Greg Sargent’s “Morning Plum” today gets Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) immigration promise on the Sunday shows exactly right. Sargent writes:
“Incoming Speaker Paul Ryan this weekend went out of his way to reassure conservatives: Republicans will not enter into any bipartisan compromising with Obama on immigration reform. No sirree:
“‘Specifically on this issue, you cannot trust this president,’ Ryan said on CNN, making reference to Obama’s executive orders last year granting some illegal immigrants a path to legal status: ‘This president tried to write the law himself. . . . Presidents don’t write laws; Congress writes laws.’
“Shorter Paul Ryan: Conservatives won’t let me hold a vote on the immigration reforms I myself would like to see happen, and I’m not about to challenge that, so I’ll just go ahead and blame this on #Obummer.”
Ironically, Ryan’s refusal to take up immigration reform is directly at odds with his own stated goals of being a new type of Party with real policy plans and “vision.” As Ryan said on Fox News Sunday:
“We fight over tactics because we don’t have a vision…We’ve been too timid on policy; we’ve been too timid on vision — we have none.”
Said Lynn Tramonte, Deputy Director of America’s Voice:
“On immigration, Speaker Paul Ryan is following in the footsteps of his predecessor, John Boehner. Rather than standing up to the bullies in the Republican conference who oppose immigration reform at the expense of their Party, he is trying to appease them.
“His excuses about why the House GOP will not move on immigration are transparent and ludicrous. Republicans ‘can’t trust this President,’ despite the fact that he’s deported more people than any other? They can’t trust him on enforcement, but they’ll consider passing enforcement-only legislation? They want Congress to write the laws, but they refuse to do their jobs and pass legislation?
“Speaker Ryan: this is not about President Obama, it’s about you and your Party. You either lead, and catch up to the rest of America on immigration reform, or get used to becoming the incredible shrinking party.”
