https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1HBnTlZa5A
George Will, Ron Fournier, Kim Strassel, and Julie Pace join Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday to discuss the options facing the new Republican Congress about the president’s executive orders on immigration last week (above) and the most recent deadline for completing nuclear negotiations with Iran.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtpObzZVt-k
George Will, Ron Fournier, Kim Strassel, and
President Obama isn’t doing Hillary Clinton any favors with an executive order on immigration and nuclear diplomacy with Iran. (Jewel Samad/AFP)
Hillary Clinton issued a rare statement Thursday following President Obama announcing he was signing an executive order on immigration. While it is clear camp Hillary feels it will help her chances in the 2016 Democratic nomination process, the chance it will doom her general election prospects is a real possibility.
“I support the President’s decision to begin fixing our broken immigration system and focus finite resources on deporting felons rather than families,” Clinton’s statement read. “I was hopeful that the bipartisan bill passed by the Senate in 2013 would spur the House of Representatives to act, but they refused even to advance an alternative.”
Following the Democratic Party’s historic defeat in the 2014 midterm elections, many of the party’s few remaining centrists looked to Hillary to win back working class whites in the North and Midwest, which overwhelmingly broke for the Republican Party. However, the president’s action on immigration is deeply and broadly unpopular among large majority blocs of the American public, including a significant number of Democrats.
“This move is widely unpopular with the American people,” said Democratic pollster, Pat Cadell. “And that includes a large number of white and black Democrats.”
So, why would Hillary Clinton risk further alienating working class whites?
First, as we previously reported, the Democratic Party largely believes that Northern and Midwestern white voters are not coming back in at least the short-term. That is the reason — the sole reason — for Obama’s astonishing reversal on whether he had the authority to issue an executive order on immigration. The party believes they need to “find new voters” among undocumented workers.
But, according to aides, Clinton still believes she can bridge the gap between working class whites and the ever-left-leaning Democratic Party. However, winning over lost white voters in a general election is a secondary challenge. She must first overcome a nomination process that is dominated by the most radical left elements of the party, and find acceptance in circles that would prefer self-described democratic-socialists Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
Speaking of dominating, Clinton is certainly doing so in early 2016 Democratic nomination polls. However, early surveys offer little predictive value and, if history is any guide at all, it tells us that 1) no presidential hopeful is ever going to walk through a party nomination contest and, 2) Hillary has been here before.
Clinton was also the perceived frontrunner in the 2008 Democratic nomination before she was railroaded by the more radical leftwing, which backed a junior senator polling around “–” by this time. Following George W. Bush’s impressive performance among black voters in 2004, as well as a dominating performance among Northern and Midwestern whites, a deep concern among Democratic strategists began to grow. Not only did many Democratic strategists worry that Hillary could not generate enough excitement to reign in black voters who strayed from the Democratic coalition, but also that her appeal to whites was weaker than her husband’s.
Basically, Mrs. Clinton is between a rock and a hard place. She knows what I also explained in a recent article titled Top Midterm Myth: Low Turnout Doomed Democrats, which is that — if the eventual 2016 nominee intends to put his or her head in the sand by chocking up their losses to low turnout — then they are going to lose, plain and simple. Demographics will not save Democrats in 2016 against modest Republican inroads among minorities and reclaiming this particular bloc of white voters, as we saw them do in 2014.
Yet, ultimately, none of that even matters if she cannot secure the nomination. As events of the remaining two years of President Obama’s presidency unfold, we are likely to see Hillary continue to learn this delicate dance. Her challenge will be keeping the trust and excitement of her base, without further alienating working class whites. To Mrs. Clinton, I say good luck with that. As of now, I am of the mind that it is an impossible task.
Sure, it’s true. I am just a lowly analyst at the Internet’s most accurate election projection model of 2014, so, “what difference at this point does” my analysis “make?”
