01/11/2015
When the Main Stream Media says the Republican leadership is finally preparing to confront President Obama on immigration, patriots are right to be cautious. After all, Speaker John Boehner, fresh from defeating a rebellion in his own caucus, has been obviously eager to impose an Amnesty/Immigration Surge for years.Nonetheless, it appears that this week the House GOP leadership will put forward legislation that will not just challenge Obama’s November grant of amnesty to an estimated 5 million illegals, but would roll back several smaller amnesties that the President has unilaterally enacted over the last few years. The only question: is the Republican leadership pursuing a strategy that is deliberately designed to fail? — Thus dooming the cause of immigration patriotism in the new 114th Congress.
The Republican plan: to tie funding to the Department of Homeland Security to a series of amendments that will attack different components of the Obama Administration’s various acts of treason and reverse the collapse of border enforcement. The most important amendment: H.R. 191, introduced by Rep. Robert Aderholt and endorsed by his fellow Alabamian, Senator Jeff Sessions.
Among other things, Alderholt’s bill would expand funding for the Secure Communities program, prohibit tax money and fees from being used to execute the President’s actions on immigration, repeal the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) that enabled the Central American “refugee” crisis, and reverse the “Morton Memos” issued by ICE Director John Morton in 2011 which provided “discretion” to the Obama Administration to stop enforcing immigration law.
This goes beyond simply reversing Obama’s latest act of immigration anarchy. It is an overdue pushback against a lawless regime that has been seeking to undermine American sovereignty ever since Obama was installed as President.
Needless to say, the Main Stream Media is concern-trolling that “Republicans are courting electoral disaster in the 2016 presidential election by passing legislation that could alienate many Latino voters.” [House GOP takes broad aim at Obama immigration policies, by Erica Werner, Associated Press, January 9, 2015]
The New York Times dug up Treason Lobbyist Frank Sharry of the AstroTurf organization “America’s Voice” to kvetch that “the new proposal could alienate Hispanic voters in the 2016 presidential election.” Sharry moans: ““It is outrageous and it is noteworthy that the House leadership has embraced the most extreme proposals from the most extreme members of their caucus.” [Expansive House G.O.P Immigration Bill Undercuts the President, by Ashley Parker, January 9, 2015]
The New York Times apparently could not find any conservative organizations to quote who believed that it was simply common sense rather than “extremism” to enforce the law.
But that might not be typical liberal media bias altogether. Conservatism Inc. has never been noted for its support of border security. Patriots can’t expect much from entrenched leading Republicans who allowed this crisis to develop in the first place. And the low-rent corporate lobbyists who comprise the Beltway Right are still pushing for a more expansive Amnesty/Immigration Surge even after immigration patriotism contributed to a Republican victory in the midterm elections.
For example, Open Borders shill and Conservatism Inc. pillar Grover Norquist, who has spent his entire life failing to limit the size of the federal government, is in currently Nebraska campaigning for Amnesty in the American heartland. [Norquist coming to Lincoln to promote immigration reform, by Richard Piersol, JournalStar, January 11, 2015]
And the new President Pro Tempore in the Republican Senate is longtime Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, apparently thinks now is the perfect time to call for more high tech immigration to replace American workers. In Hatch’s words, as quoted by the disgusting neocon propagandist Jennifer Rubin:
“The new Congress has an opportunity to enhance America’s competitive workforce through immigration reform that will streamline the hiring process for high-skilled individuals entering the United States and by investing in STEM education and training.”Immigration patriots must be cautious about the GOP leadership’s willingness to fight. The entire plan hinges on allowing a temporary shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security. And GOP leaders have already expressed their desire to surrender if the alternative is a government shutdown.Orrin Hatch: Put a conservative immigration bill on the agenda, Washington Post, January 6, 2015
In the wake of the shootings in France, it may be that the GOP leadership is even less anxious to be seen as responsible for even a temporary closure of DHS. [GOP’s DHS de-funding gambit for immigration executive orders might be in trouble, by Rick Moran, American Thinker, January 11, 2015]. This is particularly true in the Senate, where Republicans have far less stomach for a fight and Senators like Dean Heller of Nevada want to make sure “we do it in the right manner, and we don’t do it in a way that is offensive.” [House GOP’s immigration problem: No path to 60 in Senate, by Manu Raju and Seung Min Kim, Politico, January 9, 2015]
Which is why Byron York of the Washington Examiner is already predicting Republican failure. He thinks the GOP should have limited its challenge just to Obama’s latest executive action. And York notes ominously:
There is some dark talk in the Capitol that it’s all intentional, that the House leadership is sabotaging its own amendments, structuring them to make them unpassable in the Senate, because it really doesn’t want to overturn the president’s action. "It’s sending a bill to the Senate that is designed not to pass the Senate," says one GOP congressional aide, "because members who are on the fence, whose votes we could have gotten, are going to know they have a pretext to vote no." At the least, such talk is a measure of the distrust of leadership that prevails in some House and Senate circles.Boehner’s retaliation against intraparty rivals after the failed conservative insurgency against him shows that he is quite capable of such unscrupulousness. [Boehner learns leadership tricks from ‘House of Cards,’ by Rusty Humphries, Washington Times, January 7, 2015] And if conservatives lose spectacularly on immigration, Boehner may have fewer threats to his power, especially now that his whip Steve Scalise is still under attack and utterly dependent on the Speaker for his political survival.The coming Republican failure on immigration, January 11, 2015
But if Boehner is indeed operating in bad faith, he may be being too clever by half. House Republicans will finally be forced to vote, on the record, for or against a bill that contains the common sense measures that immigration patriots want. They will not be able to avoid confronting the substance of an Amnesty/Immigration Surge and limit themselves to griping about the method. The Aderholt bill will become the surest way of separating the wheat from the chaff.
And immigration patriots need not let themselves be fobbed off with this one vote. As we have outlined at VDARE.com, creative legislation protecting DHS employees who try to enforce the law can force the kind of crisis that Barack Obama’s unworkable amnesty cannot afford. And other policy initiatives on popular causes like establishing English as the official national language or ending birthright citizenship could be a wedge issues against the Democratic minority.
Finally, impeachment remains the appropriate and realistic way of confronting a lawless executive because it would force a simple up and down vote on the legality of President Obama’s policies. And Obama, who appears to be a raging case of narcissistic Expectations Syndrome, is quite arrogant enough to force this by unilateral action in some area the Beltway Right’s corporate masters really care about, like environmental regulation.
The Republican leadership may have found religion, or they may be displaying the kind of political Machiavellianism that the Beltway Right generally seems only willing to use against its own base.
But either way, the cowardly Republican leadership and the smug Democratic minority are playing with fire by giving American patriots an opportunity to be heard.
James Kirkpatrick is a Beltway veteran and a refugee from Conservatism Inc.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.