The House Republicans’ decision to not allow a vote on comprehensive immigration reform, even though they have the votes to pass it, is going to have political consequences. Because most House Republicans would have opposed the bill, the party would have received little credit for passing it, while it would have exposed fissures within the Republican base and caused outrage among the xenophobes.
In the end, from a strictly short-term political point of view, Speaker Boehner probably made the correct decision. But only in the short term. The divisions on the right can be papered over in the interest of winning the midterm elections, but they will come to the fore with a vengeance when the presidential primaries begin in earnest. Fifty years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Goldwater Party is gearing up for a repeat shellacking in 2016.