Read full statement released by Hillary Clinton:
I support the President’s decision to begin fixing our broken immigration system and focus finite resources on deporting felons rather than families. I was hopeful that the bipartisan bill passed by the Senate in 2013 would spur the House of Representatives to act, but they refused even to advance an alternative. Their abdication of responsibility paved the way for this executive action, which follows established precedent from Presidents of both parties going back many decades. But, only Congress can finish the job by passing permanent bipartisan reform that keeps families together, treats everyone with dignity and compassion, upholds the rule of law, protects our borders and national security, and brings millions of hard-working people out of the shadows and into the formal economy so they can pay taxes and contribute to our nation’s prosperity. Our disagreements on this important issue may grow heated at times, but I am confident that people of good will and good faith can yet find common ground. We should never forget that we’re not discussing abstract statistics – we’re talking about real families with real experiences. We’re talking about parents lying awake at night afraid of a knock on the door that could tear their families apart, people who love this country, work hard, and want nothing more than a chance to contribute to the community and build better lives for themselves and their children.
In an effort to secure her base
From left: US Secretary of State John Kerry, former EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif meet for talks on the sidelines of nuclear talks with Iran aimed at settling a dispute over Iran’s nuclear program at the Palais Coburg in Vienna on Saturday Nov. 22, , 2014. (AP Photo/Joe Klamar, Pool)
The Iran nuclear talks between Western diplomats and their Iranian counterparts hit a stalemate Sunday as the deadline to reach an agreement looms. The Wall Street Journal reported late Saturday that reaching a final agreement by a Monday deadline was “impossible,” according to a senior Western diplomat, despite the base principles of an agreement all but settled.
“We have reached a point in the talks where probably we can’t have an agreement without some very significant moves from the Iranians,” the diplomat told the Journal. “No one can say this is finished … The only thing is we can’t do the job for the Iranians.”
Reuters reported that the Iranian state-run ISNA news agency cited a member of Iran’s diplomatic negotiating team, who also said an agreement by Monday was “impossible.”
“Considering the short time left until the deadline and number of issues that needed to be discussed and resolved, it is impossible to reach a final and comprehensive deal by Nov. 24,” the official is quoted as saying. “The issue of extension of the talks is an option on the table and we will start discussing it if no deal is reached by Sunday night.”
On Saturday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that there remained “serious gaps” between the two sides. However, Kerry’s German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said the fate of the talks is “still completely open at this point.”
The Iran nuclear talks involve the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China. The nations began a final round of talks with Iran on Tuesday, which they hope will force Tehran to curb its develop of a nuclear weapon in exchange for lifting economically crippling sanctions.
While Kerry spoke on the telephone Saturday to Arab foreign ministers in the Gulf, many of whom have joined the alliance against the Islamic State, the leaders of the countries expressed their fear Iran’s potential abilities will move forward even if an agreement is reached on their terms. Canadian and Turkish counterparts expressed to Secretary of State Kerry much the same concerns. He also talked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by phone, but the State Department curiously gave few details of the discussion.
There are reportedly two key sticking points in the talks. First, the speed of sanctions relief and, second, the amount Iran would reduce its production of nuclear material. Iran wants the vast majority of U.S., E.U., and U.N. sanctions to be lifted if and when a deal is reached, but the West has said that sanctions levied by the U.N. in response to Iran’s nuclear program can’t be lifted before Iran has proven it holding to the agreement.
The U.S. has already scaled back sanctions at the direction of the Obama administration, which a bipartisan majority of senators have opposed.
As far as enrichment of nuclear material, Western officials told the Journal that any permanent agreement must ensure that Iran is at least a year away from producing enough nuclear material to build a nuclear bomb.
Meanwhile, The New York Times reported late Saturday that Western intelligence agencies are attempting to insert language into the final proposal that would ensure inspections, including a method of tracking the parts and fuel to and from any Iranian nuclear complex.
Iran reportedly has three major “declared” nuclear facilities, but it is know that there is at least two covert facilities located in Iran. U.S. officials believe that any nuclear bomb made by Iran would likely come from one of those places.
Fordo, which is know to be one of the covert facilities located in Iran, was outed publicly for the world to see by President Obama in 2009. The second such facility located at the city of Natanz is believed to house thousands of uranium-enriching centrifuges.
The Iran nuclear talks between Western diplomats
This week on the McLaughlin Group, Pat Buchanan, Eleanor Clift, Mort Zuckerman and Tom Rogan discuss President Obama’s unilateral action on immigration, the Jerusalem attack and more.
