Is Darrell Issa Insane?

Politico reports that Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) will introduce an immigration bill.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is planning to release legislation next week that would provide legal status for six years to undocumented immigrants in the United States, he said in an interview Wednesday.

Issa, an influential Republican who leads the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, described the legislation as a “come-from-the-shadows” effort that would allow the government to do a full accounting of those who are in the U.S. illegally. Immigrants in this new status would be able to travel to their native country while on this temporary visa, he said.

And so forth.

Barack Obama desperately wants to pivot to immigration now, to distract the nation from his massive Obamacare disaster and put Republicans who are winning that issue back on the defensive. He also wants to highlight an issue which divides Republicans and gives the so-called mainstream media — who are uniformly in favor of “comprehensive immigration reform” — a club to beat Republicans with. In fact, during the House hearings on Obamacare’s rollout today, President Obama delivered remarks at the White House precisely to create that distraction. It was surreal — here was the president pushing some new “reform” while his previous “reform” is an epic failure and disaster. On a basic level, why should anyone trust him to “reform” anything when he isn’t even bothering to correct his last “reform.” Obama is so uninterested in governing that he doesn’t even understand that the only way he could have looked more foolish today was if he had come out at the White House wearing a giant red wig, and huge red nose and huge floppy shoes.

But here comes Darrell Issa to help Obama doff the clown suit.

Helping Obama pivot to immigration right now makes no sense, purely from a tactics perspective. Why play into Obama’s plans and timing? Why press ahead with an issue on which Republicans are divided, when an issue that unites them is there for the winning?