by Tim Alberta
In February, as Rubio spearheaded the immigration push, Time magazine featured him on its cover with a suitable headline: “The Republican Savior.” People close to Rubio worried that he was sprinting headlong into a legislative quagmire that could derail his promising rise. Then again, he’d just tamed the biggest tiger in conservative media. What could go wrong?
Limbaugh wasn’t alone in believing that Obama might tank a compromise bill. The Gang’s two senior Democrats, Chuck Schumer of New York and Dick Durbin of Illinois, pleaded with the president to leave the issue alone, fearful that anything with Obama’s fingerprints would prove toxic to conservatives. The president reluctantly complied; on the day Rubio spoke with Limbaugh, Obama gave an immigration speech in Las Vegas but choked back the details of his preferred plan, arguing only for “key principles,” as the New Yorker reported at the time.7
With Obama sidelined and the conservative media syndicate on its heels, the Gang of Eight charged ahead, wooing special interest groups and cutting deals with senators in both parties. Momentum is oxygen to the policymaking process. Romney’s loss, and the RNC’s vituperative autopsy report—released to fanfare in March and calling for sweeping changes to the party’s data, technology, and minority outreach programs, all while endorsing comprehensive immigration reform—had set the heaviest of balls in motion. The Gang members needed to capitalize before that ball stopped rolling.
The legislative text arrived in April, thrusting Rubio into a full-scale charm offensive: He visited the offices of National Review, dined privately with Fox News personalities, called into talk radio programs, and, on one Sunday, appeared on seven different TV shows to promote the bill. By May it had been debated, marked up, and passed out of the Judiciary Committee, over the objections of two chief opponents, Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Ted Cruz of Texas. And on June 27, the Gang of Eight bill passed the U.S. Senate on a 68–32 vote, with 14 Republicans in favor.
From an aerial view, the ball still looked to be moving forward. On the ground, however, its momentum was arrested. Backlash to the immigration push had built organically throughout the spring, with blogs and local talk radio pummeling the Gang of Eight proposal—even as many prominent national voices remained supportive. As the outcry grew noisier, some advocates on the right got jittery. Having phoned Ryan and Cantor months earlier to lobby for immigration reform, Hannity called back with a sudden warning: “Stay away from the Senate bill,” he told them. “It’s going to be a career killer.”
THE HOUSE AND THE SENATE ARE PROFOUNDLY DIFFERENT INSTITUTIONS, not just for their respective traditions and procedures, but because of the inbuilt job descriptions that guide employee behavior.
Senators represent entire states, which affords a broader outlook on policy disputes even in red Wyoming or blue Vermont; they also enjoy the autonomy of serving six-year terms. House members, on the other hand, face reelection every two years. They represent districts that are demographically and ideologically clustered, most of which are locked down by one of the two parties. (The year 2010 saw a massive swing of 64 seats; but that means the other 371 seats, 85 percent of the House, remained loyally partisan.) With 9 of 10 seats safely under one party’s control, House members fear primaries more than general elections. And predictably, with primaries drawing just a fraction of the eligible electorate, those voters who participate tend to be the most engaged and the least inclined toward moderation.
Such is the tortured relationship between the two chambers: Senators look down upon the reactionary, hot-blooded House members, while the House members resent the imperious senators. This structural friction will, in some instances, produce sharply diverging approaches from members of the same party. Immigration was one of those instances.
In the wake of Romney’s defeat, it was principally the GOP’s nationally known leadership—Reince Priebus and his committee members, McConnell and McCain, Boehner and Cantor and Ryan—that made the case for immigration reform. Their argument was the same one made by conservative media figures such as Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, and Charles Krauthammer: Democrats were weaponizing the issue to dominate a changing America over the long haul.
But this reasoning meant little to politicians who live their career ambitions two years at a time, and even less to those whose districts weren’t reflective of any such change.
