I really like how the blog topics are lining up this morning. I just read a very good Josh Marshall post from yesterday that described an expanded DACA as “an electoral grenade dropped right into the heart of the 2016 campaign.”
1) Let’s assume, as numerous reports now suggest, that President Obama will issue one or more executive orders that effectively legalize roughly 5 million undocumented immigrants currently residing in the United States.
2) Republicans have already put a huge amount of energy behind the notion that this is not only bad policy but likely also an unconstitutional action and impeachable offense.
3) Given that President Obama almost certainly will do this and the red lines Republicans have put down, it is virtually certain that any 2016 Republican nominee will have to run on undoing this executive order when he or she gets to the White House.
Given the untold number of people affected by an expanded DACA, and the terrible threat undoing it will pose to them and their families, this will be a highly inflammable issue where Republicans will be under enormous pressure to take a cruel-sounding position.
All I’d add to what Josh said is that there’s no way GOP presidential candidates will get out of Steve King’s January 24 event without swearing on a stack of Bibles that a reversal of both the existing and the impending DACA actions will occur one nanosecond into their presidency. If any of them aren’t willing to do that, they’d better generate a scheduling conflict for January 24 mighty fast.
