Suicide gets a bad rap in the modern world, but it used to be considered an honorable solution to life’s problems. That’s never the way it works these days. We have Muslim lunatics trying to blow up the world and liberal fanatics trying to destroy Western civilization. Closer to home, we have the Republican Party, which is supposed to represent sensible white people, doing everything it can to harm and alienate the people they claim to represent. Here’s their latest.

The deadline to pass immigration legislation is this August, said Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., who is part of the effort to develop an immigration bill that could pass the House.

“The legislative process in essence, frankly, has to work on deadlines. There’s a deadline. And the deadline is that if we don’t get it done by August it doesn’t happen,” Diaz-Balart told CQ Roll Call at the Congressional Hispanic Leadership Institute’s awards gala Thursday.

“If Congress doesn’t act by the August break, the president is going to do something. And once that happens, two things happen,” said Diaz-Balart. “No. 1 is that the possibility of any further negotiations — of any — disintegrate.”

This is a classic gambit. Martin Luther King played this card repeatedly. His Letter from a Birmingham Jail is a legendary example. He offered a choice to white America. They could either deal with him and his demands or they could deal with an army of rioters in the streets. His calculation, a correct one, was that middle-class white people did not want to see the cops shooting black people on television.

Diaz-Balart is doing the same here. Either pass his amnesty scheme or something worse will happen in the fall. What could be worse than flooding the country with illiterate Mexican peasants is Obama flooding the country with illiterate Mexican peasants. Of course, if Obama does it it will be worse because reasons. This is obviously aimed at the Fox News types. Then we have Rand Paul making crazy sounds about voting.

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky broke Friday with fellow Republicans who have pushed for stricter voting laws as a way to crack down on fraud at the polls, saying that the focus on such measures alienates and insults African-Americans and hurts the party.

“Everybody’s gone completely crazy on this voter ID thing,” Mr. Paul said in an interview. “I think it’s wrong for Republicans to go too crazy on this issue because it’s offending people.”

Mr. Paul becomes the most prominent member of his party — and among the very few — to distance himself from the voting restrictions and the campaign for their passage in states under Republican control, including North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin, that can determine presidential elections. Civil rights groups call the laws a transparent effort to depress black turnout.

This, of course, is completely insane. Everyone with an IQ above room temperature knows liberal democrat groups work hard to pollute the ballot in America. The one chance to clean this stuff up is requiring a valid ID. In states like North Carolina, New Hampshire and Wisconsin, well orchestrated vote fraud can swing an election. Al Franken is in the Senate because of vote fraud.

Then we come to the final bit of insanity from the weekend. Republicans now want to lesson the penalties on illegal immigrants.

Republican Rep. Raul Labrador on Thursday offered a potential immigration deal to the White House, saying the GOP would agree to loosen penalties on illegal immigrants if President Obama would agree to increase visas for foreigners who work in high-tech fields.

Mr. Labrador suggested dropping the penalty period that bars illegal immigrants from reapplying to enter the U.S. legally after being deported, a period that now lasts for between three and 10 years, depending on how long they had first remained in the country illegally.

“I think most Republicans agree that the 3- and 10-year bars have to go away because right now the people that are here illegally, they have to go home to become legal, but then they have to remain home for ten years,” the Idaho Republican said. “We remove those bars from them, you could fix the status of about 25 percent of the people that are here illegally right now if they return to their home country and then they come back legally.”

Under current law, those that leave the U.S. after living here illegally for six months or more cannot return for three years. Those who lived here illegally for at least a year cannot return for ten years. That has served as an incentive for many illegal immigrants to remain in the U.S. rather than return home and face years long bans.

Mr. Labrador, who dropped out of a bipartisan group last year that tried to strike a broad immigration deal, made the overture at a forum of House conservatives hosted by the Heritage Foundation.

He said in return for dropping the bars, Democrats should agree to boost legal immigration by granting green cards to foreigners who graduate from American universities with advanced degrees in the fields of science, engineering, math or technology.

Think about this for a second. This guy wants to cut the legs out form under working class Americans by bringing in foreigners to take their jobs. Then he doubles downand says he wants to gut the market for tech workers, letting proven criminals Apple, Google and eBay slash the pay of their workers by hiring foreigners on visas. It’s as if he really hates the people he claims to represent.

Raul Labrador hates America. Specifically, he hates Americans. Even more precisely, he hates the people who are inclined to vote for him and his fellow Republicans. He has to know that there is zero chance this scheme helps his party. Every bit of data we have shows that immigration hurts Republicans. Pushing these polices guarantees the defeat of his party. What strange virus has gripped the minds of these men leading them to advocate suicidal policies?

The best course is to stand aside and let the suicidal get on with it. Basically, we have one party with two faces. This fools people into thinking they have a choice at the ballot box. if one of those faces dies, then people have to find another option. It does not mean things will change, but it offers an opening. Let the GOP pass amnesty so they can obliterated at the ballot box. The shame of 2008 was that it was not a bigger win for the Democrats.