Republicans use ‘locologic’ to nix immigration reform

When someone told me at the end of last month that the Republicans were going to unveil an immigration reform bill that would include a path to citizenship, my instant reaction was: Hogwash, or words to that effect, only more obscene.

But there it was, all over the media. On January 30, the CBS News web site reported: “House GOP leaders unveiling immigration reform framework.” It went on to add that Republican House Speaker John Boehner expressed concern that the party’s opposition to immigration reform could hurt it with Latino voters.

“Could?” Memo to Boehner, wake up and smell the coffee. It’s been hurting. Badly. Or have you forgotten the punishment Latino voters meted out to the GOP in the presidential elections of 2008 and 2012? Without boasting, nobody really doubts that that drubbing is at least one of the major reasons Barack Obama has been sitting in the White House for the last six years.

Memo #2 to Boehner and his party brethren: It’s bound to get worse in 2016, for at least three reasons. One, there are going to be quite a few more of “those people” voting in the next general election. Two, Hillary Clinton, the odds-on favorite to lead Democrats, was the most popular candidate among Latinos in the 2008 primary, and her years as Secretary of State have only added to her luster. (Obama did grow to be incredible popular with Latinos at the polls through his own merits but also because of the highly successful GOP efforts to enrage the Latino electorate.) Third is the fact that after Speaker Boehner announced a Republican proposal for immigration reform with a path to citizenship, the GOP, in a flash, reversed its position, said never mind what we said before, then tried to come up with a variety of reasons and excuses that further damaged their credibility with Latino voters.

How come the warp-speed turnaround? Boehner first tried the truth as an explanation – he didn’t have the votes. But that begs the question, why not? The real answer to that question would have taken Boehner through a dangerous route which leads straight to the xenophobic/Latinophobic heart that beats strongly among much of the GOP’s hard core.

So Boehner began spinning. It would be very hard to pass immigration reform “this year.” That one didn’t wash either. Why would this year be any harder than any other year? When was that year nobody can recall when Republicans favored immigration reform? Will they favor it in a coming year, say 2015 or 2016? Or maybe 2060? They can’t be sure.

When all else fails, the Republicans have one last all-purpose recourse: Blame Obama. How can they hope to sell that line, you say, when Obama has been in favor of immigration reform from day one while the Republicans always have stood in the way? It would seem to make no sense, but then you are probably reality-based and are thinking in ordinary logic.

You see, way back in the early 1980s, Republicans invented a new form of logic, which they have been refining ever since and applying to ever-expanding subjects like global climate change, evolution, and war.

I hereby coin the word LocoLogic to identify it. For example, Reaganomics proposed that the more you cut taxes, especially on the rich, the faster the economy would grow, the more money would trickle down to the middle class and the poor, the more in taxes the Treasury would collect, and the lower would be the deficit.

It was all based on a theory concocted by Arthur Laffer (the Laffer Curve)*, and indeed it was a laugher, and not only among professional economists. Reagan’s own budget director, David Stockman, admitted in a prestigious national magazine that it was all hogwash, a way of justifying lowering taxes on the rich.

And, indeed, what happened in the world of reality contradicted the theory on every point. But Reagan told the Big Lie, got away with it, and became a model and an icon to his party. Other Republicans realized one could tell the Big Lie and get away with and improved on the example. Witness George W. Bush on…just about everything.

The talking point the Republicans’ LocoLogic computer finally came up with to justify one of the fastest political flip-flops ever is that “you can’t trust Obama to properly enforce immigration reform.”

Really? Is that why the GOP turned its back on George W. Bush when he proposed immigration reform, that they couldn’t trust him? “Obama has lost all credibility,” intoned Marco Rubio, so he can’t be entrusted to implement a new immigration law. Really? You would think the ones that have lost all credibility are the ones who had one position one week and the opposite the other.

LocoLogic: Obama is already enforcing the immigration laws. And – it pains me to say it – he has done so with such efficiency that his administration has deported more people than any other. What’s for Republicans not to trust?

Mistrust of Obama is a bogus excuse but using it is tantamount to saying Republicans will block immigration reform not only this year but also the next and the next after that. That’s what the GOP is now promising Latinos. So here’s something that is not LocoLogic: Latinos take a very dim view of people who offer something then yank it away, people who betray them, people who lie to them and invent excuses, and people who try to toy with them. Seen through the prism of LocoLogic, Republicans can do all these things and still appeal to enough Latino voters to win the 2016 presidential election. And that is a bigger laugher than the Laffer Curve.

* In economics, the Laffer curve is a representation of the relationship between possible rates of taxation and the resulting levels of government revenue. It is typically represented as a graph which starts at 0% tax with zero revenue, rises to a maximum rate of revenue at an intermediate rate of taxation, and then falls again to zero revenue at a 100% tax rate. The actual existence and shape of the curve is uncertain and disputed.