E.J. Dionne lays out the game:
WASHINGTON -- Stay wide awake in the coming weeks. This is a historic moment when all of the divisions, misunderstandings and hatreds of President Obama's time in office have come to a head....
[M]ainstream Republicans seem as angry at Obama as the tea partyers. They argue repeatedly that by moving on his own, Obama has made it impossible for Congress to act.
And in fact he has, though not for the reasons they'd like you to think.
You'd think that Republicans who genuinely support immigration reform would want to prove the president wrong in a different way: by passing a comprehensive bill. That only a few of them are saying this is an obvious sign to the president's supporters that Obama is right in suspecting that the House GOP would continue to bob and weave to avoid the issue -- as they did for the one year, four months and 24 days between the passage of the genuinely bipartisan immigration reform bill in the Senate and Obama's announcement....
[Progressives] not only agree with the substance of what Obama did but also see him as finally calling the bluff of his opponents. He has forced the contradictions of the Republican establishmentarians into the sunlight.
They'd expected Obama to buckle to avoid confrontation, and let them get away with their hollow promises as he's done in the past. What he's done instead is set them up for having to deal with the right wing of their party, the loons howling for 12 million deportations and summary execution for undocumented border crossers.
Now, they can no longer have it both ways. Many of them claim they agree with the substance of what Obama did and also that Congress should pass a broader immigration bill. If this is true, then why should they spend all their energy trying to undo the constructive steps he has just taken? If they punt and simply join in the rancid attacks on Obama as an "emperor" and a "monarch," they will demonstrate for all to see that the GOP really is dominated by its right wing and that those of more measured views are simply too timid to take on their internal adversaries.
No wonder they're so angry with the president....
Obama has just told them their free ride is over....
As Billmon says: