In the wake of Sarah Palin and Arizona Governor Jan Brewer criticizing President Obama’s response to Arizona’s immigration problem in Phoenix this weekend, CNN’s Carol Costello asks Nation editor and publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel how the spotlight on Arizona immigration will affect the midterm elections. Vanden Heuvel believes that in the short-term it will play out differently by region, but in the long-term “it is going to marginalize an already marginalized Republican Party which has already become more extremist, more pale and stale.”

However, former New York Republican Congresswoman Susan Molinari, who joined vanden Heuvel on the show, says that the Arizona law will help the Republican Party. Not only do two-thirds of Americans support the bill, Molinari argues, but the situation also highlights a level of exasperation that American people feel toward the White House’s inability to act. “This is just one more example of the American government failing to listen to the American people,” Molinari says.

Vanden Heuvel and Molinari also disagree on Sarah Palin. Vanden Heuvel expresses her wish that the media spent more time covering the problems in America rather than focusing on Palin because she is clearly out for herself and her career. But Molinari argues that Palin is a stand-out figure in what she calls “the year of Republican women.”

—Morgan Ashenfelter