02/06/2014
The Main Stream Media is missing the real story on the Republican Party’s suicidal push for an Amnesty/Immigration Surge. The Party may be on the brink of a sweeping realignment — and the critical transformative figure is Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama.
This realignment is likely because, regardless of the outcome of the upcoming battles over legalizing the tens of millions of illegal infiltrators in Occupied America, the Republican leadership has already failed. Key Treason Lobby figures within the GOP are clearly feeling the heat. Even if the disaster of an Amnesty/Immigration Surge passes, the GOP base is well aware of the treachery of its own leadership and is looking for alternatives.
Thus according to Neil Munro of the Daily Caller (whose days as a journalist within the Beltway Right are surely numbered), House Majority Leader Eric Cantor frantically changed the subject when pressed by CBS reporter Major Garrett “if the GOP plan would allow the 12 million illegal immigrants to get citizenship.” Instead, Cantor began babbling about “job growth and the lack of job growth,” without making any connection between those subjects and the likely consequences of flooding the labor market with helots. [GOP Leaders Hide Immigration Plans, February 3, 2014]
Meanwhile, Paul Ryan has attempted a bit of misdirection by claiming that that it is “clearly in doubt” that Congress can pass an immigration bill this year. [Are immigration reformers talking down chances so opponents will drop guard? By Byron York, Washington Examiner, February 3, 2014]. However, what is significant is that this tactic is openly being called out as possible misdirection.
The Republican leadership’s sudden cowardice has been triggered by the surprisingly stiff resistance of the GOP House Caucus to passing Amnesty. According to Jonathon Strong of Breitbart.com, a closed door session of Republican Congresscritters revealed that 80% were opposed to moving on a bill this year. Speaker John Boehner and Ryan were apparently both restrained in their rhetorical support for amnesty in this meeting, as ordinary Congressman neither trust Barack Obama to enforce security measures nor the leadership’s promises that an Amnesty/immigration Surge would be politically beneficial. [Did Showdown Kill Boehner’s Immigration Dreams?” January 31, 2014]
Hilariously, Ryan is even saying that for an immigration bill to go anywhere, it has to be based on “security first, no amnesty” and only “then we might be able to get somewhere.” [U.S. immigration bill “in doubt” this year, Republican Ryan says, by Margaret Chadbourn, Reuters, February 2, 2014] (Mickey Kaus catches Ryan outright lying about this (“distorting and dissembling weren’t getting the job done, I guess”) on ABC’s This Week With George Stephanopoulos.
The conclusion — the Republican leadership isn’t composed of “leaders” at all. GOP Congressmen are not listening to the likes of Boehner, Ryan, and Cantor. Speaker Boehner resembles one of those late Roman Emperors who is a prisoner of his own soldiers.
So who could command the loyalty of the troops? The answer: Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, who is blazing a new and promising trail for the Republican Party politically, and ultimately more important, ideologically.
In a break with precedent, Senator Sessions organized a secret meeting on January 23 with staffers from over a dozen House offices to sabotage the GOP leadership’s Amnesty plans. The invitation sent from Senator Sessions’ office bragged that “Over here in the Senate working for Senator Sessions, we learned a lot last year about the strategies employed by the powerful forces pushing bad immigration policies — and how to counter them.” [House Conservatives Plot Takedown of GOP Leaders’ Amnesty Plans, by Matthew Boyle, Breitbart, January 23, 2014]
The result: a well-organized insurgency during the much-ballyhooed immigration strategy session of the House of GOP. Armed with anti-Amnesty talking points by Senator Sessions and his staff, House Republicans had a detailed set of responses to every single predictable talking point that could have been offered by the pro-amnesty Republican leadership.
Senator Sessions and his staff also set a trap for the Republican leadership by pointing out that any compromise solution would ultimately have “loopholes and waivers that could be utilized by or granted to illegal aliens by the Obama administration.” [Exclusive: Sessions Arms House Republicans Against Boehner Immigration Push, by Matthew Boyle, Breitbart, January 29, 2014] Boehner, Ryan, and Cantor would essentially have to publicly declare that they trust President Obama more than they trust their own base.
In terms of political power over the House GOP, Senator Sessions is the real Republican leadership.
Sessions is arguing for a fundamental reframing of the way the conservative movement views the immigration issue. In contrast to libertarian and Conservatism Inc. court eunuchs who view the historic American nation as kulaks to be dispossessed, Sessions is saying that the core principle of real immigration reform should be “helping millions of jobless Americans get back to work.” As Sessions put it, “President Obama and Senate Democrats have uniformly embraced an immigration plan that would devastate wages and working conditions for millions of struggling Americans to benefit a small cadre of lobbyists and CEOs.”
Nor is this some recent deviation from Sessions. As he said in November,
America is not an oligarchy… A Republic must answer to the people…Congressional leaders must forcefully reject the notion, evidently accepted by the president, that a small cadre of CEOs can tailor the nation’s entire immigration policy to suit their narrow interests.
[Sen. Sessions slams Obama, CEOs on immigration, by Neil Munro, Daily Caller, November 25, 2013]
This argument is political dynamite to the corporate lobbyists and low-rent sophomoric collaborationists who comprise what passes for the American Right.
And the argument is spreading.
Senator Ted Cruz, who was noticeably reticent when the Senate passed the Gang of Eight’s version of the Amnesty/Immigration Surge, is now sounding a populist, even class warfare note. Thus Cruz said recently: “Rather than responding to the big-money lobbying on K Street, we need to make sure working-class Americans show up by the millions to reject Obamacare and vote out the Democrats.” [Amnesty fight stirs GOP fight over voters’ wages, by Neil Munro, Daily Caller, February 1, 2014]
This type of attack is being echoed by other congressional opponents of Amnesty, to the distress of the Republican Party’s nominal leaders who want to deliver for the Chamber of Commerce.
Thus Republicans have the rare opportunity to be on the right side of an economically populist issue. Immigration increases are opposed by the majority of lower-income and middle-income voters, and by political moderates and conservatives. Furthermore, a plurality of African-Americans also oppose the higher levels of immigration proposed in the House and Senate bills. [Poll: Wealthy, liberals unite to support increased immigration, by Neil Munro, Daily Caller, January 20, 2014]
If it continues to spread in influence, the political philosophy of Jeff Sessions would represent the first serious reintroduction of National Conservatism in American politics since the (deliberate) destruction of Pat Buchanan.
The main obstacle of course: the money provided by the Open Borders donor class.
But with the slow motion collapse of Chris Christie, the GOP Establishment’s Great Wide Hope, the 2016 field is wide open. The battle over the Amnesty/Immigration may prove simply the first clash in a greater war to define the future of the Republican Party.
Senator Sessions has already dealt the Treason Lobby a serious setback. If he can rally the House GOP to defeat Obama and Boehner’s amnesty push, he will take his place as the most important leader of the American Right since Reagan.
And with a fractured 2016 field, Sessions may have a great opportunity to save the future of his party — and his country.
James Kirkpatrick is a Beltway veteran and a refugee from Conservatism Inc.
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