Shootout On the Potomac Looms Over Immigration Amnesty
By Wesley Pruden
WashingtonTimes.com
This is the week
Washington has been waiting for.
Barack Obama is expected to send up his
executive amnesty for 5 million illegal aliens and
double-dog dare the Republicans to do anything about
it.
The Republicans have a similar itch, eager to take
on the president. The game is afoot, and the
Republicans understand it’s a shabby attempt to use
the Hispanics to ensure the Democrats a permanent
majority in Congress, where no one will have to
speak English. Free stuff will be the lingua franca.
The nice way to say this is to say, as the
president himself does, that immigration reform will
be the proud legacy of a compassionate president. He
opened the spigot of a steady stream of the tired,
the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe
free. Emma Lazarus could have written a poem about
it.
Mitch McConnell, the leader of the Republicans in
the U.S. Senate, says executive amnesty — issued in
violation of ample precedent if not the law — will
be “waving a red flag in front of a bull.” John A.
Boehner, the speaker of the House, says
Mr. Obama will “burn himself” if he does it. The
Washington Post concedes that such amnesty would be
“giving the middle finger” to the incoming
Republican majorities (and to the voters who sent
them to
Washington).
“But
Obama doesn’t care,” says a congressional
Democrat who doesn’t relish being in the minority
for years to come. “McConnell’s red flag, middle
finger, whatever, is not just a provocation to the
new Republican majority, but to the public. I think
the president expects that bull to act like a cow,
but this time it might not be so docile.”
Some Democrats, forever in search of the illusive
silver lining, are counting on a groundswell of
anger against the Republicans when they do what they
promised to do. Against all the evidence, they think
the public actually loves
Mr. Obama and his schemes and will soon enough
be looking for opportunities to show repentance for
Nov. 4.
The president delayed his executive amnesty to
help several embattled Democratic senators — Mark L.
Pryor in Arkansas, Mary L. Landrieu in Louisiana,
Kay R. Hagan in North Carolina, Mark Udall in
Colorado and Mark Begich in Alaska — and they lost,
or are about to lose, anyway.
Mr. Obama is said to be pouting, because none of
the Democratic incumbents wanted to be seen in
public with him, so great was the partisan stench.
They wouldn’t fall on their swords for him, so why
should he care?
The new congressional Republicans are not the docile
cud-chewers of yesteryear, eager to make nice in the
clutch and preserve a route of retreat. They’re not
likely to take the advice of the consultants hired
two years ago to tell the party how to more
profitably behave.
“We are not a policy committee,” the wiseheads
concluded, “but among the steps Republicans take in
the Hispanic community and beyond, we must embrace
and champion comprehensive immigration reform. If we
do not, our party’s appeal will continue to shrink
to its core constituencies only. We also believe
that comprehensive immigration reform is consistent
with Republican economic policies that promote job
growth and opportunity for all.” (You can actually
get paid in
Washington for writing and saying stuff like
this.)
This was advice fortunately not taken, and the party
picked up a dozen seats in the House and won back
the Senate, and despite aggressive Republican
pushback against
Mr. Obama’s immigration “reform,” the exit polls
on Nov. 4 showed that Republicans won 38 percent of
the Hispanic vote, still a minority but up sharply
from the 29 percent won by Mitt Romney two years
ago.
Sometimes little straws in the wind measure true
velocity. Two years ago, the Oregon legislature, in
strong bipartisan numbers, enacted a law making
illegals eligible for driver’s licenses, citizen or
not. This year a group of dissenters managed to put
a repeal referendum on the ballot. The repealers
were outspent by a margin of 10 to 1, but repeal
won, 66 to 34 percent, a galvanic landslide by
anybody’s measure. Nobody was trying to be mean to
prospective legal immigrants; exit polling on
Election Day showed that most conservative voters
actually want to find a way for the illegals to
stay.
Voters are befuddled, says Mark Krikorian, director
of the Center for Immigration Studies, and often
support for immigration reform is overstated. Nobody
wants to be called Scrooge. “Whenever the public
gets a clear-cut, black and white issue for tougher
controls, even in Oregon, [voters] support them. It
really highlights how this is not a Republican vs.
liberal issue, like taxes and abortion, but an
up-or-down issue of the elites vs. the public.”
Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The
Washington Times.