Reality Is Crashing Down On GOP Leaders' Amnesty Plan
Posted 06:29 PM ET
investors.com
http://www.investors.com/image/ISS-r...AP_345.gif.cms
Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama thinks any Republican plan to grant amnesty to illegal aliens would be "an extraordinary act of self-sabotage."
Anti-amnesty Republicans prepare for an intra-party war, while wiser voices tell House Speaker John Boehner to drop immigration for 2014. Disunity going into this year's elections would be inexcusable.
Thanks to the ObamaCare debacle and the IRS, Benghazi and other scandals, Republicans will almost surely drub the Democrats in this year's midterm elections. They'll hold on to the House of Representatives and maybe even win control of the Senate.
So why spoil it all by fighting a bloody internecine battle on immigration?
"If there's one thing that could blow up GOP chances for a good 2014," warns the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol, not known as an anti-amnesty firebrand, "it would be an explosive debate over immigration in the House."
Covering much the same ground we covered earlier last week, Kristol writes: "The only sure way to avoid such a debate is not to let anything onto the floor in the first place" because "there really is no need to act this year on immigration" anyway.
Otherwise, the result will be "a circular GOP firing squad, instead of a nicely lined-up one shooting together and in unison at ObamaCare and other horrors of big government liberalism."
Democrats know this only too well, which is why President Obama's Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson told the U.S. Conference of Mayors on Friday that the 11 million illegals living here have "earned the right to be citizens."
For the GOP, the only immigration measure that belongs on the agenda this year is securing the border, a national security priority that need not be accompanied by amnesty or anything else.
Politico reported on Thursday of Speaker Boehner's immigration legislative plans that "most top Republican aides contend that all of this is a show, and the fits and starts will simply help prepare the party and its lawmakers for 2015, when dealing with immigration could be easier."
But Boehner recently hired former John McCain immigration specialist Rebecca Tallent as a senior aide. Since then, she has been strategizing with pro-amnesty business groups in preparation for a piecemeal legislative approach later this year. That doesn't look very much like a bluff.
Not surprisingly, Republicans who see big political and economic negatives in amnesty are getting angry and ready to rumble.
One House GOP aide, in an e-mail to Breitbart News, asked, "Do we really want to just give up the midterms like this?" Sen. Jeff Sessions, R.-Ala., writing in Monday's USA Today, warned that such "large permanent increases in the flow of new workers from abroad" — 30 million over a decade, under the Senate-passed bill — "would be an extraordinary act of self-sabotage."
Instead, the GOP should stand "as the one party defending the legitimate interests of American workers."
In an embarrassment to a party that seeks to be an alternative on economic policy, Peter Kirsanow, a member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and National Labor Relations Board appointed by George W. Bush, is asking to attend this week's three-day Republican retreat in Maryland to "educate" GOP lawmakers on how amnesty would hurt low-income American workers.
The liberal National Council of La Raza has already begun its midterm voter mobilization, seeking to register more than a quarter-million Hispanic new voters. The group's obvious expectation is that these new voters will vote overwhelmingly for liberal Democrats.
House Speaker Boehner, Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan and the rest of Republican leaders face a choice: Don't rock the boat and win big in 2014, or attempt to shove the completely avoidable, incendiary immigration issue down the throats of dozens and dozens of angry GOP congressmen — all in the vain hope that amnesty will make Democrats and the media stop calling Republicans racist. It won't.
One thing is sure: Republican leaders will not be forgiven for blowing an election this year that right now looks like a cakewalk for their party.
http://news.investors.com/ibd-editor...aparty-war.htm