“It’s ironic that Reince thought they were helping by issuing their autopsy, because there was this cultural thing going on: ‘Here they go again, these out-of-touch people in Washington telling us that we need to let more of the strangers in.’ It just poured gasoline on the fire,” says Cantor. “Immigration was a problem for the party, but it wasn’t a problem in a lot of these districts.”
The visual dichotomy of this dilemma is found inside the House chamber. One side of the aisle looks like the country: young and old, man and woman, black and white and brown. The other side looks like the country club: aging white guys. In the 113th Congress, spanning 2013 and 2014, Republicans held 234 seats in the House; 19 members were women, and 9 identified as an ethnic minority. The remaining 205, or 88 percent of the House GOP, were white men.8 This isn’t to say that white men are politically illegitimate or make lousy legislators. But the statistical disparity speaks to the makeup of the districts they represent, and in turn, to those districts’ willingness to embrace an America that looks nothing like their microcosm thereof.
Much like President Bush’s aides discovered a decade earlier when pushing for prisoner reentry programs, House Republicans wanted nothing to do with immigration reform because they felt it was not relevant to their constituents. “We did a little test whip with our members,” Cantor says, “and it went nowhere.”
The same was true of legislation affecting another cultural flashpoint in the spring of 2013: guns.
In the wake of the previous December’s massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, which claimed the lives of twenty grade-school children and six teachers—and which came after at least three other mass shootings during Obama’s presidency, while predating at least half a dozen others—Congress attempted to act. Addressing the lowest common denominator, West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin and Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey sought to expand background checks on commercial purchases.
But despite the modest aims, and the senators’ lifelong “A” ratings from the National Rifle Association, their effort went nowhere. Facing an avalanche of hyperbolic (and often downright false) attacks from the NRA, the bill died in the Senate.9 Even if it passed, it would have gone nowhere in the House, and for the same reason: The issue was too easily demagogued among Republican voters. The self-preserving instincts of lawmakers were not conducive to any such legislation.
THE HOUSE REPUBLICAN LEADERSHIP WAS BOXED IN.
When it came to immigration, Boehner personally liked the Senate bill and would happily have supported a qualified path to citizenship for both minors and adults. But he had to be careful. The Speaker had survived one attempt on his political life that year; he couldn’t afford to invite another by flouting the sentiments of his majority.
Cantor, meanwhile, was no longer in the catbird seat. His recently announced support for the principles of the DREAM Act, which would extend citizenship to illegal youths brought to the country through no fault of their own, had angered many of the Tea Party types who had long preferred him to Boehner. “They were told in our conference, ‘If you try this, you’re going to be gone,” Labrador recalls, referencing a potential vote on comprehensive immigration reform. “And they listened. Boehner was worried about his speakership, and Cantor was worried about not being able to become the Speaker.”
As the Senate bill hurtled toward passage, and members’ attitudes ranged from uneasy to outright threatening, Boehner and Cantor settled on a passive approach: They would sit back and let the debate unfold freely, not committing to anything one way or the other.
The early returns were actually quite encouraging. On June 5, the RSC and it
s 170-some members hosted a panel of senators for a huge, bicameral “family meeting” on immigration. The headliners were Rubio and Flake in favor of the Senate bill and Sessions and Cruz opposed. Rubio kicked off the summit by acknowledging the disdain for his bill within the House GOP. But he then pivoted to emphasize the many other areas of agreement across the party’s ideological spectrum, urging his brethren not to ignore the major concessions they would receive in exchange doing what was reasonable: pulling people out of the shadows, making them pay taxes, and putting them on a thirteen-year path to citizenship.
As Rubio spoke, intercepting subsequent questions to press his argument, heads in the room nodded. One incident aside—Texas congressman Michael Burgess made a crack about “undocumented Democrats,” drawing a glare from Rubio—Republicans left the summit sounding downright bullish on passing an immigration bill. Rubio had done it again. Boehner and Cantor couldn’t believe their ears.
