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Alan: Go Republicans! Hoist on your own petard. Piss off people of color. As close as you'll get to "brown"... is the color of toast. Democrats could never have strategized your permanent electoral defeat as definitively as your own politics have strategized it for them. Please! Don't change a thing! Where do I donate?
More bad news for immigration reform: Rep. Bob Goodlatte, head of the House Judiciary Committee (which has jurisdiction over immigration), told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that he flatly opposes a path to citizenship — even for DREAMers.
“Even for them, I would say that they get a legal status in the United States and not a pathway to citizenship that is created especially for them,” Goodlatte said. ”In other words, they get that legal status if they have an employer who says I've got a job which I can't find a U.S. citizen and I want to petition for them, ah, they can do that, but I wouldn't give them the pathway to a Green Card and ultimately citizenship.”
Goodlatte’s never been a friend to immigration reform. But of late, he’s really been emphasizing his role as a foe.
If you’re peering into the tea leaves, here’s what that means. First, Goodlatte thinks the trends in the House Republican Conference support flat-out opposition. As head of the relevant committee, if he thought serious immigration reform had a chance, he’d hold a bit of fire in order to ensure he kept his role in the process. That was his strategy early in the debate.
Second, he’s fairly confident that House Republican leadership won’t roll him to get a bill done. Again, if that seemed like a possibility, he might be a bit more reticent in order to preserve his seat at the table and avoid any humiliation. But this suggests he doesn’t believe Boehner et al will fight him to pass something that the Senate could stomach and the president could sign.
At this point immigration reform relies on one of three things happening. Boehner could go back on his word and bring the Senate bill, or something like it, to the floor without a majority of Republicans supporting it. That seems unlikely.
Another option would be a discharge petition in which every Democrats and a few dozen Republicans demand the Senate bill comes to the floor — which is also unlikely, given that discharge petitions almost never work and any Republicans who tried it would be assuring themselves primary challenges and, quite possibly, leadership reprisal.
The third option, which some Democrats still cling to, is Goodlatte and friends pass some kind of quasi-immigration bill that the White House and the Senate reject. That opens negotiations with the Senate and leads to a more moderate product coming to the House floor. It’s hard to imagine how this would work in practice, and note that Boehner has said the Hastert rule applies to a conference report.
What all these options have in common is that they require Boehner to take a large political risk — and possibly break his word — to pass immigration reform. There’s not much evidence he’s interested in doing that. And that’s emboldening restrictionists like Goodlatte.