On Cuba, after what was claimed to be intense negotiations, Obama announced as much liberalization of policy with respect to Cuba as he is able to do without new legislation, in exchange for, well, virtually nothing. Yes, Cuba released a few political prisoners, but didn’t make any fundamental, or even cosmetic, changes in the system that imprisons people for political reasons in the first place. What were these negotiations? From all appearances, Obama didn’t actually wring any concessions from Cuba, because he didn’t really care — he just wanted to normalize relations and it looked better politically to claim this was a bilateral rather than unilateral plan.
With respect to Iran, it’s the same thing. At any rate, it’s of great concern that Obama and his administration isn’t pressing particularly hard for a deal that prevents Iran from getting the bomb, because they don’t care particularly much.
And what of the Senate GOP leadership, which has now announced (see reports here and here) that it will cave, fully and unilaterally, to the Democrats on the issue of allowing Obama to implement his work permits-for-illegals plan. True, they claim that they’re not caving, merely splitting the issue into two bills, one funding the DHS and another prohibiting funding for the amnesty program, but this either takes the American public for fools, or — well, actually, it just takes the American public for fools, as it’s clear that putting forth a bill to prohibit the amnesty program is not serious if it’s done while surrendering any leverage to get it passed; the Democrats could even pass it, secure in the knowledge that Obama would just veto it anyway.
(It’s a Survivor-ish sort of move, when one player knows that another person to whom he has pledged loyalty is slated to be voted off; in order to nominally stay true to his promise, he throws away his vote, so that the doomed player is still voted off, but the swing vote can still say, “I kept my promise because I didn’t write your name down.”)
Their other rationale? The claim that the court stay means that they’ve already won.
“Most of us feel like the courts gave us a major victory,” Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., said outlining the rationale for McConnell to offer a clean DHS bill now after weeks of not backing down. “Sometimes it makes a lot of sense to bank victories and move ahead.”
But this is foolhardy. If anything, this ought to improve their leverage in negotiating with Democrats: “look, the courts aren’t going to let the plan be implemented anyway, so why not please your constituents by opposing it?” But the court decision, which I’d been meaning to write about anyway, is not a done deal. I did not put a halt to the program, with certainty, as the administration is still able to look for a court to support their view, and was told, in any case, that it is required to undertake the lengthy comment and review period applicable for major changes.
But it’s clear that their heart simply wasn’t in this fight. They’ve got their millions, and are equally able to ensure that their children will be financially set, too.
(Incidentally, here’s a telling article on the administration’s position on the Hansen court ruling, originally printed in the Chicago Tribune but online at the L.A. Times. The basic logic of the administration, as sympathetically reported: time is of the essence, because, in order to make the program de-facto permanent, they need to process as many people as possible before the new president comes into office. This hardly seems like a rationale that’s going to persuade a judge that they “urgently” need to proceed, and, in fact, seems to affirm their opponents’ claim, that implementing the program would be un-doable so should be halted until its legality is resolved. But given how political many judges are, it’s still a complete abdication of responsibility for the GOP to say, “the courts have ruled in our favor, so we don’t need to do anything.”)
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