GOP Off the Rails on Immigration, so Obama should Go Big
by Ryan Campbell | August 4, 2014
Steve King is currently leading the GOP House against immigration reform
Obama may have created this opportunity by announcing his executive order earlier this summer, but the fact remains that it is a completely golden opportunity: true to the criticism of many Obama critics, his opposition seems to be completely unreasonable, suing him while they demand he “show leadership” on the border, but the only sort of leadership he can show are administrative fixes that Steve King and others are already threatening impeachment over.
The message coming from the GOP is on it’s face schizophrenic, and the only thing we see from the GOP on immigration is posturing, a completely garbled message, several miserable failures in a row and a few politicians like Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) grandstanding to send a fundraising letter at the cost of getting anything done.
While the GOP will desperately deny it, behind the scenes, something horrible has happened. Now, Ted Cruz, Steve King and Michelle Bachmann are in control of the House. The GOP has certainly been a bit crazy on immigration in general, but Thursday marked a horrible failure when the GOP could not muster the votes for a laughably-underfunded, deport-them-faster answer to the humanitarian crisis on the border. Instead of passing legislation, it turned into one last chance for the Tea Party to say no without good reason, forcing a humiliated Speaker Boehner to recall the far right-leaning bill for not leaning far enough.
Friday was even worse for branding as the GOP pushed through a vote to attack DACA, a popular program offering relief to undocumented immigrants brought here as children and have been here a long time: that goes right next to Romney’s “self-deportation,” as far as alienating the Latino vote. Polling shows that Obama’s executive relief, meanwhile, will solidify a pro-Democrat sentiment in the Latino community, and motivate them to vote against the GOP.
This executive order should be big: it needs to not only be in proportion to the 11.7 million undocumented immigrants within our country and tens of thousands of children at the border, but also to compensate for a lack of competence in Congress where one small group in one Party can freeze government and derail popular legislation. This had held true for popular legislation like immigration reform, modest gun reform or even just keeping the lights on.
That last example is particularly relevant: Ted Cruz led the house to the government shutdown, much like he is leading them into complete dysfunction now where, no matter how many concessions the President, Democrats or moderate Republicans give, it is never enough; Ted Cruz will run immigration into the ground, using the GOP-controlled House as a liability shield, reaching out to his anti-immigrant base while separating himself from the consequences. At this point, Cruz has done everything to side with the spitters in Murrieta but pledge to deport members of his own immigrant family (such as his own Canadian self).
Both legally and politically, there’s a lot that Obama can do, and not much the GOP can use to fight against it. Afterall, the dysfunction in Congress is the President’s best argument, and Republicans are making it well.
Democrats would not suffer much for going big: while there are Democrats in red or purple states that would be hurt, this is one of those long-term investments in demographics that will pay dividends and soon. Although Obama may alienate a few people in the middle if he does truly try to fix as much of the system as he can as he said in June, the loudest voices who grab the most cameras will be Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann and Ted Cruz: none of them ever pay a price for calling Obama a criminal, terrorist, Kenyan, etc.
To be blunt, I’d bet the only part of the script that hasn’t been written on the fundraising letter and speech ready to go the moment this executive order is announced is what the details of the relief are: expect the same people to follow the same narrative on the same Sunday shows that still, for some reason, give these people air time.
Obama will face the same exact script no matter what he does, and he’s already committed: he may as well suffer the condemnation of a few reasonable Republicans to go big and throw the narrative in the face of a GOP that, quite frankly, has had it coming and will be defenseless against it. There may be initial challenges for some Democrats in 2014, but Democrats will reap ten times that in 2016 when the entire Republican brand, with a nominee very vulnerable to immigration, comes up against the largest numbers of Latino voters we have seen yet.