And neither could Steve King. The Iowa congressman was known as the House’s fiercest immigration hawk—and its most racially polarizing force. King’s collection of greatest hits included comparing illegal immigrants to livestock; calling Obama “very, very urban”;10 saying the president “favors the black person”;11 and mentioning that Obama’s middle name, Hussein, held a “special meaning”12 for the Islamic radicals cheering on his presidential run. (To mention King’s fixation on Obama’s birthplace feels superfluous.)
Leaving the immigration summit that day, King looked deeply unsettled. Comparing himself to Rip Van Winkle, he said, “I went to sleep last year before the election believing that all my colleagues believed in the rule of law and opposed amnesty and understood the impact of amnesty. And then I woke up the morning after the election, and they believed something different.” As for Rubio’s path to citizenship, and the converts he was attracting, King believed, “There is no upside to it. I can’t track their rationale or their logic. I’m flabbergasted that so many otherwise-smart people can come to conclusions that aren’t based on any kind of data.”
As King walked away shaking his head, Rubio held court with reporters nearby. Noticing at one point that Sessions had emerged from the room behind him, he moved over, inviting his colleague from Alabama to address the media alongside him. But Sessions declined. Politicians are experts in appearances, and Sessions knew better than to be photographed holding a press conference with the champion for amnesty.
IF VEGAS WERE PLACING ODDS ON FINAL APPROVAL OF COMPREHENSIVE immigration reform, no single event in the twenty-first century would have sparked as much action as that RSC summit with Rubio. For the first time, in the hours thereafter, advocates felt real hope and opponents felt real fear.
Neither lasted long.
That night, Labrador abruptly quit a bipartisan House group that was working on a proposal to mirror the Senate’s. Labrador was viewed internally as the “Rubio of the House,” a Tea Party favorite whose bilingualism and expertise on the issue made him uniquely capable of moving votes. Yet he was farther right than Rubio on the legislative details, most notably arguing for granting legal status instead of citizenship. Labrador believed he could convince many conservatives to agree to legalization, but Democrats in both the House and Senate made clear that their support hinged on citizenship. “Without a path to citizenship, there is not going to be a bill,” Schumer told reporters that summer. “There can’t be a bill.”
Labrador also wasn’t sold on the security provisions. Senators were promising to double the number of border agents to forty thousand, stationing one along every thousand feet of the Mexican boundary. But this ignored an underlying problem: The American “catch and release” policy, which allowed migrants to be freed upon their apprehension, had become a bad joke in the law enforcement community. Lots of the illegals caught crossing would skip their court date, disappear into the country, and never be heard from again. Unlike most of his fellow conservatives who cowered at the immigration debate, refusing to engage on a federal issue because there was no political upside to straying from the status quo, Labrador was serious about dealing in substance. His exit from the House group, then, signaled a symbolic blow to the reform push just hours after it appeared to have legs.
The next two weeks were instructive for House Republicans. Their office phones shrieked with angry constituent calls. Their consultants warned of dire consequences if they deviated from the simple phrase “rule of law.” Meanwhile, their leaders were nowhere to be found. Watching quietly, determined not to get over their skis on the issue, Boehner and Cantor forfeited whatever moment existed to reaffirm the reluctant members.
As his colleagues tiptoed in reverse, Steve King made sure they would never take another step forward. He rented out the East Lawn of the U.S. Capitol for the entire business day of June 19, setting up a stage and attracting thousands of supporters waving signs that read, “The Melting Pot Floweth Over.” (Boosting turnout for this event was a neighboring “Audit the IRS” rally, which was sponsored by Tea Party Patriots and held on other side of the Capitol.)
King had boasted for weeks that he had a silent majority of the House GOP on his side. Only a dozen or so joined him at the rally, but everyone else watching from the windows could feel the visceral passion of the activists in attendance. Right after former Fox News host Glenn Beck whipped the crowd of Tea Partiers into a frenzy, King bounded onto the stage. “I can feel it!” he cried. “I can feel we’re going to defend the rule of law! We’re going to defend the Constitution! We’re going to defend our way of life!”
