LuisGutierrez:Obamatoldushe’llbeas

Luis Gutierrez: Obama told us he’ll be as bold as he can be on amnesty for adults, but these children will be deported

posted at 8:01 pm on July 17, 2014 by Allahpundit

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He was part of O’s meeting yesterday with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. He’s also been known to say that his only loyalty is to the immigrant community. You trust a guy like that to take a firm line against admitting an especially sympathetic class of illegals, don’t you?

Actually, I guess the line isn’t so firm.

President Obama reassured members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Wednesday that he will flex his executive muscle later this year to be “as great and big and bold as he can be” to reduce deportations of undocumented immigrant families who have lived and worked in the United States for years, one Democratic lawmaker said at the conclusion of the meeting.

Meanwhile, members of the caucus are willing to give the administration expedited authority to deport a surge of unaccompanied children seeking asylum in the United States, as long as any statutory changes preserve judicial due process on a case-by-case basis, Gutierrez told RCP…

“We will not vote for a supplemental [spending bill] that undercuts existing law that protects the children,” he said of proposed changes to a statute aimed at curbing sex trafficking and adopted in 2008. The law offered asylum-seekers from countries not contiguous with the United States judicial reviews that can last longer than the scrutiny afforded border-crossers from Mexico and Canada. Last week, senior White House officials said Obama wanted discretion to expedite the review process and eliminate the different treatment pegged to countries of origin.

“We do want the children to get expedited, and we gave [Obama] many suggestions within the confines of the law so that those children can get inside a courtroom,” Gutierrez said. “They’re going to be deported. The vast majority do not have an asylum case. We know that. Let’s just be clear,” he added.

He’s playing a game here, and you should know by now what that game is. The trick, aimed at low-information voters, is to confuse expedited deportation with expedited judicial process. In the first case, HHS puts an illegal immigrant child on a plane back home; in the second case, HHS brings an illegal immigrant child before an immigration judge, who sets a deportation hearing for him in a week or two and then lets him go. The kid then disappears into the U.S., never to be seen by federal authorities again. Later, at the hearing, the judge issues an order of deportation in absentia, but so what? The order is pointless if it can’t be executed. Gutierrez is happy to “expedite” the process by letting deportation orders issue more quickly so long as no one does anything to carry them out. That’s what he means by “they’re going to be deported.” Deportation orders will issue, but actual deportations happening? Nope. “Due process” in this case is simply code for no process.

But it’s a great talking point, no? Here’s Luis Gutierrez, famous amnesty shill, trumpeting to reporters that he’s all for sending the kids home so long as a million or two — or five — adults gets to stay, and knowing all the while that most of the kids won’t end up going home either. Obama’s pushing the same line, and they’re both counting on the public having a short attention span: As long as promises to send the kids home happen now, when voters are paying attention, whether the kids are actually sent home later when voters have lost interest won’t much matter. That’s a lesson Democrats (and lots of pro-amnesty Republicans) learned nearly 30 years ago from the 1986 amnesty. Promise a lot on security at a rare moment when the public cares and then you can forget about actually having to deliver later. Smart bet.

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Tags: border, caucus, crisis, daca, deportation, gutierrez, hispanic, illegals, immigrants, obama

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GOPestablishmentseizescontrolinIowa posted

GOP establishment seizes control in Iowa

posted at 3:31 pm on June 15, 2014 by Jazz Shaw

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In the midst of all the foreign affairs stories it was probably easy to miss a bit of domestic political news coming out of the Hawkeye State yesterday. At the 2014 Iowa GOP state convention, political activists loyal to Governor Terry Branstad essentially ousted all of the “dissidents” loyal to Rand Paul, securing control of the state party for the perceived establishment.

Establishment forces officially wrested control of the Iowa Republican Party from supporters of Rand Paul on Saturday, a development the victors said would help save the state’s first-in-the-nation presidential caucus from being marginalized and possibly spell the demise of the Ames Straw Poll…

The battle for control of the party was primarily an effort by Branstad to reestablish himself as the undisputed leader of Republican affairs in Iowa — perhaps most critically the future of the caucuses.

