If you had doubts that the Republican Party would really put itself into a position where it seemed to squelch immigration reform — the kind of immigration reform that many Hispanic groups would consider comprehensive immigration reform — it perhaps is time to remove them. House Speaker Rep. John Boehner has apparently decided not to support any bill that does not have the support of a majority of the House GOP — which in effect means Tea Party Republicans will have veto power:
House Speaker John Boehner is not going to bring a comprehensive immigration-reform plan to the floor if a majority of Republicans don’t support it, sources familiar with his plans said.
“No way in hell,” is how several described the chances of the speaker acting on such a proposal without a majority of his majority behind him.
Boehner, R-Ohio, does not view immigration in the same vein as the fiscal cliff last December, when he backed a bill that protected most Americans from a tax increase even though less than half of the GOP lawmakers were with him, said multiple sources, who spoke anonymously to allow greater candor.
With economists warning that the deep cuts and higher taxes needed to avoid the fiscal cliff could devastate an already ailing economy, Boehner felt compelled to compromise with President Obama and allow taxes to rise on the wealthiest taxpayers. He feels no such urgency about immigration reform, lawmakers said.
Boehner has long supported an overhaul of U.S. immigration policy and would like the House to act on it before August. But he also understands the issue’s political sensitivity and the impact it could have on Republicans in the 2014 mid-term elections.
Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., a former pollster aligned with the GOP leadership, said Boehner will not approach to immigration reform the same way he did the fiscal cliff tax bill, or the Violence Against Women Act, which also passed with a minority of the majority.
“I just don’t think that’s the winning formula here,” Cole told The Washington Examiner. “What the speaker wants to do is have a hopefully bipartisan product — certainly one that has the majority of Republicans — pass the House. This has got too much emotional, political impact and I think it really has to be genuinely bipartisan.”
The problem here is that there are few signs that the most far-right members of the House GOP would support a bill with the components that those clamoring for immigration reform would want.
Or, they would support a bill with so many poison pills in it that the Syrian government would want to grab a hold of it to use it on its own people.
At this point? It’d be a political shocker if a bill that is not rejected by the longtime proponents of immigration reform emerges from the House.
Anything can happen, of course.
But don’t hold your breath on the House passing anything but a bill that would be praised by Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter.
BE SURE TO READ THIS earlier column.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.