Mitch McConnell, obstructionist extraordinaire, says no immigration reform in 2014

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The man running for re-election this year -- and that's important to keep in mind here (he's got a Tea Party to appease, after all) -- is once more playing the obstructionist card:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Tuesday said immigration reform poses an "irresolvable conflict" between the two chambers and predicted that it won't be completed in 2014.

"I think we have a sort of irresolvable conflict here," he told reporters at his weekly press conference. "The Senate insists on comprehensive [reform], the House says it won't go to conference with the Senate on comprehensive, and wants to look at step-by-step [reform]. I don't see how you get to an outcome this year with the two bodies in such different places."

The Republican leader, who is facing re-election this year, declined to take a position on the House GOP's broad blueprint for reform that was released by leadership last week. It calls for legal status (but not necessarily with the promise of citizenship) for people living in the country illegally.

Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said Tuesday that House Republican leaders are still discussing the issue with members and haven't yet decided on how to proceed when it comes to advancing immigration legislation.

He may well be right. Maybe there won't be immigration reform in 2014. Maybe the differences between the House and Senate, between the White House and Congress, between Democrats and Republicans, are just too great.

But McConnell has pursued an agenda of all-out obstructionism since the very start of the Obama presidency, refusing to give the president anything that might be considered a win for him, and he now seems to be refusing even to try to bridge the differences on immigration reform, even though there do appear to be areas of possible overlap between the two sides.

House Republicans, an impotent leadership barely managing an extremist caucus, are bad enough. There's really no dealing with them at all on most things, and of course they continue to push their crazy agenda and various conspiracy theories. But it's hardly much better in the Senate, where even a somewhat more moderate Republican caucus has basically given up on any effort to help Democrats, including the president, govern the country, so entrenched has their obstructionism become.

McConnell is basically leading a disloyal opposition that puts party well before country. He's as much a face of today's Republican Party as any of the hardcore Tea Party extremists who dominate its far-right ideological agenda.

Behind the Ad: AFL-CIO weighs in on immigration reform

By Richard K. Barry

Who: AFL-CIO

Where: Atlanta; Bakersfield; Denver: Orlando (in Spanish) and Metropolitan Washington, D.C. (in English)

What's going on: The AFL-CIO is launching a bilingual ad campaign to encourage Republicans to pass immigration reform and to draw attention to hostile statements some Republicans have made about Latino immigrants.

From the AFL-CIO Now website:

The Senate passed a bipartisan immigration reform bill in June, and last month a House bill patterned on the bipartisan Senate measure was introduced. But House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and other Republican leaders have indicated they will not allow a vote on a comprehensive immigration reform bill with a road map to citizenship.

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If this doesn't persuade you we need immigration reform STAT, nothing will

By Carl

We hear an awful lot – too much, in my book – about the shiftless, lazy welfare-grubbing, taxpayer mooching undocumented workers flooding our nation, and overwhelming our social services.

And then there’s this guy, who I believe is far more representative of the average immigrant who comes to this nation:

They are busboys, dishwashers, construction workers. They are on their feet at enervating jobs all day and often all night. Many do not have health insurance. Most find it difficult to afford the increasingly hefty fees New York Road Runners charges for its races, especially the marathon, which now costs at least $227. 

For [Julio] Sauce, that is half a week’s paycheck.

Sauce finishes first in his age group, 40-49, regularly, despite working ten hours a day as a cook. Recently, he worked from 2:30PM to 12:30AM on a Saturday evening, and grabbed three hours’s sleep before winning a half-marathon in Central Park, a good hour’s ride from his home on Coney Island. Chew on that for a bit: he works 60 and 70 hour weeks (we presume he’s not bound by union regulations) and still manages to find time to train to win races in one of the most athletic and competitive cities on the planet. 

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Immigration reform still unlikely

By Frank Moraes 

(Ed. note: Well, good for the Senate, or at least for the Democratic majority along with a handful of Republicans. But now it goes to the House, where crazy-ass Republican extremism prevails, where the Republican leadership is divided, with Speaker Boehner barely clinging to power, and where it will likely die. Maybe there's enough establishment Republican support to give Boehner cover, and so maybe the bill can pass with Democratic votes and a few Republicans on board, but it's awfully hard to move anything forward when the majority party is insane, so much so that it won't even support a flawed, Republican-oriented bill that Ronald Reagan would have backed and that includes a pile of throw-ins for conservatives. -- MJWS)

I'm sure you've heard that the Senate managed to pass their little immigration reform bill with a vote of 68-32. Let's think about that for a second. That means that 32 of the 46 Republican senators voted against the bill: 70%. This is what passes for a huge bipartisan compromise. And notice: the bill itself is extremely conservative. Bernie Sanders voted for it, but with a great many misgivings. Yet despite giving in on all kinds of issues, the Democrats only managed to get 14 Republicans to vote for it. And these were senators: the more moderate of the congressional Republicans.

