Wall Street Journal: "A Party Whose Preoccupation Is Deporting Children Is Going To Alienate Many Conservatives"

For the rest of this election cycle-- probably for the rest of a couple of election cycles-- all congressional Republicans are Steve King. The House Republican Caucus never elected him to a leadership position, but the deranged, sometimes delusional, racist fanatic was handed the reins of power by the de facto head of the Republican Party, Ted Cruz, their likely 2016 presidential nominee. Cruz will be the most catastrophic presidential nominee since the radical right got their way in 1964, when Republicans won Goldwater's home state of Arizona plus South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. That's it; not even Kansas! Three Republican senators lost reelection bids-- Beall in Maryland, Mechem in New Mexico, and Keating in New York-- and the Democrats picked up 37 seats in the House, giving them a 258-176 super-majority. In Iowa alone the Democrats swept the field and picked up 5 Republican-held seats that year. They took away 4 Republican seats in New Jersey, 4 in Washington, 4 in Ohio, 7 in New York and Texas' only two Republican congressmen, Bruce Alger from Dallas and Ed Foreman from El Paso, were both handily defeated. Hillary Clinton couldn't ask for a better opponent than Ted Cruz. And the Republican right is hell-bent to accommodate her.

Today the right-wing Wall Street Journal and the centrist NY Times both ran editorials castigating the Republicans for letting the Cruz/King racist deportation caucus bamboozle the party into what the Times called an unhinged posture of immigration and dysfunctional governance.

Boehner tried on Thursday to pass a bill dealing with the crisis of migrant children at the Texas border-- a harsh bill to deport the children more quickly to their violent home countries in Central America, and to add more layers of border enforcement. But it wasn’t harsh enough to suit the Tea Party, and it was pulled for lack of votes. The hapless House leadership had to drag members back from the start of a five-week vacation to try again on Friday.

The revised legislation sought to appease the hard-liners, who were insisting on swiftly expelling migrant children but also intent on killing the Obama administration’s program to halt the deportations of young immigrants known as Dreamers. Tea Party members believe, delusionally, that the program, called DACA, has some connection to the recent surge of child migrants, who would never qualify for it. On Friday night, the House passed a bill that dragged immigration reform so far to the right that it would never become law.

As Congress takes the rest of the summer off, there may be no two happier House Republicans than Steve King and Michele Bachmann, charter members of the “hell no” caucus that resolutely blocks all efforts at sensible immigration reform. The Senate’s attempt to address the border crisis, meanwhile, is also dead-- filibustered by Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama. Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican who engineered the House revolt, was exultant. Nothing will happen there until September, if then.

Meanwhile, the border crisis is still a crisis and people are suffering. The Border Patrol and refugee programs will run short of money for aiding and processing traumatized children. Immigration courts will still be overloaded, due process will continue to be shortchanged or denied. Because House Republicans killed a comprehensive reform bill that passed the Senate more than a year ago, the larger immigration system, choked by obsolete laws, backlogs and bureaucratic breakdowns, still awaits repairs.

Eleven million people are still living outside the law with no way to legalize their status. Farmers and other business owners who depend on immigrant labor are still looking to Congress to bring order and efficiency to the system. They have been waiting for at least a decade. They will have to wait some more.

Congressional nihilism has created a vacuum. Now it’s President Obama’s job to fill it, to keep his promise to end the border crisis and find ways to redirect immigration enforcement and protect possibly millions of families from unjust deportation. Of course, regardless of what he does, the system will still be marked by chaos and pain. And the hard-liners will scream at any action he takes.

Having spent the summer howling about a catastrophe at the border, Republicans are now congratulating themselves for refusing to solve it.

And the GOP got no solace from the usually GOP-friendly Wall Street Journal either. The editorial was ominously titled The GOP's Border Spectacle-- The party melts down one more time over immigration.

Republicans should be heading toward a November election victory, perhaps even a big one, adding to their House majority and maybe picking up the six or more seats necessary to control the Senate. Yet never underestimate their ability to save the day for Democrats, not least by showcasing the GOP's immigration neuralgia.

The House GOP looked ready Friday to pass a bill to address the influx of children over the Southwest border, though not before providing another spectacle of internal disarray. The bill should have been a moment to redirect attention to President Obama's cynical handling of the border problem and to the Democratic Party's immigration divisions. Instead the GOP again gave the country the impression that its highest policy priority is to deport as many children as rapidly as possible back from wherever they came.

Earlier this week Speaker John Boehner had his caucus lined up to pass a modest bill that would have provided the Obama Administration with $659 million to deal with the border influx, while tweaking a provision in a 2008 law that even President Obama has said has encouraged the flood of unaccompanied minors to the U.S. This would have allowed Republicans to return home for the August recess saying they had voted to address the border problem and put pressure on the White House and Senate Democrats to act.

