Yet another jaw dropper from House Speaker John Boehner during his weekly press conference on Thursday, this time in response to a question about whether House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's primary defeat means House Republicans will never support immigration reform:
The issue of immigration reform has not changed. The president continues to ignore laws he's signed into law, violating his oath of office. He did it again with the release of these "Taliban Five." And I had to remind the president again yesterday that every time he does this, it makes it harder to gain the trust of our members to do the things that need to be done around here.
Earlier, in the press conference, Boehner
blamed Obama for Cantor's defeat, but if anything, this claim is even more absurd. Whatever you think about the Bergdahl release, to suggest that it has any impact at all on whether Republicans will support immigration reform is pure lunacy. In fact, it's completely irrelevant.
The real reason Republicans aren't moving forward on immigration reform is a combination of fear of their base (see Cantor, Eric) and the fact that unlike Boehner, many if not most House Republicans don't think immigration reform is among "the things that need to be done around here."
At a minimum, Boehner wants people to believe that he supports immigration reform, otherwise he wouldn't describe it as something that needs to happen. But if members of his conference agreed with him—or at least agreed with what he's saying—then he wouldn't be making up bizarre excuses about Bowe Bergdahl. He'd be at the White House, in the Rose Garden, standing at the president's side as Obama signed bipartisan immigration reform into law.