As President Obama prepares to take action on immigration in defiance of last Tuesday’s midterm shellacking, he faces an uncertain political and policy terrain filled with risk.
On the policy front, the loudest argument against executive action is by far the easiest for the White House to dismiss. That would be Speaker John Boehner’s plea that by going alone, Obama would “poison the well” for immigration reform in Congress and kill any chance of major legislation passing.
If Boehner had shown any intention of moving forward on reform earlier, this might be a concern. Instead, he sat on a bipartisan Senate bill for over a year then announced over the summer that he wouldn’t even pass a GOP-only counteroffer, let alone anything that the president might sign, because his caucus didn’t trust Obama enough. It was this move that prompted Obama to announce that he would come up with a White House-based alternative.
This is the main reason immigration groups have upped the pressure on the White House to act even if the policy gains are less sweeping and more fragile than a legislative solution. The default GOP position has shifted several ticks to the right since the Senate passed its bipartisan bill last year and many newly elected Republican politicians won their races while railing against “amnesty” in speeches and ads. On the Senate side, expected Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wanted nothing to do with immigration reform last year. Based on his history, he’s loath to pass anything Obama can claim as a legacy achievement.
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What the White House does have to worry about, however, is the Republican response to its move. A bitter, early confrontation could set the tone for a long final two years in office.
Boehner and McConnell have made it clear their goal is to avoid high-profile standoffs like last year’s shutdown. On Tuesday, McConnell made a speech on the Senate floor, saying that unilateral action by President Obama on immigration would be a “big mistake,” urging Obama and Senate Democrats to help set “a positive tone for the work of the next Congress,” which he said “will depend largely on the adminstration’s willingness to respect a message sent last Tuesday.”
Other Republicans are taking the opposite tack. Even immigration reform co-sponsor Senator Marco Rubio has suggested tying measures to undo Obama’s executive action to must-pass funding bills, which could lead to a shutdown. Others, like Republican Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, want to press Obama’s pick for Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, on the issue in hearings and could threaten her confirmation. A handful of Republicans, most recently Congressman Joe Barton, have even thrown around the idea of impeachment.
Here we get to the political risks and benefits.
In the short term, what happens if things come to a head in a series of standoffs? Republicans suffered the most in the last shutdown fight, though the botched health care rollout quickly lifted them right back up in the polls. It might be easy to assume that another Republican-initiated cliff would be an immediate boon to Democrats, especially given how hard Boehner and McConnell are trying to avoid them.
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This is possible, but not guaranteed.
One Republican strategist argued that while blocking Obamacare looked like a quixotic fight to undo an already passed law from the start, executive action has not been litigated the same way and Republicans might be able to spin a new standoff their way. A new post-election Gallup poll shows 53% of respondents want Republicans in Congress to “have more influence over the direction the nation takes” next year versus 36% who say the same for Obama. While exit polls for the 2014 midterms indicated that 57% of voters this year favor a path to legal status for undocumented immigrants rather than deportation, Obama’s approval ratings on the issue are low and it’s less clear whether Americans support unilateral action.
“[Executive action] undercuts supporters of immigration reform and emboldens the opponents,” Republican pollster Whit Ayres, who has advocated passing reform to help the GOP win back Latinos, told msnbc. “It’s going to come across as an illegitimate and crassly political move by a desperate president.”









