Obama DREAMs of Amnesty

Republicans on Capitol Hill reportedly don’t trust President Obama, and with good reason. He’s nearly always up to no good, promising a “change in tone” while in reality, he’s pursuing the same old divisive, destructive policies.

According to Politico, President Obama wants the defeated Democrat majority to pass the DREAM Act on its way out as a “down payment” on “comprehensive immigration reform,” which in his world amounts to amnesty for illegals:

President Barack Obama told Democratic members of Congress Tuesday he wants the DREAM Act passed in the lame duck session as a “down payment” on substantial immigration reform, according to members at the meeting.

And, he said, he’d call resistant senators to get them on board.

The president told Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), Reps. Nydia Velasquez (D-N.Y.) and Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) in a meeting at the White House that he would call members holding out on approving the DREAM Act, which provides a path to citizenship for young illegal immigrants who complete two years of college or military service.

Among other things, the DREAM Act would put illegal aliens ahead of U.S. citizens and legal residents for benefits like in-state college tuition. It would put an estimated 2 million illegal aliens on the path to legalization. It’s unfair and expensive, neither of which seem to matter to Obama and folks like Harry Reid. Politics trumps common sense and the rule of law.

In ordinary times, it would be fitting at this point to say that someone needs to tell President “I Won” that he lost and therefore has no clout to get anyone to do anything. But these aren’t ordinary times and this president isn’t a triangulating self-preservationist. This president is a hard-edged ideologue and he knows exactly what he’s doing.

This gambit, which he’s presenting to three far-left Hispanic ideologue Democrats, is a move to ratchet up racial polarization. He’s in his community organizer/community polarizer mode here, dipping back into the strategies that he used as ACORN’s man in league with Chicago UNO to try to stir up heated rhetoric and action among his political opposites. On this issue, his political opposites amount to most of the country, but that’s fine.  The more enemies, which remember is his preferred word delivered to Spanish-speaking audiences on Univision Radio, the better — a few are bound to say something that he can use, or twist into something he can use, to present the pro-law enforcement case as based on race. Polarization ensues, or so he hopes. In the wake of GOP gains among minorities, and minority gains among the GOP, in the midterms, this is a rational — and malignant — strategy.

He’s setting himself and his party up for some temporary pain to make what he hopes will be long-term gain.  The pain: bad headlines, widespread negative public reaction.  The gain: cementing more of the Latino vote to himself as leader and to the Democrats as a party.  He is attempting to play the Latino vote as the Democrats have played the black vote for decades now.

DREAM Act opponents need to keep a cool head and keep the rhetoric focused on why folks born outside the U.S. and who are here illegally should ever get any benefit that puts them ahead of anyone who is legally here. Doing so via the DREAM or any other act is not fair to those who follow the laws of the land. Why should some Frenchman whose family snuck into the U.S. or overstayed their visas immediately get benefits that an Oklahoman has to wait a year to get if she attends university ten miles from her home over in Arkansas?  Make Obama’s Democrats answer that.

Obama’s strategy is cynical and bound to create yet more divisive politics, sure, but it’s exactly the kind of thing a community polarizer would do and has done.  All that talk of “changing the tone” even after the midterms is just smoke and mirrors.  The project of “fundamental transformation” sustained some damage on Nov 2, but is still underway.