Obama to Boehner: You’ve Got Until the End of the Year to Pass an Immigration Bill or Else I Order Executive Amnesty (+video)

Heads he wins, tails you lose. As Gabe Malor says, this deadline is completely unserious: It’d be bad enough for Republicans to pass a weak immigration bill next year, but that at least would have the virtue of giving the GOP’s new crop of senators a crack at voting on it. Trying to sneak a bill through the lame-duck session, before Cory Gardner, Joni Ernst, and the rest of the freshmen have a say, would mean all-out war at this point between Boehner, McConnell, and the base. Joe Biden at least seems to understand that. That’s why he floated a mid-February deadline at Friday’s White House summit with the GOP before Obama gave him a death stare that shut him up. I think Obama understands it too, actually. His ultimatum here is likely born not out of ignorance of Boehner’s predicament but a new determination to make Republicans pay politically after they swamped him last Tuesday. Issuing executive amnesty so soon after a landslide is an act of supreme defiance of the election results, in keeping with last week’s “I’m listening to all the people who didn’t vote” press conference. And it’s also a middle finger to congressional Democrats who spent the last six months giving him the “Barack who?” treatment on the stump. If executive amnesty puts them in a tough spot too, screw ‘em. Besides, the only Dems left in Congress at this point are in states or districts so blue that they won’t lose in 2016 no matter how crazy he gets. He’s now fully entered the YOLO phase of his presidency.

Actually, maybe Obama doesn’t understand Boehner’s predicament. Here’s a tidbit from WSJ’s mini-bombshell on Friday about secret talks on immigration between the White House and the House GOP over the past year.

Mr. Obama offered Mr. Boehner what he saw as a compromise: The White House would defer executive action on immigration until after the summer to give the speaker maneuvering room, a deal Mr. Obama confirmed in his Wednesday news conference.

In the discussion, however, he followed up with his go-to talking point in dealings with Mr. Boehner: “There will never be another Republican president again if you don’t get a handle on immigration reform.”

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