Sean Hannity and Texas Gov. Rick Perry, co-chairmen of the GOP's Latino Outreach Committee
Apparently, the only way a Republican can take a reasonable position on immigration reform these days is to speak
under the condition of anonymity:
One GOP political operative, who requested anonymity to speak frankly about the strategy, warned that the party is falling into a trap on immigration. He described a hypothetical disaster scenario for the party in which the president takes executive action on deferring deportations; then, Republicans try to defund the new program and potentially try to shut down the government. In this case, the 2016 Republican presidential primaries would become a litmus test on whether the candidate would end the policy -- forcing candidates to take the position that millions of people should be stripped of protections put in place by President Barack Obama.
"That is a terrible place to be politically and that's where we're going to be," the operative said. "This is like a slow-moving car wreck where we can see exactly where it's heading. And if anybody thinks that's not going to be a problem in Colorado, in Florida, in Arizona and Nevada and all of these places, they just live in fantasy land."
The
GOP position on immigration truly is absurd: They are simultaneously trying to claim that they want to do something on immigration while refusing to take action, then saying that if President Obama takes action, they will refuse to take action ... even though they were already refusing to take action.
If the GOP actually wanted to do something about immigration reform, nothing is stopping them. But they don't want to take action: Instead, they want to fight with one another about who is standing the tallest against whatever actions President Obama ends up taking.
Two years ago, Republicans were talking about how to have a chance of winning the next presidential election, they needed to embrace immigration reform. Eighteen months ago, a handful of them even voted for immigration reform in the U.S. Senate. But now all they can talk about is how President Obama has made them completely opposed to any sort of reform ... because he's taking action to reform immigration.
Bottom line: As long as President Obama moves forward as promised—and Democrats support him—when 2016 rolls around, Republicans are going to be wishing for the good old days when "self-deportation" was their biggest problem.