I often wonder how much of what Republicans say is purely for what they perceive to be their political advantage and how much of it just that they genuinely cannot understand what motivates us. The idea that everyone pushing for immigration reform is just trying to piss off the right is a very strange and grossly incorrect idea. People are trying to address a major source of correctable human suffering.
Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a Boehner ally, accused Obama of intentionally trying to provoke a fight with the new Republican Congress.
“I’m mystified by the political calculation,” he said. “There’s a new Congress coming in. Why would you do this on the eve of Thanksgiving going into the holiday unless you just want to create a political crisis?”
In a fact-based universe, everyone knows that the president wanted to make this announcement prior to the election and that the timing was delayed at the behest of worried Democrats. It wasn’t done tonight because the president wants to create a political crisis. It wasn’t to make himself relevant again. It wasn’t to divide the right or to distract them from their agenda. It wasn’t to provoke them into a frothy racist rage and another government shutdown.
It was because he could not put off doing what is right any longer.
That’s it.