WILL THE DELIBERATE FAILURE OF THE REPUBLICAN- DOMINATED US CONGRESS TO PASS THE IMMIGRATION BILL LEAD TO THE PARTY’S IMMINENT DEMISE?
By: Lamin Sabally, Minneapolis, Minnesota
The thunderous spontaneous euphoria and elaborate celebrations that appropriately greeted the Senate recent momentous passing of the bi-partisan sweeping immigration bill that seeks to grant legal status to the 11 million illegal immigrants in the US may appear to be short-lived or ephemeral if Congress fails to pass the same bill that will soon be headed to the Republican-dominated House. If the current warnings are anything to guardedly construe from, then this bill will be heavily defeated by the Boehner- led House of Representatives. Already some seeming notable rebellious Republican House members do not seem to be mincing their words in showing their fervent opposition to the Senate recently passed landmark bill. Speaker Boehner had already released a warning shot by making it clear with the exact utterances “the bill, as it stands now, is dead on arrival in the House” Other House Republican Members who are stubbornly allied to the opinionated Speaker hinted that they will prefer to pass the bill in piecemeal instead of the whole package, while indicating that focus should be put on tighter border security and identifying immigrants who have overstayed their visas. Majority of them also oppose any path to citizenship for illegal residents.
Once again, the entire nation of America is faced with another Republican consistent recalcitrance to supporting Obama-initiated programs and policies that are validated by independent institutions to be heralding excellent results for the US. For instance, the bill according to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which is a bi-partisan group of economic and fiscal experts, predicted that the bill will engender economic recovery in the form of significant deficit reduction in billions of dollars. It must be recognized that part of the solid genesis of this very bill is traced to “a gang of 8” representing some prominent political heavyweights of both parties. The “gang” did an excellent job by carefully reconciling their exhaustive findings with the White House version of the sweeping or comprehensive immigration bill. To many serious pundits, this is what gave the bill an added impetus as a bi-partisan bill. Despite, the Republican dominated Congress led by Speaker John Boehner appears poised to yet again blatantly flex their political brinkmanship by indicating their vehement opposition to the bill for no valid reasons or justifications, but purely to make outrageously inflated political scores. Some of the explanations for their opposition are very flimsy including the notion that the bill is only an attempt to offer blanket amnesty to law breakers. Some of the characterizations from ultra- conservative standpoint are at best nauseating and ridiculously frightening to listen to. They include hyper falsification and empty threats that are finely inserted in manufactured political gimmickry that even if the House passes the bill, most of the immigrants who would eventually be granted Citizenship status will still vote for the Democrats and not Republicans.
To me, in the face of the mammoth challenges faced by the Republican party concerning their very survival and relevance in the rapidly changing political landscape of the US, their failure to support the bill will tantamount to speeding their gradual demise and eventual metamorphosis or transmogrification into political redundancy and extinction .
Lest they forgot, the GOP- (Grand Old Party) still sluggishly recuperates from the shocking defeat meted out to them in the November Election that gave President Obama a clear victory for his second term. The low and abysmal performance of the party among women and minority groupings including Latinos, African-Americans and Asians is a clear reminder that the Republican Party is seriously alienated from these important voting blocs. Aware that a party can win the White House with sole dependent on majority white votes is a proven moribund political ideology that is now destined to a permanent political graveyard, the Republican Party needs to immediately rebrand their party to be able to woo the minority voters if their dream of securing the White House again can become concretely realizable. Key among the strategies they need to deploy is to limit the level of apprehension, mistrust and ostracization among minority voters. As a matter of urgency, Congress must follow Senate historical example by approving the impending sweeping immigration bill in its entirety. Failure to do this, the party must be ready for their eminent demise, and before then, their collective action will be viewed as an additional problem to the string of enduring issues that their party is bedeviled with.
In numerous media political discussion forums the Republican Party is proven to be faced with chronic political problems that are deepening by the day. For me personally, they seem to be detaching themselves from ideologies that they are very much identified with since the very inception of the party. In my personal assessment, Minnesota Public Radio Prairie Home Companion Host Garrison Keillor’s recent characterization perfectly encapsulates the party’s present predicament by stating “ The Republican Party suffers an ideological schizophrenia” and went on to describe the House Speaker as “ someone with a narrow world view”.
Literature on the ballooning problems that are chokingly riddling the party are voluminous and interestingly, some of these findings have graciously offered perfect diagnosis of the Republican Party with few conclusions serving precise political prescriptions for the ailing, weakening and isolated Grand Old Party.
One of the findings came from the College Republicans who in their latest post-mortem brutally lambasted the party as “closed-minded, racist, rigid, [and] old-fashioned.” Commenting on Latino’s general reaction to the GOP, the College Republicans who are a solid political arm of the GOP stated in vehemence “Latino voters, angered by hardline immigration positions and other policies, “tend to think the GOP couldn’t care less about them,” the report said, and people across the board are turned off by “outrageous statements made by errant Republican voices.”
Time’s Senior National Correspondent Michael Grunewald wrote in an edifying piece that the modern GOP must sway from “ chronic obstructionism and borderline surrealism and rather repair their relationship with data, so they won’t be flabbergasted when election night doesn’t ratify the predictions of their pundits. They need to use Skype, improve minority outreach, and stop behaving like crotchety reactionaries who scream “You lie!” during presidential speeches to Congress.
The above sample study findings are enough reasons to convince the party’s echelons to rebrand their party in order to make it better receptive to minority constituencies. For now though, America and the World patiently await the outcome the crucially important decision of Congress that will determined the future survivability of the one-time very loved, adored and cherished GOP.