This week on the McLaughlin Group, Pat
President Barack Obama appears on screen at the 15th annual Latin Grammy Awards at the MGM Grand Garden Arena on Thursday, Nov. 20, 2014, in Las Vegas. He announced he will expand deferred action, which is the first step in a series of steps to offer executive amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)
I am a data guy, an editor and senior political analyst of an Internet news outlet that boasts the most accurate election projection model of 2014. Because my role requires readers trust that my projections are a result of impartial analysis, I typically refrain from writing opinion or offering excessive commentary.
However, today I am breaking my own rule, and joining an expanding list of number-crunchers, who have offered their own take on the president’s recent decision to sign an executive order contrary to current immigration law. While I am a data guy, I am also a liberty-loving American, an admirer and defender of the rule of law that once took precedent in the decision-making processes of our nation’s great statesmen of yesteryear. I am a truth-seeker, who — in the event I am privileged to stumble across it — feels compelled to share it with my fellow-Americans of all colors.
Introspection has led me to believe on more than one occasion that I chase and digest data because, unless it has been blatantly tainted, it can be trusted to tell me the truth. Unfortunately, the same can no longer be said of the media fourth estate, who have completely abdicated their once-solemn responsibility to the public to act as a watchdog to those in power. Perhaps, if they weren’t too busy faking public opinion polls, spinning or ignoring stories and generally covering for their big government masters, they would tell you what the data are telling me.
Data trends don’t lie, but President Barack Obama does, a lot.
Despite Obama’s claim he cares so deeply for “undocumented workers” that he felt compelled to reverse his stance on the legality of his executive decree, without offering so much as an explanation to the American public, the factual record and data suggest he doesn’t give a damn about Hispanics.
Undocumented workers of all races are nothing more than a vote to President Obama and the Democrats — no more, no less.
In 2006, then-Sen. Barack Obama sat in the Oval Office and pledged his support and his vote to President George W. Bush on comprehensive immigration reform. The day the vote went down in the Senate, the jaws in the White House dropped when news arrived that it was idealistic Illinois Sen. Barack Obama who cast the deciding vote against the bill. Obama’s 24-hour evolution back in 2006 is largely seen as a cave to the unions. But there is more to it than that.
Fast-forward to 2014. The midterm election results were historic and significant, as was the Democrats’ response to them. In Top Midterm Myth: Low Turnout Doomed Democrats, I recently demonstrated that the low turnout argument is both wrong, and a distraction from the real significance of the 2014 election results. My historical and data-based argument answers all of the questions posed by the president’s critics in recent days.
“If he felt so strongly about this, then why did he wait until after the election?” Charles Krauthammer asked shortly after Obama’s speech. “Why, if he felt so strongly, if Scripture dictates it, didn’t he do this before the 2012 election, his own election? Why did he do nothing in 2009 and 2010 when he had the White House, the Democrats had a supermajority in the House and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, when he could have done this constitutionally?”
The answer is simple. Democrats have come to two conclusions.
First, Republican inroads among Northern and Midwestern white voters represents the finality of a long-observed trend line that suggests it is likely they are not coming back to the Democratic Party. They believe these voters are gone for at least the short-term and, even if their nominee and candidates were to move back to the middle, it would only serve to discourage their base (see Hillary Rodham Clinton’s declared support of Obama’s presidential edict).
Further, Democratic strategists are increasingly fearful that the nearly monolithic black coalition, as well as the 2 to 1 support they enjoyed among Hispanic voters, were an “Obama electorate” phenomena. They believe it is unlikely to be repeated by their 2016 nominee and candidates. The significant Republican inroads among minorities in Florida, Nevada, Colorado, Georgia, Virginia, among others in 2014, has further exacerbated that fear.
While 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney and other GOP candidates overwhelmingly won white voters in 2012, the margin was a result of a disproportionate concentration of support in the South and, to a lesser extent, Appalachia. Even if Romney won 40 percent of the Hispanic vote nationwide — mirroring George W. Bush’s performance in 2004 — he still would have lost. Only in the state of Florida did the Hispanic vote truly make an election-swaying influence, a disheartening reality considering Gov. Rick Scott’s increased support among Hispanic Floridians.
In fact, in my recent aforementioned article, I explain that if Mitt Romney won the same margins demographically that Republican candidates won in 2014, then President Obama would have comfortably lost the 2012 election. Previous polling and pre-2014 election research conducted by PPD suggested just that.
