Well, it would seem that while Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, on Tuesday, was telling reporters that immigration is just wasn’t going to be in the cards this year, Speaker John ‘Boner’ Boehner seems to have other ideas about it, demonstrating that he isn't quite ready to let the dream die. And this despite the fact that the editors from National Review, Weekly Standard, and numerous other top conservative pundits have urged the Ohio Republican to just let it go for now. But ever since the GOP retreat last week, Boehner has just kept marching along to the beat of his own immigration drummer.
And it all just kinda makes me wonder just whose side it is that old ‘Boner’ is really on. Because it was at a press conference Tuesday morning, in response to a question from Breitbart News, that Boehner said, "Clearly, the draft principles we outlined, members seemed to be supportive of them," adding, "no decisions have been made" on whether to move forward. But then we also had one GOP member, identified as being one ‘in the know’, who said, "I wouldn't be surprised" if immigration legislation came to the House floor as early as this spring. Come on people, this is all just so simple and is being made far too complicated.
So in what I assume was an effort to build his case for moving forward, Boner's office has released several documents touting these GOP ‘principles’, some of which include some almost cartoonish defenses of a proposal. These so-called "principles" would "eliminate the ability for any administration to arbitrarily decide which laws to enforce," a Q&A posted on Boner's website says. Despite his efforts, immigration is still likely to be a tough slog, no matter what ‘Boner’ may want. The push back from conservatives has caused significant tremors of doubt within ‘Boner's’ leadership team.
GOP Whip Kevin McCarthy, who has made it clear that, on a personal level, he strongly supports moving forward on the issue, is feeling some heat back home. The California Republican represents a highly conservative district where there’s a lot of anti-amnesty sentiment. And then we have Majority Leader Eric Cantor who has put major effort into a GOP version of the DREAM Act, which grants amnesty to the children of illegal immigrants. But he is also keeping an eye to his right in the event ‘Boner’ retires at the end of this Congress, leaving the seat open for Cantor to claim.
And then, or course, we have yet another amnesty favoring RINO in Paul Ryan, who confirmed on Tuesday that he has met ‘secretly’ with top Democrat Chuckie Schumer on immigration but, or course, dismissed the importance of the session, which he claimed occurred last year. After first raising some serious doubts about whether immigration could come to the floor this year in a Sunday television interview, Ryan was far more optimistic in his remarks to reporters Tuesday. "It wasn't really bad," Ryan said about the immigration showdown at the GOP retreat held in Cambridge, MD. "The substance of our document people really appreciated. It's just, like I said, the lawlessness of the White House makes us lose confidence that the President will enforce the laws," Ryan said.
What took place in the meeting has emerged as a point of debate among Republicans. GOP sources who participated in the meeting, both those who support moving on the issue and those who don't, said in the hours afterwards that about 80 percent of the lawmakers who spoke were against bringing a bill forward this year. Rep. Jeff Denham, from California and is someone who favors moving forward, said, "I would say that's ridiculous." The issue is complicated because some of the lawmakers who spoke in favor of the substance of the principles were not in favor of moving forward on legislation.
Still, conservative heavyweights like Reps. Tom Price and Jeb Hensarling came out strongly against moving forward, and the result of the meeting seemed to change Ryan's tone in the days afterward. One conservative lawmaker who said the meeting was deeply lopsided against bringing forward legislation in 2014 warned ‘Boner’, saying, "I think he is out for a walk with nobody tagging along." said Rep. Tom Cotton, a freshman member running for Senate in Arkansas said, "At this point I don't anticipate legislation will come to the floor." All I got to say is, from his lips to God’s ears.
‘Gang of Eight’ member Lindsey Graham, who just happens to be up for re-election this fall, said, "80 percent of Americans, if not 90, want to secure the border. So, lets say that for some reason the Obama administration backed away from what Congress mandated – fellow Democrats would get killed." He went on to say, "He's not running again, other people are. This scenario that he could just unilaterally back away from border enforcement and politically that not be damning to the Democratic party… the reason I know that we could move forward with securing the border is the Democratic party would get killed if they didn't."
Marco Rubio, who many, like myself, view as having stabbed his supporters in the back by joining up with the ‘Gang of Eight’, was a bit more pessimistic. Asked if the House should move forward in 2014, Rubio said, "That's not my role to give them advice on. They're working on what is a very difficult issue. The resistance they're running into is a lack of confidence that this president and the federal government will enforce the security measures no matter what they're written as." To me it seems as such an obvious no-brainer that we, the Republican Party, should make no moves on immigration until AFTER the next election.
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