Something peculiar is happening on the immigration front in Washington.  With an eerie resemblance to the drumbeat leading up to Obamacare, Republican leaders are creating a sense of urgency that immigration must be addressed now.  And much like Obamacare is doing to our already-broken healthcare system, their proposals will exacerbate the very factors that have broken our immigration system over the past few decades.

However, GOP leaders know that their party base is not buying their sense of urgency, their understanding of why our immigration system is broken, and their solution to “fixing” it.  And unlike Democrats who seek to empower and energize their base to fight Republicans, GOP leaders are planning to bamboozle the base into supporting them in 2014, only to drop the hammer on them a year later.

National Journal’s Fawn Johnson lays out the artifice pretty convincingly:

“John Boehner is planning to unveil a set of Republican principles for immigration reform before President Obama’s State of the Union address, aiming to show the GOP is not hostile to legislation that might win them Hispanic voters.

According to House leadership and immigration-policy aides, the principles will be broad, nebulous even, and heavily focused on Republicans’ favorite immigration issue—border security. It will not include any concrete proposal, they said. Indeed, the wording is likely to be intentionally squishy, giving lawmakers lots of room to maneuver.

But no matter what happens, Boehner will come out a winner just for the effort. If it flops over hardliners’ objections to anything that approaches amnesty for illegal immigrants, Boehner and Republican campaign leaders looking for cash can still tell the business community they tried. What’s more, it could lay the groundwork for a Republican overture to Hispanic voters, a group everyone sees as critical to winning in 2016.”

Again, they are working with the delusional premise that A) amnesty will win over a large number of Hispanics who are already voting Democrat; B) it is not a net loss with the other 90% of the electorate; and C) the number of new amnestied voters will not create a tsunami of Democrat voters, which as we all know, is the end-game of amnesty.  With that in mind, they plan to deceive the base by talking about border security (never actually on implementing it, of course) just to keep the issue in the news, in preparation for an amnesty push in 2015.  Even as they claim to focus on border security, the House leadership bill, which is merely their opening bid, would legalize up to 6.5 million illegals.

But the money quote comes from Senator John Cornyn:

“We can win in 2014 without resolving it. We can’t win in 2016 without resolving it,” said Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn.

This short observation tells you everything you need to know about GOP leadership.

1)      Obviously, when he speaks of resolving “it,” he is not referring to resolving the issues that conservatives would like to address: actual implementation of border and interior enforcement, clamping down on our dangerous refugee and asylum policy, ending welfare for illegals, clarifying the 14^th amendment to mean what it was intended to address by the framers, and shifting towards a legal system that benefits the broad populace instead of narrow special interests, ethnic front groups, the welfare state, and chain migration.  He is referring to one outcome – amnesty, citizenship, and/or benefits for illegal immigrants – the same outcome he almost supported last year when he revived the Gang of 8 bill after we almost killed it.

2)      They will wait until after conservatives empower them with a midterm victory in order to push amnesty when Obama is a lame duck president – the most dangerous time.

3)      Clearly, in their minds, the most important purpose in making Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn new leaders of a Senate majority is to bring amnesty to the floor ahead of the 2016 elections.

4)      Cornyn is absolutely correct when asserting that Republicans cannot win in 2016 without “resolving it.”  But the “it” in reality is antithetical to the plan Cornyn will push.

We are all itching to throw out Harry Reid and the Obama-era Democrats.  It is so tantalizing for many of us to begin focusing on the general election against the Democrats.  But remember, if we fail to make a strong showing in this year’s primaries, we will be stuck with a Republican leadership that is singularly focused on granting Democrats a permanent majority.