Gail Collins probes into "Sunny John" Boehner's "thinking" on immigration -- and she has a quiz!

"Well, we got a lot of things on our plate."

-- "Sunny John" Boehner, quoted by Gail Collins
in her NYT column "Boehner on Fantasy Island"

by Ken

We like to pop in occasional pop quizzes, and so, it seems, does NYT columnist Gail Collins. Her subject today is a gentleman who scarcely needs any introduction, a gentleman who, at least by the standards of the scurvy gang known as the House Republican caucus, which he nominally leads, isn't as hopeless in the matter of immigration reform and the American melting pot as one might assume. Or wasn't entirely hopeless, up until Thursday, when he --

pretty much tossed the idea of immigration reform over a railing. This was a metaphorical railing and not the one that the congressman from Staten Island threatened to throw a reporter over.

But it's sad. The immigration bill that was passed by the Senate last year would have done a lot of good, both in giving millions of undocumented residents a better life and in rationalizing the way we decide who gets to come here legally and who doesn't.

"For a while," Gail notes, "it looked as if the House was going to pass a modest version of the same."

But that was long ago. Back, um, last week. That was when the Republicans came up with a series of principles for reform during a group retreat. Principles that, Boehner said, "our members by and large support, put together by the leadership team. And they believe it."

He made that last comment Thursday, about three seconds before he announced that nothing was going to happen.

Which brings Gail to her Pop Quiz.

Complete the following sentence: John Boehner dropped the plan to pass immigration reform in 2014, and blamed his sudden, abrupt, U-turn on:

A) The people who closed down the George Washington Bridge without Gov. Chris Christie ever knowing a single thing about it.

B) Russian oligarchs.

C) Justin Bieber.

D) President Obama.

"Yes!" Gail proclaims. "Everybody got this one right!" And before we go on, I'm going to give you one last chance to change your answer in case you didn't think it through. And where "Sunny John" Boehner is concerned, "thinking through" is hardly an in-depth activity.

Are you sure of your answer? Okay, let's continue.

John Boehner says the House Republicans won't pass the plan they came up with last week because Barack Obama ruined everything.

Nobody out there picked (A), (B), or (C), did they? (I just wanted to be sure.) The operative quote from Mr. D came at a press conference,:

Listen, there's widespread doubt about whether this administration can be trusted to enforce our laws. And it's going to be difficult to move any immigration legislation until that changes.

Which prompts Gail to "consider the Obama administration's record on enforcing immigration laws."

Under this president, half of all federal crime prosecution involves immigration crime. The government now spends more on enforcing immigration laws than it spends on the F.B.I., Drug Enforcement Administration, Secret Service, U.S. Marshals Service and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives combined.

We have more than 650 miles of fencing along the Mexican border. Plus, don't forget all the drones. And 21,391 border patrol agents. Given the plummeting numbers of people actually trying to illegally cross into the country, let us hope that a lot of those agents are good at meditation.

A sizable chunk of Obama's own base is furious over the all-time high rate of deportations -- nearly two million so far in his tenure and way ahead of the record of George W. Bush. The government now automatically goes through the fingerprints of people who are arrested and sifts out the ones who are here illegally.

Immigrant advocates say the system breaks up families and viciously punishes people who may be guilty of nothing more than a minor traffic violation. The administration says it's all about targeting the real criminals. This is an argument we need to continue, but, however it turns out, the answer is not going to be that Barack Obama refused to enforce the immigration laws.

Hmm, so it appears that Sunny Johns "thinking" (for want of a better word) on the subject may have gone a tad deeper than I suggested. Or maybe that he was just lying. "So what do you think John Boehner's real motive is for dropping immigration reform?" Gail asks.

Do you think his members are worried that if illegal immigrants get a path to citizenship, they'll use their franchise to vote Democratic? ("G.O.P. Crafts Plan to Wreck the Country, Lose Voters," said the headline in a blog from the ever-popular Ann Coulter.)

Maybe the House is just short of time. There's a post office somewhere that needs renaming, and Obamacare to repeal.
"Well, we got a lot of things on our plate," said Boehner. He mentioned fixing Medicare payments for doctors and flood insurance. That's one heck of an agenda, but maybe they could fit in just a little more by expanding their 2014 schedule beyond the current 97 more working days.

"Too hypothetical," she says. And she harks back to the beginning of the column, where she suggested that Sunny John "has his good moments," like "when he brushes off a question by saying: 'If ands and buts were candy and nuts, every day would be Christmas.' " She always enjoys this, she says.

But she warns, press the speaker on this real agenda, "and he'll feel obliged to tell you about candy and nuts again."

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