If it’s true that the House of Representatives will not authorize any pathway to citizenship in their immigration reform bill, it will create an interesting scenario. I am assuming that the Senate has the votes to create a pathway, and I’m assuming that they will pass a bill. The House can try to meld their bill with the Senate bill in conference, but the pathway issue will have to be resolved one way or the other. If it’s not, the reform effort will die in conference.
Maybe that is where this is all heading, but that seems like an unsatisfactory result for everyone involved. I still see it as a smarter bet for Boehner to orchestrate a failure to pass any bill out of the House and then to allow a vote on the Senate version with limited opportunities for amendments. The alternative, if he does want a bill to pass, would be to cave on a pathway in conference, and then pass it with a majority of Democratic votes. That seems a harder sell to his base and his caucus if they haven’t tried and failed to pass their own version.
To fail either to pass the bill or to strip out any path to citizenship dooms the Republican Party electorally. To pass it with Democrats and a handful of Republicans dooms Boehner’s Speakership and maybe that handful of Republicans in 2014. A win-win for Democratic political calculus.
Last time I polled conservative Republicans (unscientifically by asking those that I know), all but a handful would go along with a mass plea bargain deal in which the illegal would plead guilty to illegal entry and receive a small fine and be allowed to stay in the USA. They did feel that they should join the citizenship queue at the tail end. Those few who did not like the plea bargain idea were out and out racists. One advocated machine gunning border crossers, even women and children. However, ignoring the racists, all felt that an acknowledgement of guilt was mandatory. The problem is that diehard Hispanic rights champions vehemently reject guilt claiming that the USA (or at least the Southwest states) belong to Mexico by Right. I, myself, view those claims as somewhat analogous to the neo-Confederates. i.e. regardless of any legal or moral claim you made, you lost in battle so your claims are moot. Anyway, I think both sides have to give something and “I’m sorry. I acknowledge that I broke your law.” seems a small price to pay to come out of the shadows.
The orange man is trying to thread a needle without the needle. I don’t see any way this goes well for Republicans. Either they alienate the fastest growing demographic (or, more accurately, confirm what they already know about the Republican party) or they will alienate their own base. Immigration is one of the epicenters of the schism within the Republican party. It’s the ideal wedge issue, cleaving pro-business types from ethnocentrists. I’ve seen the potential to create real problems for them for years. We simply lacked a party leader who was a brilliant tactician until now.
I agree that if a bill gets done, it likely happens via more of Pelosi’s caucus than Boehner’s.
But I’m not sure I can make a case for why House Republicans that refuse to vote a path to citizenship in a House version of the bill, or in a conference committee bill that favors the Senate path to citizenship approach …
… I can’t see why those House members are going to vote on a Senate-only bill that has the path to citizenship in it. Why wouldn’t they continue to oppose that bill, leaving Boehner to violate the Hastert ‘rule’ once again to get the bill done, and the issue into the rearview mirror.
So it would be smart for Boehner to shoot himself in the head?
What the heck is the upside supposed to be, for him or for any Republicans, voting for any bill that would create far more new Democratic voters than Republicans?
Your assumption is that the status quo is significantly better for the Republicans, but that is not the case.
That is for two reasons.
First, they have lost the popular vote (excepting 2004) in every election since 1988, and the trends are worsening largely because the share of the Latino is growing. In 2004, Latinos gave over 40% of their votes to the GOP. They need to do even better than that to win.
Second, the status quo won’t hold for the simple reason that the GOP has to take a position on immigration reform. If they block it, their position gets even worse. The 27% of the Latino vote that Romney won will shrink, and there is the potential for Latino vote to collapse completely until it begins to resemble the black vote.
Now, to get back to your point, as long as Latinos favor the Dems by even one percentage point, it doesn’t help the GOP to add Latino voters to the rolls. What you’re missing is that the party, as it is presently constituted, has no long-term future regardless of what they do. They will have to evolve dramatically. But they can still compete in the short-term if they do better with Latinos, and those new voters will have a lengthy and arduous path to citizenship, meaning that they won’t all be voting any time soon.
So, it is very much in the short-term interests of the party to show moderation on Latino citizenship, and in the long term, they’ll have to be moderate anyway.
The House vote in reality is a determination of who will be President in 2016. For a Republican Presidential to have a reasonable chance of winning, there must be Immigration Reform granting a “green card.”
If the Republican controlled house wants to create a second class set of Americans, The Republicans too will see itself becoming a second class party always on the outside looking in the White House at a Democratic President.