After the 2012 results, Ron Paul supporters mobilized at district-level conventions to take over the party — despite the fact he finished third on caucus night — and wound up controlling the delegation to the national convention.

Branstad, cruising to an unprecedented sixth term as governor, has spent the better part of the past two years sparring with A.J. Spiker, a co-chair of Ron Paul’s Iowa campaign who defeated the governor’s preferred pick to lead the state party in 2012. As chairman of the party, Spiker was publicly critical of Branstad’s legislative agenda. Establishment-minded donors refused to contribute to the state party as long as Paul people were in charge.

This appears to be the end (at least for now) of a long simmering dispute. The report lists several complaints by Branstad’s alliance creating the need for such a change. The first was a growing fear that the credibility of the Iowa caucus would be damaged if they keep selecting candidates who go on to lose either the primary or the general election. (See Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee.) On that score, I have to say that it doesn’t make much sense. We have competitive primaries for a reason and not every state selects the same person, so nobody picks the winner every time.

They did express some other concerns, however, such as a fear that the candidates who are perceived as being more moderate – such as a Chris Christie or Jeb Bush – might wind up skipping Iowa entirely and focusing instead on New Hampshire. This led one committee member to state, “We need to let people know that when candidates come to Iowa, they have a fair shake,”

The other question, though, is what they meant about the possible end of the straw poll.

It also jeopardizes next year’s straw poll: Branstad said the annual ritual has “outlived its usefulness,” and other critics say it’s become a spectacle that raises a lot of money for the party but has little significance politically. Pro-Paul forces, however, enthusiastically support the event and want to keep it going.

Can they really just cancel the straw poll? Aside from the fact that it gives bloggers something to do while waiting for the actual primary battles, it’s something of a tradition which draws the entire political spectrum. As much as I personally disagree with having Iowa and New Hampshire go first every single cycle, it would be a shame to lose it.

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Tags: 2016 election, caucus, Iowa

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Theabsurdityofleadershipfightsinanera

The absurdity of leadership fights in an era of populism

posted at 9:01 am on June 13, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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Philip Klein and Byron York write interesting takes on the repercussions of Eric Cantor’s stunning primary loss and subsequent resignation from House GOP leadership, but it’s not clear that one of the clear lessons has been absorbed. In part, that’s because the House GOP still hasn’t quite analyzed what it means for them, and that’s understandable given the singular nature of the event. York reports that the caucus is holding off on setting priorities for the rest of the session while they mull the meaning of Cantor’s fall:

It’s only natural that a who’s-up-and-who’s-down leadership struggle would consume House Republicans after the stunning primary defeat of Majority Leader Eric Cantor. There’s a big hole in the party’s top echelon, and it’s got to be filled.

But after a new majority leader is selected, and the leadership slate finished, GOP lawmakers will have to figure out what Cantor’s loss means for the Republican agenda. Right now, they have no idea.

That’s because they don’t know why Cantor lost. Sure, there have been dozens of stories purporting to explain the vote, but for the moment, it’s all just guesswork.

The fact that Cantor lost by 11 points in a race in which his campaign pollster projected a 34-point lead is pretty clear evidence Cantor did not know what was going on in his district. He didn’t know how many people would go to the polls — turnout was far higher than in Cantor’s primary in 2012 — and he didn’t know what motivated them.

York then goes through four possible explanations for Cantor’s loss, but misses the fact that he’s already identified the primary reason. Cantor didn’t know his own district, and his district didn’t know him. On the same day that Cantor lost a safe seat by double digits, Lindsey Graham won 57% of the vote against six opponents in South Carolina despite being one of the biggest national grassroots villains over the last few years (Cantor was a minor irritant in comparison).

What was the difference? Graham did the retail campaigning and engagement necessary to win handily. He paid attention to voters. Salena Zito went to the epicenter of the upset to talk to voters in Cantor’s district, who were tired of being ignored while Cantor focused on his own leadership ambitions:

Cantor, R-Va., underestimated the anti-Washington sentiment among voters in his 7th Congressional District, said Bruce Haynes, a Washington-based Republican strategist.

