Republican Amnesty: In Lies We Trust

It was a Republican electoral head fake.

They always favored amnesty; but prior to the mid-term elections, in order to mobilize their voter base, the Republican leadership pretended to oppose Barack Obama’s threat of executive amnesty.

On February 24, 2014, the US Chamber of Commerce, the heart and soul of the Republican establishment, laid the groundwork for Republican amnesty for illegal aliens...

[Chamber President Tom] Donohue. “The case for immigration reform is clear. The need is undeniable. The time is now.”

Donohue had previously stated that they would “pull out all the stops” to get immigration reform in 2014...

Having received his marching orders, on March 4, 2014, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said that he wanted to get amnesty legislation done before the end of the year...

Then came the head fake.

Knowing support for amnesty was a losing issue, the Republican establishment focused their opposition on executive amnesty, hoping that, if it was presented forcefully, voters might also think that it included any form of amnesty.

During the run-up to the midterm elections, Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC), called executive amnesty “un-American” and “unconstitutional, illegal, and we don’t support it.”

Priebus promised that if the Republican Party took the Senate, they would do everything in their power to stop Obama from proceeding on the executive amnesty...

Among voters, strong “majorities of men (75%), women (74%), whites (79%), blacks (59%), and Hispanics (54%),” in addition to tri-partisan majorities of “self-identified Republicans (92%), Independents (80%), and Democrats (51%),” did not want Obama to enact executive amnesty.

Yet, according to Reps. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and Steve King (R-IA), the political establishment, both Republican and Democrats, made a decision months ago that they were going to approve amnesty.

HR 83, a bill literally crafted behind closed doors in cigar smoke-filled rooms by a handful of legislators and staffers, endorses and fully funds Barack Obama’s unconstitutional executive actions granting amnesty to illegal aliens, including Social Security benefits to support them...

They did so not out of weakness.

In order to preserve their fragment of the political landscape as junior partners in a corrupt status quo, it is a more defensible position for the Republican establishment to be deemed eunuchs and cowards rather than what they are: bold-faced liars who care little about the Constitution and represent only themselves and the interests of their wealthy financiers...