Romney didn’t lose because of his poor showing among Hispanics — in fact, he could have won 70 percent of Hispanic voters and still would’ve lost — but rather he simply did not perform strong enough among Northern and Midwestern whites, a bloc George W. Bush dominated in 2004.
In 2014, Republican candidates, in Colorado and Iowa for instance, not only dominated among these whites once again, but also outperformed Romney among the only group of rural white voters Democrats have stubbornly continued to appeal to — low-income rural whites without a college degree.
And it scared the hell out of Democrats.
While eavesdropping on what Democrats thought was a private conference call following their devastating defeat, during which Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) argued why members should keep her as leader, several times she and other Democratic leaders acknowledged the fact they needed to “find new voters” and, not once but twice, “immigration” was used in the same breath.
From the corrupt 19th century Tammany Hall political machine to modern-day manufactured border crises, the Democratic Party has always sought to exploit what they hoped would be a permanent underclass, which they create and systematically subjugate. It is their true reasoning behind their opposition to school choice, an issue data overwhelmingly show to be an effective anti-poverty policy and a path for minorities to climb the social-status ladder. And, just as I’ve argued prior, it is also the true reasoning behind their opposition to passing a border security bill first.
Political coalitions in American politics are nothing if not temporary, and the history of Democratic Party coalitions tells a story of one underclass from another abandoning their message of grievance as they have socially and politically matured over generations. In 2008, black voters began to show signs of political and social maturation before the radical leftwing of the Democratic Party derailed Hillary Clinton for a junior senator, a historic figure who would reign in large numbers of black voters who strayed from the coalition in 2004, and they are in search of new underclass now strictly as a means of political survival.
That’s why the all-but-certain 2016 presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton released a rare statement in support of the president’s immigration action — she won’t be railroaded, again — and why it was taken in the first place.
“So, to everyone who voted, I want you to know that I hear you,” the president said at a press conference the day after Election Day. “To the two-thirds of voters who chose not to participate in the process yesterday, I hear you, too.”
Don’t let the president fool you. He heard the American voters, alright — all of the voters — bet on it. That’s why he and Democrats know they need to “find new voters” in the short- and long-term. This is the prelude to amnesty and its sole purpose — politics — pure and simple.
PPD's senior political analyst Richard D. Baris
House Republicans on Friday filed the long-expected ObamaCare lawsuit against the Obama administration liberal law Professor Jonathan Turley as lead counsel. Turley. who currently serves as the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Chair of Public Interest Law at George Washington University, said the suit challenges the Health and Human Services Department and the Treasury Department on two key areas of the health law’s implementation.
First, the lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. cites the administration’s unilateral delay of the employer mandate, a rule that was scheduled to kick in this year. However, with millions of Americans set to lose their policies and be forced into the more expensive exchanges, the president decided to wait until after the election.
“Time after time, the president has chosen to ignore the will of the American people and rewrite federal law on his own without a vote of Congress,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said in a statement. “If this president can get away with making his own laws, future presidents will have the ability to as well. The House has an obligation to stand up for the Constitution, and that is exactly why we are pursuing this course of action.”
Second, it challenges the roughly $175 billion in funding the administration has given to insurance companies to subsidize coverage for ObamaCare enrollees.
“People are looking at this controversy in terms of whether they support health care or immigration reform — that’s not what this is about,” Jonathan Turley said. “President Obama did not start this trend toward a dominant American presidency — it’s’ been building for some time, but it certainly has accelerated under President Obama. We have a system that is not designed for this type of uber-presidency.”
He recently took to his website to further explain his decision to take up legal arms alongside House Republicans.
“As many on this blog are aware, I have previously testified, written, and litigated in opposition to the rise of executive power and the countervailing decline in congressional power in our tripartite system,” Turley wrote. “I have also spent years encouraging Congress, under both Democratic and Republican presidents, to more actively defend its authority, including seeking judicial review in separation of powers conflicts.”
Meanwhile, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz on Friday took to Twitter to use the lawsuit to rack in the money, posting a link to a page where Democratic supporters could make donations to the party. Of course, despite being badly outspent in the 2014 midterm elections, House Republicans now have their largest majority since the Hoover administration.
