Buying Credibility
by digby
President Obama was very disappointed in the failure of the DREAM Act and sounded as though he wanted to push it again in the next congress. The Republicans, however, don’t seem to be in a mood to cooperate:
Congressional Republicans are pronouncing President Obama’s proposal that the next Congress overhaul the country’s immigration laws as dead before arrival. […]
Congressional Republicans said in interviews Thursday that their concerns about the [DREAM Act] measure remain strong, and both House and Senate GOP leaders said they would fight any attempt to legalize any of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country before the administration secured the nation’s southern border with Mexico.
“It is pointless to talk about any new immigration bills that grant amnesty until we secure the border, since such bills will only encourage more illegal immigration,” incoming House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) said in a statement.
They seem pretty adamant. And they aren’t accepting any half way gestures, no matter how draconian:
Whenever Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.) and other immigrant-rights advocates asked President Obama how a Democratic administration could preside over the greatest number of deportations in any two-year period in the nation’s history, Obama’s answer was always the same.
Deporting almost 800,000 illegal immigrants might antagonize some Democrats and Latino voters, Obama’s skeptical supporters said the president told them, but stepped-up enforcement was the only way to buy credibility with Republicans and generate bipartisan support for an overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws.
I’m fairly sure that there is no amount of cruelty and heartlessness that will buy “credibility” among the right wingers on this, short of deportation of all undocumented workers and an electrified Berlin-style Wall across the entire southern border. And even then, there would still be work to do to ensure that all the people who “look” Hispanic (or middle eastern, why not?) are required to prove that they weren’t missed in the deportation sweeps.
Quite simply, it is impossible for anyone to “buy credibility” on issues of bigotry and xenophobia short of changing your position and becoming a bigot and xenophobe yourself. There was a time not long ago when Republican leaders tried to pretend that their right wing followers weren’t those things, but it was always absurd. It’s definitional.
So, we’re getting nowhere with this for some time. I expect things will ease up if the economy picks up. It usually does. But short of that, this will continue to be battleground — and the right is not going to meet the enemy in the middle of the field. This one’s far to important to their base and they know it.
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