“What this race tells me is that people do not care about seniority as an argument for re-election, or how high up you are in leadership,” Haynes said. “They care that who they send to Washington is ‘one of us.’ ” …

White believes the disconnect began with his vote for TARP legislation, the 2008 financial bailout that authorized hundreds of billions of dollars in expenditures. But other issues were more personal for people, she explained: “He didn’t hold town halls; he didn’t keep appointments.”

In other words, Cantor became part of the institutions rather than someone who could represent his district’s interests in contrast to them. Cantor missed the populist swing in his district, and the House GOP seems to be missing it in general.

Philip Klein calls the election of Kevin McCarthy as Cantor’s replacement as Majority Leader “pure absurdity“:

Though we’ll never know precisely why Cantor was knocked off byDave Brat, an obscure economics professor, it’s clear that in recent years, Cantor lost the trust of the conservative base and became a symbol of Washington. Whether it was on immigration or fighting to shrink the size and scope of government, Cantor was increasingly at odds with conservatives and far too cozy with business interests.

His defeat presents House Republicans with an opportunity to signal – ahead of the 2014 midterm elections - that they’re listening to conservatives. But by elevating McCarthy, who is next in line as whip, they’d be sending the opposite message – that they’re determined to crush conservatives.

I’ll go one further than Philip on this. The focus on who gets the Majority Leader position now is itself “pure absurdity.” It’s inside baseball, a divvying of the spoils of the very institutionalism that Cantor’s district rejected. Filling the position is a necessity for organizing the caucus, but it’s only going to be for the next few months. After the midterms, there will be another leadership fight of more consequence involving the entire leadership chain, and not just the number two slot.

Cantor would have done the caucus a favor by sticking it out until then. Right now, it looks like Washington Republicans are a lot more concerned about themselves than they are about the voters, which is exactly what got Cantor into so much trouble in VA-07.

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Tags: caucus, Eric Cantor, House Republicans, Kevin McCarthy, leadership

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Herewego:Obamanowreviewingdeportationpolicy

Here we go: Obama now reviewing deportation policy after pressure from immigration activists

posted at 4:41 pm on March 14, 2014 by Allahpundit

They’ve been after him for months to use his magical unilateral executive kung fu and declare a deportation moratorium for the broader illegal population, not just the DREAMers whom he amnestized before the 2012 election. And now, finally, movement.

The amnesty cometh.

The president changed course after months of claiming there was nothing his White House could do to stem the flow of deportations of undocumented immigrants. Obama announced in a meeting readout that he has requested a review of his administration’s enforcement policies for immigration laws to see if that enforcement can be done “more humanely within the confines of the law,” the White House said Thursday…

The White House made the announcement after Obama met for more than an hour Thursday evening with three leading members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus amid a furor in the Latino and immigration-rights community over the number of deportations of undocumented immigrants during his administration.

“The president emphasized his deep concern about the pain too many families feel from the separation that comes from our broken immigration system,” the White House said in a readout of the meeting…

“It is clear that the pleas from the community got through to the President,” Gutierrez said in a later statement. “The CHC will work with him to keep families together. The President clearly expressed the heartbreak he feels because of the devastating effect that deportations have on families.”

Gutierrez, whose only loyalty is to the immigrant community, not to the Democrats, had taken to calling O the “deporter-in-chief” lately in order to twist his arm on this. He didn’t understand why, if Obama can rewrite the law on ObamaCare, he couldn’t summarily rewrite it for deportations too. That’s a completely predictable reaction to executive overreach: The more the president claims a unilateral right to upend the law on behalf of one constituent group, the more other constituent groups will demand similar favors. Power grabs become one more goodie in the federal bag to distribute to special interests.

What now? BuzzFeed looks ahead:

A source close to the CHC said members have their own reservations about what stopping deportations might mean. They say if Obama suspends deportations then it would give Republicans more ammunition to float impeachment, which brings them no closer to comprehensive immigration legislation.

