House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told “60 Minutes” not long ago that the far-left caucus in the Democratic Party was comprised of no more than a handful of people who posed no problem at all to the party’s ability to govern. Just drama queens looking for Twitter followers, she said without saying. Alexandria Ocasio-Who? Pelosi ain’t sweating nobody.
Well, turns out that socialist wing of the party is a little stronger than Pelosi admitted. Crafting and passing a bill to grant permanent amnesty to Obama’s DREAMers should have been a piece of cake for House Democrats. Pelosi and other party leaders have called this legislation a major priority, and – unlike most of this party’s wish-fulfillment brand of politics – this one even has an outside chance of getting some Republican support. To our chagrin.
But they can’t come up with a bill. Why? Because there are too many rank-and-file extremists in Congress who want a DREAM Act that will not only grant amnesty and a path to citizenship to your average immigrant under DACA but also to those Dreamers who have been convicted of crimes.
“Always issues when it comes to immigration, but we’ll get through it,” House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) told Politico. “I hope it’ll get to the floor.”
In media interviews, moderate Democrats are downplaying the divisions within their party, but this fracture is just one more ominous sign that there is nothing cohesive or unified about the current iteration of the left. While Nancy Pelosi warns 2020 Democrats to run to the middle as a way of attracting as much mainstream support as possible, an infected element of the party is doing the exact opposite.
“The bill, authored by Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Calif.), would allow undocumented immigrants to commit three misdemeanors before they’re disqualified from seeking citizenship,” reports Politico. ”But some Democrats worry the language in the bill is too broad and want to consider changes so that committing only certain misdemeanors would allow people to remain on the path to citizenship. The prospect of further narrowing access to citizenship, however, has inflamed immigrant-rights supporters and some liberal lawmakers.”
It’s fascinating to see how self-defeating the modern Democratic Party is, and nowhere are they slapping themselves in the face more obviously than on the issue of immigration. Even the leaders of the party seem to believe there is some overwhelming force among the American electorate that wants to throw open the borders, abolish ICE, and make citizens out of every illegal alien in the country. Where they are getting that impression, we’re not sure, because polling shows just the opposite. They want to simultaneously pander to immigration-rights groups and assure moderates that they’re all about the rule of law. That’s an impossible tightrope to walk convincingly.
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