Boehner’s immigration retreat

Just days after declaring immigration reform a priority for Republicans, House Speaker John Boehner has reversed himself and said any bill would be “difficult” to pass, essentially killing any prospect for reform this year. He blamed President Obama, saying many conservatives “don’t trust that the reform we’re talking about will be implemented as it was intended to be.” Boehner’s shift marked a win for vocal anti-reform Republicans like Sens. Jeff Sessions of Arizona and Ted Cruz of Texas, who argued that compromising on immigration would dilute the party’s focus on Obama’s unpopular health-care law in the upcoming midterms.

This about-face is “not on Obama,” said the Chicago Tribune in an editorial. “It’s on Boehner.” Obama made compromise possible by deporting record numbers of illegal immigrants, enraging many in his own party. But Boehner couldn’t sell hard-liners in his party on giving any kind of legal status to America’s 11 million undocumented immigrants, even though they wouldn’t be able to vote. Now Latino-Americans have more reason not to vote Republican in 2016, making Boehner’s reversal “shortsighted and self-defeating.”

Actually, this was smart politics, said Jennifer Rubin in The Washington Post. Dealing with immigration this year would only split the party and hand Democrats a much-needed legislative victory. Why open a second front when Obamacare gives Republicans “all the ammo they need” in 2014? Next year, with a GOP-majority Senate, they can pass an immigration bill “even more to their liking.”

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

This is a defeat for plain common sense, said The Wall Street Journal. “So great is the House GOP fear of a talk-radio backlash that it won’t even pass smaller bills that 75 percent of Republicans agree on.” As a result of Boehner’s cowardly punt, businesses will continue to be barred from legally hiring millions of workers, the recovery will languish at a snail’s pace, and the reactionary Right will only tighten its stranglehold on what’s supposed to be the pro-business party. “What a display of American economic leadership.”