“Let them try to impeach him, who gives a shit?” the source said. “They would be voting to impeach the president for helping the families of undocumented veterans.”

Silver lining: Obama’s not going to proclaim some sort of executive amnesty for illegals unless he’s completely given up on the GOP passing anything this year. It’d be a slap in the face after Boehner’s warnings that the House caucus doesn’t trust him to enforce the law faithfully, essentially a confirmation that they were right. Maybe this “review” he’s ordering is just a bluff to see if Boehner will panic and start moving on immigration again — or, failing that, maybe it’ll bait Republican border hawks into attacking O for it, which might at least get Gutierrez and Latino media off his back. I think he’ll wait to act on this even if he makes up his mind now to do it, just because there’ll be more bang for his buck later. Latino voters won’t save Democrats in the midterms but they could be a boost for them in a higher-turnout election like 2016. If O’s planning an amnesty, he’ll keep it in his pocket and then unveil it next year or in 2016, when the stakes are higher and the rewards bigger.

Tags: amnesty, border, caucus, deport, deportation, gutierrez, hispanic, immigration, obama, reform, security

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SheilaJackson-Lee:MyHousecaucusisdraftinga

Sheila Jackson-Lee: My House caucus is drafting a number of executive orders for Obama to sign

posted at 5:51 pm on February 5, 2014 by Allahpundit

Via CNS, I’m late with this but it’s worth preserving belatedly. In theory, separation of powers is supposed to prevent what you’re about to see. The president may belong to the same party as members of Congress but the quest for power forces each to guard their respective branch’s constitutional prerogatives. Pitting different arms of government against each other is one way to make sure — again, in theory — that no single arm grows too powerful. That’s checks and balances 101. I’m sure there’s a “Schoolhouse Rock” episode about it somewhere.

In reality, congressional Democrats’ despair that the GOP is set to hold the House for the foreseeable future leads to this pathetic spectacle, in which members of one branch are now working as secretaries for another to encourage it to bypass them in the legislative process. Some people used to care about this, and eventually they’ll care about it again. But not for the next three years, at least.

Tags: caucus, executive orders, house, separation of powers, Sheila Jackson Lee

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BoehnertoGOPcaucus:I’mnotcommittedto

Boehner to GOP caucus: I’m not committed to moving forward on immigration

posted at 11:21 am on January 31, 2014 by Allahpundit

A scoop from Jonathan Strong about the mood inside yesterday’s big immigration-reform rollout.

But if the public rollout of the document seemed like an announcement, the feeling inside the room was much more tentative. Speaker John Boehner, in particular, surprised many in the audience with his tepid words on behalf of moving forward.

“He seemed timid or reluctant to suggest that this was anything but a discusssion,” Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) told Breitbart News. “He even said, he made the statement—which I found surprising — that he is not commited to moving forward on any legislation. He wasn’t trying to sell us on this, I don’t think. He was saying the words but it didn’t seem to be coming from his heart.”

Baffling. He waffled last year on immigration reform, then finally mustered the courage to push it front and center this month — in an election year, no less — and now he’s waffling again. The fight to pass something will be wrenching, no matter when it happens and how solicitous Boehner’s language is. Essentially, he’s rolled a grenade into the Republican tent but left the pin in, leaving it up to the caucus to decide whether to pull it. If you’re going to use a grenade, full commitment is part of the deal, no?