Instead, the GOP's Deportation Caucus-- led by Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions and Ted Cruz of Texas-- lobbied House conservatives to resist any immigration compromise and pick a fight with Mr. Boehner. The dissenters demanded an array of policy changes, most notably new restrictions on the President's executive order allowing some undocumented immigrants who were brought here as children to remain in the country.

Readers may recall that the last Republican in an election year to support deporting immigrant children brought here through no fault of their own was Mitt Romney. A splendid voter attraction that was. "The only way to stop the border crisis is to stop Obama's amnesty," declared Mr. Cruz, as he rallied House GOP members to vote against the bill.

Iowa's Steve King and Minnesota's Michele Bachmann were only too happy to follow the Senators into this cul de sac. And by Thursday evening the Republican caucus disintegrated into a screaming match on the floor in full view of the national media. Our sources say that nearly the entire Alabama delegation defected (thanks to Mr. Sessions) as did numerous participants at a Wednesday huddle held in Mr. Cruz's office. House leaders had little choice but to pull the bill.

…[T]his latest immigration debacle won't help the party's image, which is still recovering from the government shutdown debacle of 2011. A party whose preoccupation is deporting children is going to alienate many conservatives, never mind minority voters.

The episode is also sure to raise doubts among swing voters about whether Republicans would be prepared to govern if they do win control of the entire Congress. Let's hope they spend August planning how to return in the fall like a party that looks ready to do something other than fight with each other.

Historically, right-of-center, business-oriented parties have always had a problem with democracy. Their economic policy agenda just can't get the kind of popular support from the working and middle class to win elections. So they welcome right-wing populists into the tent-- nationalists, racists, religious fanatics, Know Nothing xenophobes, women haters, gay haters, haters in general.They Money Men always think they can toss the extremists a few bones and keep control. That worked out very badly for conservatives in Weimar Germany and for Republicans in California. Cruz and his fringe elements are in effective control of the Republican Party and this is going to spell some heavy duty trouble for the Greed and Selfishness wing of the GOP.

Even a right-wing propagandist like Jennifer Rubin reports that public polling-- even by partisan Republican polling firms-- shows overwhelming support for the DREAMers and for comprehensive immigration reform the Cruz-King caucus is blocking.

The GOP excuse for not acting-- the president won’t enforce the law-- is not fooling anyone. Some 72% reject that argument, including 2 out of 3 Republicans and 69% of Independents. The idea of waiting for reform is also a loser with 80% of voters wanting Congress to act this year, with nearly half calling it “very important” they act this year. Some 77% of Republicans say it is important that Congress act, while 53% say it is very important. And 74% of Independents believe it is important for Congress to act this year.

…In short, two-thirds of voters and 54 percent of Republicans support legal status for undocumented immigrants. Republicans would rather vote for a presidential candidate in 2016 that is from a party that supports reform (71%) than one from a party that opposes it (15%).

The anti-DREAMers bill passed last night 216-192, 4 right-wing Blue Dogs (Barrow, Peterson, McIntyre and Rahall) voting with the GOP (while another racist Blue Dog, Dan Lipinski, voted "present") and 11 Republicans abandoning their own party's extreme position to cross the aisle and vote with the Democrats. These are the 11 Republicans who, for one reason or another, could not support the deranged anti-Latino approach Cruz and King had forced on the party:

• Mark Amodei (R-NV)
• Mike Coffman (R-CO)
• Jeff Denham (R-CA)
• Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL)
• Cory Gardner (R-CO)
• Joe Heck (R-NV)
• Adam Kinzinger (R-IL)
• Dave Reichert (R-WA)
• Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL)
• Fred Upton (R-MI)
• David Valadao (R-CA)

Several Republicans who often try passing themselves off as "moderates" or as vaguely mainstream because of the districts they represent, stuck with the extremists this time. If there was a competent DCCC in play, this vote would help end the political careers of Republicans Chris Gibson (NY), Charlie Dent (IL), Peter King (NY), Michael Fitzpatrick (PA), Rodney Davis (IL), Paul Ryan (WI), Vern Buchanan (FL), David Jolly (FL), Reid Ribble (WI), Pat Meehan (PA), Jaime Herrera Beutler (WA), Chris Collins (NY), Sean Duffy (WI), Tom Reed (NY), Steve Pearce (NM), Frank LoBiondo (NJ), Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm (NY), Erik Paulsen (MN), and Richard Hanna (NY). But there isn't a competent DCCC and this vote is unlikely to defeat any of these banditos. Besides, the DCCC is too busy spending $2 million on reelecting anti-DREAM voter and spineless Blue Dog John Barrow to bother with trying to really beat Republicans.

Did Chris Gibson just hand Sean Eldridge the key to beating him in November?