Michele Bachmann received the most boisterous welcome of any speaker that day, calling the event “a beautiful family reunion.” It could have been: The crowd was almost exclusively white. At one point, she invited children onto the stage as she argued that bad immigration policy could imperil their future. “Amnesty costs a fortune,” she announced, cradling an infant in her arms. “It could also cost us our nation.” The crowd responded with booming chants of “U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!”
There was only one senator invited to speak: Cruz. The Texas freshman had made a conspicuous effort to befriend King upon arriving in Washington, and quickly earned an ally in the Iowa lawmaker with considerable clout in the first presidential-nominating state. Cruz, like Rubio, was the son of a Cuban immigrant. But unlike Rubio, he was an immigration hard-liner. Standing before the crowd, Cruz warned that his Republican colleagues—he did not need to mention Rubio, whose name had already been booed countless times that day—were peddling the same proposal that had failed them in 1986: amnesty now, promises of border security later. “If you fool me once, shame on you,” Cruz declared. “If you fool me twice, shame on me.”
Cruz wasn’t wrong. Ronald Reagan had been duped in 1986, offering legal status to nearly three million undocumented immigrants in exchange for enforcement mechanisms that never materialized. Even so, in this case, the Texas senator’s motives were suspect.
Much like Obama in the run-up to his own presidential bid, Cruz observed the electoral implications of the problem and saw no upside in seeking out compromise. He sponsored an amendment in the Judiciary Committee that spring to substitute legalization for citizenship, but privately boasted of doing so as a “poison pill” to destroy the overall effort. Cruz, who would deploy the “undocumented Democrats” line while running for president, was concerned more with politics than policy. And the politics were clear: Historical data13 showed that Hispanics had voted for Republicans in lower numbers after Reagan’s 1986 amnesty, and present-day feedback showed that the base would impale anyone who repeated the Gipper’s mistake.
The Senate bill passed eight days later, but the tide had already turned. Boehner refused to bring it to the floor of the House. He knew that the legislation would pass on the strength of Democratic votes; that only 40 or 50 of his Republican colleagues would support it; and that conservatives would banish him for overruling the popular will of the House GOP. The Speaker was willing to be sacked over a budget deal, but not over imm
igration.
Boehner had a veneer of plausible deniability in scuttling the immigration bill: Obama, he said, had demonstrated through his unilateral actions that he could not be trusted to enforce immigration laws, old or new. This was a tad disingenuous, but it bought the Speaker time. It also squared with the rhetoric of his most conservative members. They had long accused the administration of being underhanded and deceitful, and in May 2013, just as the immigration debate was reaching its climax, their beliefs were substantiated. The Internal Revenue Service had “used inappropriate criteria that identified for review Tea Party and other organizations applying for tax-exempt status based upon their names or policy positions,” according to a blockbuster report by the Treasury inspector general for tax administration.
Since the emergence of the Tea Party in 2010, conservatives had accused the IRS of systematically targeting right-wing groups. Now their allegations had been substantiated. In the long run, the IRS scandal would prove endlessly useful to conservatives in their war on the Obama administration, especially given the dog-ate-my-homework routine from IRS officials claiming to have lost thousands of pertinent emails. In the short term, the inspector general’s report handed Republicans the justification they needed to claim they had an untrustworthy partner in the executive branch.
As the August recess approached, Boehner’s resolve stiffened. Nothing, not a visit from Ryan or a call from his friend Jeb Bush, could convince him otherwise. The timing wasn’t right, Boehner told them. They would revisit immigration in 2014, when things cooled down.
King took a victory lap. Referring to the undocumented minors who remained in limbo, he told Newsmax, “For every one who’s a valedictorian, there’s another one hundred out there who weigh 130 pounds, and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.”14 King lauded Boehner for his rejection of the Senate bill—the sort of praise that convinced the Speaker he’d made a big mistake.