Now it moves to the House where many of our liberal friends in the pundit world are cautiously optimistic. Somehow, they think that winning 30% Republican support in the Senate will put pressure on the House to pass the bill. Maybe! Stranger things have happened. But Dylan Matthews wrote an article this afternoon that made me think it is highly unlikely, "Immigration Reform Has Passed the Senate. Here's How it Passes the House." In the article, he provided three ways that the immigration reform might make its way through the House.

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Nothing new on immigration

By Frank Moraes 

Jonathan Chait wrote yesterday morning that immigration reform is different this time. He focused on the conservative push back against the Heritage Foundation paper than said that immigration reform would cost us a trillion dollars and cause us all to die of syphilis next year. As he correctly noted, this paper is actually not any worse than other papers conservatives accepted like Paul Ryan's budget causing unemployment to drop to 3% and that the Bush tax cuts would pay for themselves.

All of this is true, and yet I don't think that immigration reform is really different this time. What you have to understand is that the modern Republican Party doesn't really make compromises. Steve Benen wrote a post the other day at Maddow Blog about Eric Cantor's new Republican rebranding campaign. The great new idea is to appeal to women with a media blitz. And what are they going to tell women? Only that they should support the "Working Families Flexibility Act." That is a euphemism, of course. It should be called the "Employer Flexibility to Screw Employees Act." It is an idea that the Republican Party has been pushing for decades. My point is that even when Republicans reach out to a group of people, they aren't willing to do anything; it's just, "You should love us just the way we are because we ain't changing a thing."

The same thing is going on in the immigration bill. There has always been a large part of the Republican elite who want immigration reform. Let's face it: it's good for business. In the long term, it is good for everyone. In the short term, it is good for Walmart. The business interests who will lose out on more legal workers are small and weak. So the Republican leadership wants this and always has. What's different this time is that they lost last time. Before, they thought with a Republican president, they would be able to get their law. Now they know they have to fight for it.

And look at how typical the conservative response to the Heritage paper was. Those who are against immigration reform embraced it; those who are for immigration reform denounced it. And yes, those denouncing it did it with facts. But conservatives are fine with facts when they are helpful. But facts have no relationship to truth for them. They are just rhetorical devices. All we are seeing now is an argument between two sides that has long existed in the Republican Party. There's nothing new here.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

Defeat is victory: Rubio's immigration reform plan

By Mustang Bobby 

Greg Sargent had a piece up the other day about Sen. Marco Rubio's plan to frame the immigration reform debate in purely win/lose-for-the-GOP terms:

So how can Republicans who want immigration reform get conservatives to accept it, given that Obama also wants it?

Republicans pushing for reform have come up with a strategic answer to that question, one that isn't really acknowledged openly. They are subtly making the case to their base that a defeat for immigration reform is actually a hidden victory for Obama, and that passing the Senate compromise is actually worse for the President than the alternative, i.e. doing nothing.

In other words, putting the immigration bill in terms that the Republicans can understand — what can we do today to destroy Barack Obama? — they make it an easy proposition. So pass the Gang of Eight proposal that the president backs and we've actually made things worse for him. That's all that matters anyway.

It's like the country is being run by eighth-graders.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Obamacare is bad for Republicans

By Frank Moraes 

Yesterday morning, I was reading Jonathan Chait about "The Obamacare Opposite-of-a-Train-Wreck Scenario." He argued that even though next year's implementation of Obamacare will likely have problems, these will be trumped by the fact that many millions of people will finally get health insurance. For a man who is too often mired in the middle, he is very blunt, "To the extent that the implementation brouhaha comes into any focus, it will shine a light on those people's struggle to get needed help from the government. Republicans aren't trying to get those people better help. They're trying to screw them."

As usual, I got to thinking about this. I remembered all of the brouhaha from conservatives about immigration reform. "We will be creating 11 million citizens who will all vote Democratic!" (Well, I guess they would say, "Democrat.") I understand the concern and I've even argued that Republicans should not be for immigration reform, given that they are unwilling to do anything else to court the immigrant vote. Maybe the Republicans are doing the same kind of calculation with Obamacare.

