With Barack Obama having thrown down the gauntlet on immigration reform and his promise that he will address immigration issues via executive order, the Republican Party seems headed towards possible self-destruction thanks to the Christofascist,Tea Party/white supremacist base of the party. The seething hatred of racial minorities, especially Hispanics, may be more than the so-called GOP leadership can control. Now, the insanity and dysfunction which have racked the House of Representatives thanks to the GOP majority may well over take the Senate after January. The talk of government shut downs and other spittle flecked lunacy may well prove that the GOP is in fact incapable of governing and force voters to realize the party belongs to vulture capitalists, corporate polluters, racists and religious fanatics. Average Americans need not apply. The New York Times looks at the GOP quandary. Here are highlights:
A rerun of the 2013 shutdown battles over the Affordable Care Act has the potential to drown out the new Republican message before the party even takes control of Congress. . . . “I think we need to go all the way,” said Representative Raúl R. Labrador, Republican of Idaho, referring to what steps Republicans should be prepared to take to prevent the president from acting unilaterally on immigration. “What I think is a mistake is for any Republican to take any option off the table.”The president’s decision has broad support among members of his own party on Capitol Hill. While they have quibbled about the best moment for Mr. Obama to announce the plan — some are pushing him to delay until at least mid-December, in order to give the must-pass spending bill a better chance of success — Democrats appear eager for him to do it.Democrats are already exploiting the divisions among Republicans by painting them as the leaders of government obstruction and gridlock.“Just over one week after elections, Republicans are back to true form by talking about shutting down the government over an issue the vast majority of Americans support and 68 senators already passed — a comprehensive compromise on immigration,” said Representative Steve Israel of New York, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.So far Republicans believe their best path to blocking the president’s immigration actions is a spending bill that must pass by Dec. 11 in order to fund the government through the next year. In the Senate, three Republicans — Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Senator Mike Lee of Utah and Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama — have taken the lead in urging their colleagues to oppose any spending bill unless it includes provisions to stop the president from acting on immigration.If the spending bill does not contain their desired language, Republicans say another option would be to pass a short-term spending measure to fund the government into early next year, when Republicans will control both chambers and believe they will have more leverage.[M]any Republican strategists worry about political damage if the party’s first action on Capitol Hill is a protracted budget battle that leads to a shutdown — much as occurred after the shutdown over Mr. Obama’s health care law in 2013. Even many Republicans who have been vocal opponents of the president over immigration say that such an outcome is not their goal.Meanwhile, Representative Steve King, an Iowa Republican who is an outspoken opponent of any immigration overhaul, said he was huddling with his conservative allies in “back-of-the-room, outside-the-room” conversations. He is also readying legislation that would be triggered by Mr. Obama’s unilateral immigration action, defunding that executive action, as well as the protected status Mr. Obama has already provided for undocumented immigrants who arrived here as children.
Note how the party of supposed Christian values is ready to target children yet again. The GOP has become increasingly the antithesis of the Gospel message. Hate, hypocrisy and extremism is now the GOP norm.
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