can win over Latinos by hosting mariachi events and talking about “jobs and education,” but she may be surprised. Immigration isn’t necessarily the most important issue for Latinos, but anti-immigrant rhetoric is often enough to drive Latinos away from a candidate in droves.

Whitman once said that she supported comprehensive immigration reform. She always maintained that she opposes outright amnesty “100%,” but used to reportedly favor a “program in which people would go to the end of the line, pay a fine and do things that would allow for a path to legalization.” However, as her race against immigration hardliner Steve Poizner (R-CA) tightened, Whitman went out of her way to clarify that what she really “meant” was that she supports reform that “secures the border first and includes a temporary guest worker program” and not an earned path to legalization for undocumented immigrants. Meanwhile, 77% of Latino voters support a legalization plan.

It also doesn’t help that Whitman’s proposals don’t even make economic sense. Government data shows that the border “is safer now than it’s ever been.” The top four biggest American cities with the lowest rates of violent crime also happen to be in border states: San Diego, Phoenix, El Paso and Austin. This is especially true for California. The Los Angeles Times recently wrote that “the California frontier is quieter than it has been in years.” Not only is Whitman okay with the idea of pouring more money into securing a border that is already safe, she’s apparently opposed to generating $16 billion annually from putting California’s 1.8 million undocumented Latino immigrants on a path to legalization. Other studies have shown that temporary worker programs, in the absence of legalization, are associated with more costs than benefits.

The Latino Politics blog points out that Latinos have a saying: “Dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres,” which means “Tell me who you walk with, and I will tell you who you are.” Last month, Whitman released an ad featuring former Gov. Pete Wilson (R-CA) who affirmed that Whitman will be “as tough as nails” on immigration. Wilson’s endorsement might’ve scored some points with right-wingers, but it also meant a lot to California Latinos who remember him backing Proposition 187 — an Arizona type law that was ultimately deemed unconstitutional. The law never really went into effect, but Republicans are still hurting from it. In a report released by the Center for American Progress, Gebe Martinez writes “after 1994, California Democrats won every presidential, U.S. Senate, and gubernatorial election until 2003″ — largely thanks to a Latino electorate that was deeply offended by Wilson and his Party. Allan Hoffenblum, a longtime Los Angeles-based GOP strategist is worried about the potential fallout from Whitman’s primary campaign. “This is bringing back all the fears that the Republican Party is a white man’s party,” Hoffenblum told Politico. “It’s depressing.” In the video, Whitman also proclaims, “Illegal immigrants are just that, illegal.”

In the general election, Whitman faces a much different race against Democratic opponent Jerry Brown. “Yes, protect our border. Yes, enforce the law,” Brown has said. “[But] I’m not going to scapegoat immigrants and public servants and poor people.” However, he may want to bring up the immigration issue early and often by reminding Latino voters of Whitman’s desperate move to the right and providing a welcoming immigration platform for them to flock to.

Today the UN Security Council passed sanctions against the Iranian regime by a vote of 12-2 with Lebanon abstaining. This is a significant diplomatic victory for the Obama administration, as in the end it was able to get China and Russia to support sanctions. While it is a blow that Turkey and Brazil voted no — given that a unanimous vote would have sent a stronger global signal — in the end, it doesn’t detract from the practical matter that Iran will be struck with the harshest UN sanctions yet. Quietly, and without much awareness in the press, the Obama administration has successfully implemented a robust containment plan to deal with Iran.

Over the last few months, the right has asserted that UN sanctions against Iran were pointless because China and Russia would water them down. But the very reason why the sanctions effort was dragging on was because the US kept pushing for stronger measures, as UN Ambassador Susan Rice noted, “had we wanted a low ball, low impact resolution we could have had that in a very short period of time.”

In the end, the Obama administration appears to have gotten fairly significant measures that puts additional pressure on the Iranian regime. As the New York Times reports, “the main thrust of the sanctions is against military, trade and financial transactions carried out by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which controls the nuclear program and has taken a more central role in running the country and the economy.”

The measures will no doubt make it harder for Iran to develop its nuclear and ballistic missile program. Nuclear proliferation expert David Albright told the Washington Post that the sanctions will likely push back the timeframe on Iran’s nuclear development, explaining that the “stuff they got easily five or six years ago they are struggling to get now.” And Secretary Clinton is undoubtedly right when she says that these are “the most significant sanctions Iran has ever faced.”

Importantly, though on areas where China and Russia did weaken sanctions, such as in specifically targeting the Iranian central bank, the US, and much more importantly, the European Union can now move to take stronger action. The New York Times noted:

Beyond the restrictions imposed by the sanctions themselves, the vote sets stage for harsher measures that the United States and the European Union have promised to enact on their own once they had the imprimatur of the United Nations. European leaders are likely to discuss new measures at a summit in mid June.

As I noted previously, the US has all but sanctioned itself out of relevance vis-a-vis Iran, but the European Union (along with China) remains its largest trading partner and therefore has significant leverage. Therefore further EU sanctions are very significant.

