Friday Open Thread [2.27.15]

Sen. Harry Reid is the Minority Leader, but he learned well from his predecessor’s unprecedented obstruction, and he is employing Mitch McConnell’s evil tactics to such success that Mr. Reid still controls the agenda in Congress. Politico reports that Reid’s “uncompromising posture during the flap over homeland security funding and his emerging plans for an upcoming fight over immigration make clear he’s doing little to change the hardball style that defined his tenure as majority leader.

“The 75-year-old Reid, who may seek reelection next year and is in his second stint as minority leader, is betting that Republicans are so nervous about being blamed for a crisis in Washington — as they have been repeatedly before — that they will capitulate again. Naturally, his unyielding stance has maddened Republicans.”

Meanwhile, in the House, the Dems there show some signs of stiffened spine as well. Some House Republicans are working on a measure that would fund the Department of Homeland Security for only three weeks. It seems pointless, since what will change over the course of those three weeks among the GOP that will make them pass a clean bill without any immigration riders? Because that is the only way a DHS funding bill gets to the President’s desk. Now, given the dynamics of the House Republican Caucus, I doubt there are 218 votes among that group to pass a three week clean bill, even though there are over 240 Republicans in the House now. So obviously Boehner will hope Democrats join him. Not going to happen, according to a statement from a Democratic leadership aide, per Huffington Post’s Sam Stein:

The House Democratic leadership is whipping against this bill. If House Republicans want to end up with another crisis that risks our national security in a matter of days they can do it with 218 votes of their own.

Mara Liason at NPR gives three reasons why President Obama is winning the Immigration fight.

1. Congress can’t stop him from implementing his executive actions on immigration.
Congress can shut down the Department of Homeland Security, but even that won’t stop the president from using his prosecutorial discretion to give as many as 10 million people effective protection from deportation. A Texas judge may have stopped him from offering work permits or papers to individual immigrants, granting them temporary legal status, but the judge never disputed the president’s power to decide how to prioritize law enforcement. It estimates that only 1 million of the 11 million immigrants here illegally are recent border-crossers or have criminal records.

2. House and Senate Republicans can’t get on the same page.
On this issue Democrats, for a change, are united. House Speaker John Boehner told his Republican colleagues that he and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell haven’t spoken in two weeks, although they did finally have a meeting Wednesday afternoon. And while McConnell was willing to throw in the towel and allow a “clean” DHS funding bill, Boehner can’t get his conservatives to agree. The Republican leadership is convinced it will be blamed for shutting down DHS at a time when the American people are increasingly concerned about terrorist threats. But the conservative base is not convinced. Democrats feel they have the upper hand, with a message that, at its simplest and crudest, says: Republicans played politics with the nation’s security in order to force the president to deport more hardworking Hispanics.

3. The president’s position is more popular.
What the president wants to do — bring out of the shadows immigrants who have been in this country for a long time, have U.S. citizen children, and clean records — is wildly popular with Hispanics. The broader public supports the substance of the policy, even if polls show lower support for the way he went about it — acting unilaterally. But the president’s action is extremely unpopular with the conservative base of the Republican Party, which calls it “executive amnesty”.

Kudos to Former Texas Governor Rick Perry. Yes, I just said that. Why?

“These are Americans. You are talking about, in the case of ISIS, people who are beheading individuals and committing heinous crimes, who are the face of evil. To try to make the relationship between them and the unions is inappropriate.” — Rick Perry, in an interview with NBC News, criticizing Scott Walker’s comparison of union protests with the Islamic State.

Scott Walker is an evil man and his political career must be destroyed at all costs. He is a slightly smarter Sarah Palin with male genitalia. Luckily, the polling boom has gone to his head, and he let some of the evil stupid contained within his brain to leak out. Eventually, he will be toxic to the general public. I mean, if even Rick Perry says you have gone too far, you are obviously off the road and in the forest.

Even the conservative National Review called Walker’s comparison “awful:”

That is a terrible response. First, taking on a bunch of protesters is not comparably difficult to taking on a Caliphate with sympathizers and terrorists around the globe, and saying so suggests Walker doesn’t quite understand the complexity of the challenge from ISIS and its allied groups.

Secondly, it is insulting to the protesters, a group I take no pleasure in defending. The protesters in Wisconsin, so furiously angry over Walker’s reforms and disruptive to the procedures of passing laws, earned plenty of legitimate criticism. But they’re not ISIS. They’re not beheading innocent people. They’re Americans, and as much as we may find their ideas, worldview, and perspective spectacularly wrongheaded, they don’t deserve to be compared to murderous terrorists.

Joe Klein says Jeb Bush is running like a grown up. That means he is doomed for the Republican nomination.

“In a week during which Rudolph Giuliani went crusader-­ballistic questioning President Obama’s ­patriotism—­indeed, questioning his ­upbringing—Jeb Bush gave a speech about foreign affairs, the third serious policy speech he’s given this winter. Giuliani got all the headlines, of course. That’s how you do it now: say something heinous and the world will beat a path to your door. And Bush’s speech wasn’t exactly a barn burner. His delivery was rushed and unconvincing, though he was more at ease during the question period. He was criticized for a lack of specificity. But Bush offered something far more important than specificity. He offered a sense of his political style and temperament, which in itself presents a grownup and civil alternative to the Giuliani-­style pestilence that has plagued the Republic for the past 25 years.”

“It has been the same in each of Bush’s three big speeches. He is a political conservative with a moderate disposition. And after giving his ­speeches a close read, I find Bush’s disposition far more important than his position on any given issue. In fact, it’s a breath of fresh air. I disagree with his hard line toward Cuba and the Iran nuclear negotiations, and I look forward to hearing what he has to say about reforming Obama­care. His arguments so far merit consideration, even when one disagrees with them.”

Bush is the Donor Class and Beltway Punditry Candidate for the GOP. He will be well financed and will go far in the primary. He is the Mitt Romney and John McCain of 2016. And remember, Mitt Romney and John McCain won. But I don’t see Jeb doing it.