#Priorities RT @TheDemocrats: Fight back: http://t.co/hdfrmpLYbn pic.twitter.com/8lnj4ENimp
— D Wasserman Schultz (@DWStweets) November 21, 2014
What Chairwoman Schultz failed to mention was that opposition to the law was also in large part based on an unprecedented number of special interest deals that amounted to legislative rents and bribes. The insurance companies, themselves once opposed to the bill, was offered what has been repeatedly referred to as a “bailout bribe,” a legal assurance in the bill that the American taxpayers would be on the hook for over 80 percent of their losses if the risk pools began an insurance death spiral.
House Republicans on Friday filed the long-expected
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), one of the most outspoken critics of the president’s immigration policy, responded to Obama’s executive action on immigration Friday. Speaking at an event hosted by The Heritage Foundation on Friday, Sen. Sessions pushed back on suggestions that Republicans in Congress will move to impeach Obama.
“No, we are not going to impeach or have a move to impeach,” Sessions said. “The president has certain powers. We truly believe, and I think it’s accurate to say he abused those powers.”
What Sen. Sessions and other congressional Republicans have suggested is a tactic that has been used successfully by both Democrats and Republicans to prevent the president from closing the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, another move that is widely unpopular among the American people.
He also spoke to the tone struck by President Obama in his speech Thursday night, which suggested that the American people were angry at immigrants and, in general, held some ill-will toward them. Despite the president’s assertions, polls show the American people are open to a so-called “pathway to citizenship,” if and when the border is secured first, but staunchly oppose the president taking executive action on his own without Congress.
“I don’t think the American people are mad at immigrants. They fully understand that immigrants would like to come to America, more than we can accept,” he added. “They are mad at their government and their politicians. And that’s what the anger is about because we refuse to do what the right thing is.”
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), one of the
Jim Webb speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Photo: John Shinkle)
He may have picked a bad time to do so, but former Democratic Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA announced Thursday via Twitter he is leaning toward running for president. Webb took the first step in becoming a serious challenge to Hillary Rodham Clinton.
He announced he has formed an exploratory committee in a message posted from his Twitter account late Wednesday, making him the first candidate of either of the two major political parties to take the initial official step for the White House.
“A strong majority of Americans agree that we are at a serious crossroads,” Webb wrote in a message posted to a website for his committee with a 14-minute video address attached. “In my view the solutions are not simply political, but those of leadership. I learned long ago on the battlefields of Vietnam that in a crisis, there is no substitute for clear-eyed leadership.”
The response from fellow-Democrats, including Clinton ally Donna Brazile, was positive. Of course, Brazile comes from an era of the Democratic Party that is — or, at least, pretends to be — far less radical than the hard left core representing the party today.
Thank you! @donnabrazile : Best of luck to fmr. Sen Jim Webb on his announcement of an exp. committee for the Dem nomination for President.
— Jim Webb (@JimWebbUSA) November 20, 2014
What is unclear is whether the Democratic Party, with its drastic move to the hard left following the midterm election, still has a place for a moderate Democrat like Webb. The field Webb would join would almost certainly include Vice President Joe Biden, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (whose deep unpopularity largely led to a Republican Larry Hogan being election), and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described “socialist Democrat” running as an independent.
But, Washington, the buzz is dominated by hard leftist Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). If Democrats are practical in 2016, which the evidence suggests they likely will not be, Webb would make for a strong viable candidate.
He may have picked a bad time
President Obama speaks from the White House on his executive order to grant millions of illegal immigrants deferred action status and work visas on Thursday, Nov. 20, 2014.
According to a senior White House official, President Obama was hoping to bait Republicans with his executive action on immigration, forcing a government shutdown. The president Thursday night announced he would give deferred action status to millions of illegal immigrants by circumventing Congress, and any GOP plan to undo this executive decree will be vetoed.
The official said that the president met with Democratic strategists upon his return from Asia and — rather than heed the election results and give the newly elected Republican Congress a chance to act — decided that this was a fight that the White House wanted to have. The official said that the White House didn’t want to get boxed in by bills passed by the new majority, specifically a widely popular border security bill that would have served as a prerequisite to any other congressional action on immigration.
“Deferred action will go ahead regardless of a government shutdown, so the president wins either way,” the officials said. “The president will veto any bill that impacts his executive order, and welcomes a shutdown.”
