Anyone who is still arguing that the Republican Party is not, in fact, a dysfunctional wreck is going to have quite a bit of work cut out for themselves in explaining how one of the most xenophobic members of the party managed to lead a revolt that stomped out any rational attempts at immigration reform. Attempts, of course, that the party desperately wanted in order to show that they were
not as xenophobic or as dysfunctional
as America might believe.
Congress' most outspoken enemy of immigration reform told TPM that House Speaker John Boehner made the right move by hitting the brakes on the effort last week.
"It's the right position and makes sense and is consistent with a majority of our conference -- a significant majority of our conference," Rep. Steve King (R-IA) told TPM in a brief interview on Monday evening. [...]
The Iowa congressman said reform opponents must keep the heat on Republican leaders so that they don't change their minds.
Rep. King may have gotten mocked and pilloried for his warnings about immigrants mostly being drug mules with melon-sized calves, etc., but his contingent won and all the "sensible" Republicans had to give up the campaign lest it do even more damage to the party's credibility than it was already doing.
A large part of this is the tea party, a group that quickly morphed from "tax" movement to a catch-all bin for every far-right crackpot disillusioned as to why the hyper-conservative Bush reign did not lead to the magical utopia they had been promised. Mix in a bunch of "border" groups, a bunch of militia groups and militia-lite groups, all the diehard racists and bigots and xenophobes and everyone else; the movement itself may be less visible, but the party members that they so successfully pushed into office are still obsessed with the need to cater to the ultra-right.