What am I thinking? We know that poor people don't live as long as rich people. Part of that has to be due to the lack of good health care throughout their lives. By providing health insurance to everyone, the poor will live longer. The poor are overwhelmingly liberal. Therefore, Obamacare will make more liberals!

I know this sounds fanciful. And in truth, it is possible that the Republicans have not thought of this. There are, after all, a lot of reasons they hate Obamacare. The most fundamental one is that they think that the poor are morally inferior and they don't believe in helping them at all. But Obamacare is clearly a good political strategy for the Democrats and poison for the Republicans.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

My bipartisan immigration plan

By Frank Moraes 

I have an immigration plan that should gain wide bipartisan support in Congress. This is because it will appeal to Republicans. Also: Democrats will go along with anything. There are three pillars of my plan: border security, guest workers, and path to citizenship.

First, border security. The Canadian border is fine the way it is, because they're white like us. But we really need to make the border with Mexico secure. May I suggest: the Berlin Wall. Let's set up two walls with armed guards every 20 feet on top of the north wall. Anyone who gets over the south wall will be shot. This would require a total of a bit more than 1.5 million guards at a total cost of $30 billion per year, if we pay them minimum wage and give them no benefits. But that is a small price to pay for securing our borders.

Second, guest worker program. American workers are famously demanding. What we need is a program that will allow any employers to hire guest workers if they can't find American workers at a price they like. But I know what you're thinking, "With the ridiculously high $7.25 federal minimum wage, won't the guest workers still break the backs of the American businessman?" No, because we will not only eliminate the federal minimum wage, we will make it illegal for states to set a minimum wage. With these pro-growth policies, the US economy will be as strong as Bangladesh.

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Jeb Bush figures looking like a fool is preferable to taking a firm position on immigration

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Jeb Bush isn't so much flip-flopping over immigration as he is playing Twister with himself, contorting himself into sorts of different positions to avoid, you know, actually having to take a position:

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) told MSNBC's Morning Joe on Tuesday that he would support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants "if you can craft that in law where you can have a path to citizenship where there isn't an incentive for people to come illegally" -- a position that puts him at odds with his new book, out [yesterday] from Simon & Schuster.

In Immigration Wars, co-authored with immigration lawyer Clint Bolick, Bush agues that denying a path to citizenship for the 11 million unauthorized immigrations is "absolutely vital to the integrity of our immigration system that actions have consequences." Those who enter the country illegally, Bush contends, should "start the process to earn permanent legal residency" after pleading guilty to breaking the law and paying "applicable fines or perform community service." But they should not have access to "the cherished fruits of citizenship."

So he used to be a relatively reasonable voice for immigration reform in the Republican Party, backing what to most Republicans, even before the party's lurch to the far right, were liberal policies, and then he wrote this book taking a harder line, and then the same day the book comes out he says no, no, no, he's okay with a path to citizenship, if this, if that, saying he's not smart enough to figure it out, but really he's still on the fence, trying to walk that fine line between the old-school party establishment on one side and the extremist grassroots base and movement conservatism on the other.

And he's doing it with an eye on 2016, clearly, playing both sides, trying to seem reasonable while also pandering to the party's power bases, and otherwise looking like a shameless fool.

Remember when Jeb Bush was a sensible, relatively moderate establishment Republican?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

In what is perhaps a sign of the Republicans' times, Jeb Bush has flip-flopped on one of his signature issues, immigration, arguing now that undocumented immigrants should not be granted a pathway to citizenship:

Bush, a Spanish-speaker who's wife is Mexican-born, has long-been viewed as one of the more liberal-minded GOP leaders when in comes to immigration policy, warning Republicans for years that they oppose significant reform at their own political peril.

But in a Monday interview with NBC's "Today," Bush advocated for a system in which the millions of immigrants living in the country illegally be given the option of attaining permanent residency, but not eventual citizenship.

It's a stunning reversal, in a way, but not really. He still isn't a right-wing hardliner on immigration, and he also said that he's "optimistic that there could be a consensus about going forward on immigration," but he's also eyeing 2016 and no doubt trying to straddle the line between the somewhat moderate (but still rabidly conservative) establishment on one side of the party and the grassroots, Tea Party radical right on the other, the party mainstream shifting from the former to the latter in recent years.

