One of the more frustrating aspects of being a conservative Republican is the constant need to look over one’s shoulder for stealth attacks by moderate squish members of the GOP on important issues like health care, gun control, and amnesty for illegal immigrants. Such ideological shivs in the back always arrive under the execrable guise of bipartisanship.
It should be noted upfront that I am not at all opposed to true bipartisanship. Nothing resembling it exists in Washington though. What bipartisanship means now is that the Republicans cave to the Democrats and move leftward on an issue in order to avoid having The New York Times write something mean about them.
Ever since last month’s red trickle election, it seems as if the Republicans are trying to prove to the electorate that they shouldn’t have won big anyway. The latest indication of that comes in the form of a proposed Senate bill on amnesty, which my friend and colleague Matt Vespa wrote about over at Townhall:
I’m not a staunch social conservative, but you can arguably say that the recent repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act didn’t earn any dividends with GOP base voters. So, what do Republicans want to do now in the lame-duck session? Pass a grand bargain on immigration that could lead to millions of illegal aliens being put on a pathway to citizenship.
The deal was hashed out between Sens. Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ). There is no funding to complete the border wall—that would make sense. Still, it will permit some two million recipients of Obama’s unconstitutional Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program to get on the citizenship track. The buried portion of this provision is that once these two million are through the process, they can sponsor extended family members so that two million-figure could be closer to seven million, and I’m being conservative in that estimate.
Matt provides The Washington Post link to more details in his article, but he summarizes the gist of it very well in the above passage.
I cannot begin to ponder what Tillis’s rationale is for signing onto this. He should probably be put into the NFL concussion protocols because a Republican with all of his faculties fully functioning would know that this is a horrible idea. Even Sinema’s sponsorship is disappointing, given that she often acts in the best interests of Arizona even when her fellow Democrats are excoriating her for doing so.
As a native of this great state and someone who lives a mere 60 miles from the Mexican border, I can assure this is not in the best interests of the citizenry here.
The second tier free-for-all in this bill is what is particularly galling, and makes any Republican support for it unforgivable. It’s as if they want to merely crack open the gate for a short while, then fling it all the way open when they hope no one is looking.
Matt brings up something else that I’d like to address:
Do Republicans even have the votes to pass a package like this that will infuriate the conservative base? Was that even part of their strategic thinking when drafting this bill?
This is an ongoing trigger point for me. The Republicans are at times seemingly devoid of the ability to do any strategic thinking. This is especially the case when it comes to messaging — which is why they really failed in November — and optics. Tillis fails at both with this whiff.
The party is still trying to stop the bleeding from the midterms, and a Republican senator who has been in office for almost eight years thinks it’s a good idea to give an assist to a Barack Obama program that is loathed by all conservatives and even most moderate members of the GOP.
Rephrasing: Tillis didn’t think at all on this one. A congressional rookie Republican would know that buddying up to the Dems on amnesty is a major party foul.
Call me cranky, but I’d prefer to not have to deal with the very real negative consequences of a porous border simply because Kyrsten Sinema batted her eyes at a Republican from North Carolina and made him and his squish buddies think that they might get to dance with her at homecoming.
The death of this great Republic is being greatly hastened by congressional Republicans who have a pathetic and almost pathological need to be liked.
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