Now, question: Would passing reform next year become impossible if the Republicans pick up seats in the midterms, as everyone expects? I argued yesterday that it’ll be harder because grassroots righties will expect a GOP-controlled Congress to produce a much tougher bill than they could reasonably expect to produce now. Matt Lewis counters that I’m missing the point — if the GOP takes back the Senate, grassroots righties will expect them to stay away from immigration entirely, reasoning that if inaction on the matter was no obstacle to a big win in the midterms, it’ll be no obstacle to a big win in 2016 either. True enough, some tea partiers would react that way. My sense, though, is that the rest of the GOP simply Will – Not – Tolerate another presidential election where the Republican nominee has nothing conciliatory to show Latino voters. It may be a myth that Romney lost in 2012 because he got walloped by Obama among that group, but it’s no myth that as the Latino population grows and turnout rates improve, a 72/27 Democratic advantage would be ruinous for the GOP long-term. The core question here has always been whether amnesty is the key to winning back some of those voters, either as a “magic bullet” (even McCain admits it won’t win any votes by itself) or as a sort of threshold issue on which the GOP needs to show compromise so that Latinos will give the rest of their agenda a fair look. Wherever you land on that subject, I think large numbers of centrist/establishment Republicans believe immigration reform is an absolute prerequisite to rebuilding goodwill with Latinos. And I think they’re secretly optimistic that passing amnesty would be a bit of a magic bullet with Latinos as soon as 2016, not enough to cut deeply into the Democratic advantage but maybe enough to trim five points, which could be crucial in a tight election.

So no, I don’t agree with Lewis that a redder Congress would mean doom for reform in 2015 as border hawks shift to an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach to the GOP’s chances in 2016. We already have painful experience with the reality that midterm results and presidential results are very different creatures. No matter how well Republicans do this year, it won’t be as well as they did in 2010, and 2010 ended up being no impediment to an Obama landslide in 2012. Many, many more Democrats, especially minority Democrats, will be at the polls two and a half years from now to decide who wins the White House than will be at the polls this fall to decide who holds Congress. Even tea partiers who prefer the status quo on immigration should realize that. (Some do. Rand Paul, who’ll position himself as Mr. Tea Party in the election if Cruz doesn’t run, is himself open to forms of legalization if the border is secured.) And speaking of which, why would anyone want the status quo? At the very least, Boehner and McConnell should be expected to pass a serious border security measure next year, if only to dare Obama to veto it. If border security passes, though, Democrats’ new message will be that Republicans are actually becoming more hardline against illegal immigration at a time when polls show the public is willing to allow citizenship eventually for illegals who are already here. What do Boehner and McConnell do then? A limited DREAM-type amnesty? Full legalization contingent upon measurable improvements in border security? Tea partiers may howl, but tea partiers aren’t the whole party; other Republicans will be howling for different reasons. So this brings us back to yesterday’s question: If you’re going to tackle immigration and you know that you’ll have to include some type of legalization for at least some subgroup of illegals, when is/was the best time to do it? Early last year, when House GOPers who voted yes might face a primary this year because of it? Later this year, after the primaries have passed but before the all-important midterm election? Early next year, when they’ll have a redder Congress but might figure that Republican voters will forgive them by the time the 2016 election rolls around?

I’ll leave you with Sean Trende’s theory for why Boehner thinks now is the moment:

If a fight is inevitable, have it now rather than a much messier one in 2015. Maybe the Senate Democrats won’t be able to swallow a bill with tougher enforcement provisions and without a path to citizenship, and they will own part of the death of immigration reform. Or maybe they’ll pass it, and the issue will be partly cleared off the table for an election year. For an establishment Republican, that’s win-win…

What I am saying is that they [the GOP leadership] are closer to neutral about big [midterm] gains than we might think, given the problems that the surge in base enthusiasm caused for them after the 2010 elections. So if they check agenda items like this off the list now and still get a landslide, great. But if they end up cooling off the base’s enthusiasm and get a narrow, establishment-based Senate majority and keep the House, well, that’s not the end of the world either. In fact, it would mean a more docile caucus in both Houses, which is good for those who run those Houses.

If they pass amnesty this summer and Republican voters protest by staying home in November, fine. That means fewer tea partiers end up in Congress next year, which Boehner can live with. If they don’t pass it and Republican voters turn out in force, painting Congress red, that’s fine too. A bigger majority also has certain advantages. There are upsides and downsides to either outcome for Boehner so, he probably figures, why not make his move now?

Tags: amnesty, boehner, border, caucus, GOP, immigration, reform, republican, retreat, security

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