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All in the context

By Mustang Bobby

This tells you everything you need to know about the Republicans: 

According to a new Washington Post poll, 70 percent of Americans support a path to citizenship in comprehensive immigration reform, including 60 percent of Republicans. Those results are in line with a slew of polls showing that earned citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants is a popular policy.

But a funny thing happened when Republicans were asked an identical question about citizenship with Obama's name attached. Republicans hated the idea: Support dropped from 60 percent to just 39 percent.

If President Obama came out with a right-wing agenda, the GOP would go completely leftie.

Hmm...

Immigration reform fracturing

By Frank Moraes 

As we wrote yesterday, "Don't Get Excited About Immigration Reform." Well, as Greg Sargent reported, "Confusion Envelops Senate Immigration Plan." Basically, the eight senators can't quite agree about what exactly they mean by the Southwestern border commission. The Democrats claim that this will just be an advisory commission and that it won't have veto power about whether the federal government can move forward with the rest of the plan.

But Marco Rubio says he wouldn't support a plan that doesn't require the approval of the border commission. Rubio is in a difficult position. He wants to appeal to Latinos but he doesn't want to offend the Tea Party angry-crazy coalition that just loves him. You might think he is just another senator, but right now, he is the Republican Party's best chance at the White House in 2016. The other Republicans will not go along if he doesn't.

The whole "secure the boarder" clause in the Senate "framework" is a typical delay tactic. We see this tactic used a lot in gun law reform. Senator X would love to support a ban on high capacity magazines, but there is $100 in the bill for gun safety awareness and Senator X really can't accept more than $50. (If the bill is changed to have only $50 for gun safety awareness, Senator X will find something else in the bill that "unfortunately" stops him from supporting it.) In this particular case, the Republican senators have come up with a brilliant idea: they pass immigration reform without doing any actual immigration reform.

It will be interesting to watch this go forward. Regardless, I remain unconvinced that anything real will happen. This is yet more of the Republicans pretending to reach out to (in this case) Latinos while signaling to the angry-crazy coalition that they have nothing to fear.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

Craziest Republican of the Day: Lou Barletta

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I'm not sure, though. Is this just craziness in the sense of being out of one's mind, or it is just another example of the sort of bigotry and ideological extremism one finds all over the Republican Party these days, particularly within the party's right-wing base?

Maybe both, but more the latter than the former, I would say.

In response to the bipartisan immigration reform plan currently being worked out on Capitol Hill, with the president prepared to present his own package, Pennsylvania Rep. Lou Barletta didn't hold back in explaining just what he thinks of these undesirables:

"It's amnesty that America can't afford," Barletta said Monday. "We have to stop people from coming in illegally. This will be a green light for anyone who wants to come to America illegally and then be granted citizenship one day." [...]

"I hope politics is not at the root of why we're rushing to pass a bill. Anyone who believes that they're going to win over the Latino vote is grossly mistaken," Barletta said. "The majority that are here illegally are low-skilled or may not even have a high school diploma. The Republican Party is not going to compete over who can give more social programs out. They will become Democrats because of the social programs they'll depend on."

And there you have it, a glimpse into the ugliness of the Republican mind: These Latinos shouldn't be granted a path to citizenship (even a tough one, which is what a deal would likely include) because they're lazy, stupid bloodsuckers who will vote Democrat because, of course, the Democratic Party is the party of lazy, stupid bloodsuckers also known as the 47%.

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Polishing a turd

By Mustang Bobby

(Ed. note: For more on the Republican "fix" for itself, see Frank's post from yesterday, "Occasionally principled thoughtless assholes." See also our post on immigration and how moving to the left slightly is part of the fix, "Don't get excited about immigration reform." -- MJWS)

The GOP doesn't see anything wrong with their party that a quick buff and shine won't fix:

"It's not the platform of the party that's the issue," RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said Friday after being easily reelected to a second, two-year term. "In many cases, it's how we communicate about it. It is a couple dumb things that people have said."

A slide presented during a closed-press strategy session said that Mitt Romney might be president if he had won fewer than 400,000 more votes in key swing states.

"We don't need a new pair of shoes; we just need to shine our shoes," said West Virginia national committeewoman Melody Potter.

So as far as they're concerned, it's not what you say but how you say it. So they can still be anti-women, anti-gay, anti-immigrant, pro-pollution, pro-mythology and anti-science; they just need to market it better.

Yeah, that's the ticket. 