While the effort at the UN has been the most visible aspect of the Administration’s Iran policy, it has taken other steps to contain and isolate Iran. Militarily, the administration has reoriented US missile defense plans in Europe so that they are more focused and effective in countering the Iranian missile threat. Through General Petraeus the Administration has sped up missile defenses in the Persian Gulf. They have also reassured Iran’s Arab neighbors of US commitment to their security in an effort to stave off potential cascade of nuclear proliferation throughout the region. Ideologically, through its broader outreach to the Muslim world and by developing a direct dialogue with the Iranian people the Administration has helped undercut Iran’s ideological appeal in the region.

Internationally, the administration has been able to increase Iran’s isolation and box it into a corner at the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference so that it was forced to sign on to a consensus document supporting the tenets of the treaty that prohibits them from having a nuclear weapon or risk being the lone country to veto. And by directly engaging Iran in talks and by not closing the door to diplomatic talks, the Obama administration has clearly shown the world that the intransigent party is Iran, not the United States. This has built up international support for punitive measures against Iran.

While sanctions and containment may in the end not block Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, the only way to ensure that outcome is to invade – not bomb, invade. And as of yet, even the most hawkish conservatives have been reticent to publicly call for such disastrous action. Instead of pursuing such a disastrous approach, by maintaining international cohesion among the world’s major powers and implementing a containment strategy, the US has now ensured that should Iran chose to go down the nuclear path, its future will look a lot more like North Korea’s — isolated and poor.

In the wake of Helen Thomas’ offensive comments about Israel and subsequent resignation, a very important conversation has developed over the double standard that exists in regard to the denial of Jewish claims versus denial of Palestinian claims in the area of Israel-Palestine, and the fact that the the former is seen as unacceptable while the latter is a regular feature of conservative discourse.

As Yglesias wrote yesterday, the point here is not to diminish or excuse the ugliness of either side’s arguments, but to raise the level of discourse by making clear that population transfer is always ugly, always a human tragedy, something never to be treated lightly, let alone advocated.

In thinking about this, I was reminded of one of the tactics used by Israel hawks to downplay the negative impact of the settlements on the peace process, which is to insist that the settlements are not permanent, and that when the time comes the settlers can simply be sent to live somewhere else inside the newly established borders of Israel. David Frum provided a good example of this in a February 2009 discussion with Israeli journalist Gershom Gorenberg:

FRUM: If people move one way, they can move another way. I just — the idea that these are kind of geologic facts — we’re talking about loading up a moving van. Had there been, had there been a deal, there’s nothing easier. I mean you’ve seen these settlements, they’re ramshackle things, they’re trailer parks…

GORENBERG: David, David, you’re not visiting the same settlements that I am if that’s what you’re seeing. And I spend a lot of my time reporting on the settlements.

FRUM: Even if they’ve built the Emerald City of Oz in one particular place, again, people move, people are incredibly mobile…

Watch it:

People are incredibly mobile. I’m certainly no supporter of Israel’s settlement project, but I do recognize, as Frum apparently does not, that the eventual withdrawal from these settlements — which will be necessary in any two-state agreement — will be enormously traumatic, both for the residents themselves and for Israel as a country. It will break up communities, cause people to abandon homes, schools, and places of worship. It will force them to dig up and move their dead. One has to admire Gershom’s ability to deal in such good humor with Frum’s ignorance of all of this, but taken in addition to Frum’s continued insistence that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank “has ended” — a comically indefensible claim by any measure — I really have to wonder why anyone considers him worth taking seriously on the issue.

Unfortunately, such inconsideration of the suffering and trauma that transfer entails is not limited to conservatives. Pushing back on the idea that the settlements represented an obstacle to two-states, last year the New Republic’s Jonathan Chait argued, like Frum, that “settlements are reversible“:

To make peace with Egypt, Israel abandoned settlements in the Sinai peninsula, forcibly uprooting residents there. It did the same when withdrawing from Gaza recently. It was prepared to do the same in the West Bank in 2000 and 2001, though it never had to follow through because negotiations collapsed.[...]

If Israel’s government and population can be convinced that a real peace is attainable, then they should be able to dismantle the settlements.

While not as blithely dismissive of the whole issue as Frum, Chait still evinces little appreciation for how deeply painful the process of withdrawal will be.

Last week I had an opportunity to meet with Ami Ayalon, the former head of Shin Bet who, in 2002, offered a peace initiative developed with Palestinian activist Sari Nusseibeh. Among other things, we discussed how Israel must begin to prepare to compensate the settlers for removing them from communities that they’ve occupied for decades. “We must tell the settlers ‘it’s time to come home’” to Israel, Ayalon said. This would be difficult, he acknowledged, because in the settlers’ view, they are already home in the West Bank, which they refer to as Judea and Samaria. Sharon’s 2005 withdrawal of settlers from Gaza was incredibly difficult for Israel. The withdrawal of West Bank settlers will be far larger, and far more difficult. And those who have consistently downplayed the significance of the settlement issue — and thereby helped enable their continued expansion — bear a share of the blame for that.