Whatever.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz plans to take a hard-line stand that could rile up conservatives just as lawmakers — including two from his home state — are struggling to address the growing humanitarian crisis along the southern border.
The conservative firebrand believes that any bill to deal with the unaccompanied migrant children at the border must also include language to stop a 2012 immigration directive from President Barack Obama — a proposal unlikely to go anywhere in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
He's talking about Obama administration plan to defer deportation of undocumented children who have been in the country for an extended length of time, which is an act so intolerable to conservatives that they keep talking about possibly impeaching him for it. Cruz and the rest of the Republicans, save a scant few who have actual presidential ambitions, want those kids catapulted out of the country with all possible speed, lest they foul our schools with their learning or start believing they belong in America just because they've spent most if not nearly-all of their lives here. Or something. You'll have to get them to explain it, all I know is that they've gotten a bee in their bonnet about little brown children that has caused protests from California to Arizona to Steve King's melon-calved imagination.
It's not just Ted Cruz, either; there are a number of Republican lawmakers who are insisting that America not spend one thin dime more on border security or towards the current spike in child refugees unless it also contains language to require more and faster deportations. This does seem to be the (latest) hill they want to die on.
That said, Ted Cruz is a reliable oracle for whatever Republicans could do that would turn out worst for them. He's the one who pushed the Republican House to shut down the government, remember, under the bold plan of something something then we win. If he's now aligning himself with the Steve King-led xenophobe wing of the party, that's a pretty good indication that (1) there's about to be a huge fight on this and (2) that Ted Cruz is personally shipping in a crateful of rakes for his party to step on.
Also too, maybe the party could consider doing the decent thing here because it is the decent thing, and not because of an obsessive insistence on opposing every single particular thing that the current president does. No? All right, just had to mention it.