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Occasionally principled thoughtless assholes

By Frank Moraes 

This past weekend Republicans had yet another get together where they planned to figure out how to stop being a minority party without, you know, actually changing the party in any meaningful way. And I think it is important to remember that some of their great ideas are really not going to work. Recently, I've been hearing this one, "Never discuss rape." A better idea would be, "Pretend that you are for abortion exceptions." As I've noted, this is the real hateful position. But it continues to be the one that comes off the least repellent. It just is the case that being an abortion absolutist is going to get the Republicans into trouble.

And this brings me to my general advice for Republicans, "It's the policies, stupid." Last week, Bobby Jindal said that the Republicans had to stop being the stupid party. But any party that takes advice about how not to be stupid from a creationist who has done exorcisms is in deep trouble. And it isn't just that the Republicans are the party of stupid. They are also the party of hateful. Everywhere they seem committed to have no principle to being anything but thoughtless assholes. Except on abortion where their principled stands makes them thoughtless assholes.

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Don't get excited about immigration reform

By Michael J.W. Stickings and Frank Moraes

MJWS:

Like Frank, I'm interested to see how this will go. And, obviously, there's still a long way to go to get anything meaningful done. But there's a political calculation at work for Republicans here that may very well lead to meaningful bipartisan reform.

As Jon Chait notes, the Republican strategy coming out of the election is to move left on immigration and right on everything else -- or to solidify their extremist right-wing positions. (It's a faulty strategy based on a faulty reading of the election -- that the problem was the Hispanic vote, and all Republicans need to do now is agree to moderate immigration reform and change some of their rhetoric generally, with no changes whatsoever to their positions on other issues (e.g., remain anti-tax absolutists) -- but it's got broad support across the party establishment, including 2016 frontrunners Ryan and Rubio.

And so both House and Senate Republicans are working on bipartisan reform. Chait again: "It's pretty amazing how fast this has happened. Republican leaders recognized an electoral weakness, figured it was on an issue they didn't want to fight on anyway, and are cauterizing the wound as fast as they can."

Again, it's still very early. There's a framework but nothing else, and we'll have to see if Republicans hold together on this one and if they're actually willing to make concessions to get a deal done that, in the end, would be seen as a major victory for the president. But it's promising that we're at this point, and it's all because Republicans, however delusional still, have been scared shitless by the demographic changes that, over time, will continue to isolate them out of power.

It's a fortuitous combination of political opportunism and the urgent need for reform, and Democrats should do everything they can to take advantage of the situation.

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Beware Mitt Romney and friends on immigration reform

By Richard K. Barry

As evidence of the extent to which Republicans will line up behind Mitt Romney despite their concerns about his conservative bona fides, key GOP leaders are choosing their words carefully about Romney's plan to "grant qualified illegal immigrants legal status and even U.S. citizenship," even offering words of support.

Still, their "support" for Romney's immigration plan is more of a holding pattern than actual support. And if communities most interested in immigration reform listen closely to what many GOP opinion leaders are saying, they shouldn't be overly optimistic about what a President Romney would do on the issue. In fact, they are likely to find it will be one more lie from the man who aspires to be America's Prevaricator-in-Chief.

According to the The Hill:

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee who has long been critical of "amnesty" proposals like the DREAM act, praised Romney's plan this week, saying it was "right to recognize that immigration reform needs to be geared towards bolstering our economy and job creation."

And:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), another DREAM act opponent, also praised Romney's plan without mentioning "amnesty" provisions. "I applaud Governor Romney's commitment to working to improve our broken immigration system," he said. "American has been, and remains, a welcoming country for legal immigratin. But the President's last-minute election year ploy can't erase the fact that he has failed to lead.

And this:

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), among Congress’s most vocal opponents of illegal immigrant rights, was also notably uncritical of Romney’s plan, telling The Wall Street Journal that he’s happy to see Romney advocating for tougher enforcement policies at the border. While King said he has questions about some parts of the plan, according to the Journal, he also expressed confidence that Romney is “committed to the rule of law." 

The Hill notes that other GOP hardliners on immigration didn't return phone calls, which may suggest they are trying to decide how to support Romney's plan without supporting Romney's plan.

Yes, everyone is playing the game. Romney is saying what he thinks he needs to say on immigration. GOP opinion leaders are supporting him without necessarily supporting the key piece in the reform, i.e., amnesty, probably believing they can make it all go away after the election should their guy win. And since Mitt Romney clearly has no core beliefs other than whatever it take to win elections, they are probably right.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)