Mitch McConnell Outwits Obama By Letting Him Keep Immigration And DHS Funding

Remember when Republicans were going to teach President Obama a lesson by refusing to fund the Department of Homeland Security until he apologized for not hating immigrants? And the plan was to keep holding a vote on the same bill over and over and over again, no matter how many times Senate Democrats said "hell nope," because that would really show them! That was the brilliant GOP strategy as recently as Monday, when Congress returned from vacay to hold a vote on the same bill for the fourth time, which failed for the fourth time because Republicans are slow learners who have no new ideas and suck at governing and also math.

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Except now McConnell has a new idea, and it's so crazy, it just might work!

The months-long standoff over President Barack Obama's executive actions on immigration took a major turn late Monday when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) proposed decoupling funding for the Department of Homeland Security from legislative action against Obama on deportations.

The threat of withholding DHS funding to block Obama's immigration moves has been the centerpiece of the GOP's political strategy for months. McConnell's proposal to de-link them is a sign that he's trying to find a way out of a battle that GOP leaders in both chambers never really wanted, but which has been pushed by hard-liners within the party.

In other words, McConnell has tried to appease co-Majority Leader Ted Cruz and other dipshit nihilist burn-it-all-down senators by insisting on a funding bill that would shake a furious fist of fury at the president and yet, huh, somehow McConnell has not been able to get Democrats to agree to it no matter how many times he asks. So now, with the clock ticking and our entire national security about to be jeopardized in approximately four days, McConnell's new idea is to ask Democrats if they might be willing to vote on a clean funding bill, which is exactly what they've been asking for all along. Boy is that Mitch clever!

In order to keep the Cruz wing of the GOP from losing its mind (too late!) and reading Dr. Seuss on the floor of the Senate again, McConnell has promised Republicans they can have a separate vote on the President Obama Sure Does Suck Act of 2015 real soon, but maybe keeping DHS funded beyond Friday is slightly more important at this particular moment. Especially because if Republicans fail to keep the agency open, Americans are going to blame them for it, and gosh, that wasn't the idea AT ALL when they first thought playing the hostage game with national security would be a great way to embarrass the president. Don't you hate it when a plan doesn't come together?

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Now the real trick is persuading the uber-nihilists in the House to support a clean funding bill, and good luck with that one, Speaker John Boehner, because as crazy as the Cruz-style senators are, those wingnuts in the House are eleventeen times crazier.

So will our new bold Congressional leadership be able to avoid a shutdown of the department they hold so dear, or will rank and file Republicans tell those RINOs to suck it because throwing a hissy fit over the president's executive action on immigration is more important than national security? Guess we'll find out soon enough.

[ TPM ]