Bobo Gets Lucky On The Dice

Visually-impaired squirrel named David Brooks, meet the tasty acorn of immigrationyou stumbled across by complete accident.

It’s beginning to look as though we’re not going to get an immigration reform law this year. House Republicans are moving in a direction that will probably be unacceptable to the Senate majority and the White House. Conservative commentators like my friends Bill Kristol and Rich Lowry are arguing that the status quo is better than the comprehensive approach passed by the Senate. The whole effort is in peril.

This could be a tragedy for the country and political suicide for Republicans, especially because the conservative arguments against the comprehensive approach are not compelling.  

Every now and again, David Brooks is correct about something.  That's what makes the other 97% of the time so maddening, because it means his standard obliviousness is a conscious choice.  And again, you long-time lurkers know I've been telling anyone who cared to listen that the House GOP was going to trash immigration reform, just like seven years ago.

The first conservative complaint is that, as Kristol and Lowry put it, “the enforcement provisions are riddled with exceptions, loopholes and waivers.” If Obama can waive the parts of Obamacare he finds inconvenient, why won’t he end up waiving a requirement for the use of E-Verify. 

There’s some truth to this critique, and maybe the House should pass a version of the Senate bill that has fewer waivers and loopholes. But, at some point, this argument just becomes an excuse to oppose every piece of legislation, ever. All legislation allows the executive branch to have some discretion. It’s always possible to imagine ways in which a law may be distorted in violation of its intent. But if you are going to use that logic to oppose something, you are going to end up opposing tax reform, welfare reform, the Civil Rights Act and everything else. 

And surprise, that's exactly what they are doing and why.   Republicans are opposing legislating and governance itself and figure whatever happens, they can hang it all on Obama.

Whether this bill passes or not, this country is heading toward a multiethnic future. Republicans can either shape that future in a conservative direction or, as I’ve tried to argue, they can become the receding roar of a white America that is never coming back. 

That’s what’s at stake. 

They'll never do it.  Years from now when we look back on the ruins of the Obama-era GOP and their failure on immigration reform as where they broke down for good.