They also said that the American people will hear a lot about “accountability” in the next few months, to combat the opposition’s message of “amnesty.” Further, at a meeting Wednesday night at the White House, Democratic leaders in Congress pressed the president to do something that would help the members of their otherwise defeated minority party.
“The basic message to the president from top Democrats was ‘you broke it, now fix it’,” the official said. “A large part of the plan to revive the party is centered around this strategy.”
President Obama did not invite Republican members of Congress to the White House for the meeting Wednesday, which ended up being less a meeting about immigration policy and more a strategy session for the Democratic Party. Republicans criticized the president for excluding them from the meeting, but even more so for the actual order Thursday night.
“By making that announcement, he is making it very to clear to those around the world waiting to get in the U.S. legally that they are chumps,” said Charles Krauhammer, following the president’s speech. “I find the president’s audacity here rather remarkable.”
“If he felt so strongly about this, then why did he wait until after the election.?” Krauthammer asked. “Why, if he felt so strongly about it and if Scripture dictates it, didn’t he do this before the 2012 election, before his own election? Why did he do nothing in 2009 and 2010 when he had the White House, the House and the Senate, when he could have done this through legislation constitutionally?”
In 2009 and 2010, the president enjoyed a filibuster-proof Democratic majority in both houses of Congress, yet did not act on immigration reform for those two years. Now, the president and Democrats are making the argument that he had to take executive action because the Republican-controlled House of Representatives failed to pass a bill even though they had a shorter period of time to do so.
According to a senior White House official,
President Obama Thursday night addressed the American people to announce he will take executive action on immigration, blaming Republicans for not passing a bill.
“For a year and a half now, Republican leaders in Congress have refused to vote,” he said. “The same kind of action has been taken by Republican and Democrat presidents before me, and will help make our immigration system more fair and more just.”
Except, in at least 25 separate occasions, the president has said on video that such an action would be unprecedented, illegal and unfair to those who have been waiting in line legally. No other president has issued an executive order that seeks to achieve a policy that a congressional piece of legislation explicitly prohibits them from doing.
“By making that announcement, he is making it very to clear to those around the world waiting to get in the U.S. legally that they are chumps,” said Charles Krauhammer following the president’s speech. “I find the president’s audacity here rather remarkable.”
“If he felt so strongly about this, then why did he wait until after the election.?” Krauthammer asked. “Why, if he felt so strongly he thought it warranted invoking Scripture, didn’t he do this before the 2012 election, his own election? Why did he do nothing in 2009 and 2010 when he had the White House, the House and the Senate, when he could have done this constitutionally?”
Krauthammer touched on a common theme throughout the president’s speech, which was to ignore the facts, his own past statements, and aim to distract from the constitutional with the moral. Several times the president mentioned “mass deportations,” which no one has ever proposed as an alternative policy.
Here are a few of the president’s most striking statements:
The long list of emotionally charged comments above underscores why the president’s executive order is considered as amnesty by large numbers of Americans. The narrative will also be used to tear at the heart strings of others when it is time to give those impacted by the order entitlements, health care, other welfare programs, and the vote.
Republicans are gearing up to fight the president’s power grab “tooth and nail,” House Speaker John Boehner said. Soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made statements from the Senate floor Thursday morning, and promised a legislative fight when Republicans take full control of Congress in 2015. Regardless, it is the legal issue that truly concerns the newly elected Republican majority in both the House and Senate.
“If President Obama acts in defiance of the people and imposes his will on the country, Congress will act,” McConnell said. He also echoed Krauthammer’s sentiment about shafting those who have been waiting in line legally for years.
“What does the president have to say to the countless aspiring immigrants who spent literally years waiting patiently in line? To the people who played by the rules? Where’s the compassion for them?” McConnell asked.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said in an op-ed in Politico Wednesday that if Obama acts, the new GOP majority in the Senate should retaliate by not acting on a single one of his nominees – executive or judicial – “so long as the illegal amnesty persists.”
“I’m open to some form of immigration reform. I’m open to expanding work visas. I’m open to a lot of ideas,” said Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said Thursday in an interview. “But the president can’t do this. This goes against the fundamental separation of powers that we have in our country.”
President Obama Thursday night addressed the American
