GOP already in lame excuse mode: Republicans can’t pass an immigration bill, and somehow that’s Obam

[applegrove]

GOP already in lame excuse mode: Republicans can’t pass an immigration bill, and somehow that’s Obama’s fault

by Simon Maloy at Salon

http://www.salon.com/2014/11/12/gop_already_in_lame_excuse_mode_republicans_cant_pass_an_immigration_bill_and_somehow_thats_obamas_fault/

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When it comes to President Obama’s plan to take executive action to ease deportation, there’s one argument coming from top Republicans that, to my ear, really doesn’t make a lot of sense. Various media outlets have reported on Obama’s post-election meeting with congressional leaders and the messages top Republicans sent Obama on immigration. On one point they were unanimous: If the president takes executive action, he’ll have guaranteed that the new Congress will not pass any immigration bills.


“The Speaker warned that unilateral action by the president on executive amnesty will erase any chances of doing immigration reform,” noted Roll Call. “There was a lot of push-back from our guys. It would make not only passage of immigration reform more difficult but would also spill over to other areas of the agenda,” Sen. John Thune told the Wall Street Journal. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, one of the GOP’s most fervent advocates of immigration reform, told Bloomberg’s Dave Weigel that “there’s pretty much a guarantee we can’t get it done if he does something by executive order.”

Maybe I’m alone in this, but I recall very clearly the many months the Republicans in Congress spent earlier this year arguing that the reason immigration reform was not going to pass was that they just couldn’t trust the president to enforce the law. Did something happen to reestablish a sufficient level of trust in the president that Republicans feel they can move forward with him on immigration? Perhaps, sometime in between their vote to sue Obama and their vote to defund his DREAM Act-lite program, the Republicans found it in their hearts to maybe give him a second chance.

There’s not a whole lot of reason to believe any of this, and it’s not entirely clear what the threat to Obama is. Republicans spent more than a year sitting on their hands and saying they won’t work with the president because he’s a dictatorial socialist whom they can’t trust. It’s tough to see how vague hints of potential action on immigration would entice him, or how a promise to maintain the status quo would cow him.





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