Tea Party Smells Blood in Immigration Fight
Glenn Thrush and Reid Epstein report on one of the reasons that gun legislation failed in the Senate yesterday:
In the end, [] moderates and conservatives in the upper chamber said they simply couldn’t deal with a flurry of progressive issues at once — from gay marriage to immigration to guns….One senator told a White House official that it was “Guns, gays and immigration — it’s too much. I can be with you on one or two of them, but not all three.”
Some are taking this to suggest that voting against the gun bill gives conservatives a little more room to maneuver on immigration. So the silver lining here is that all the no votes on guns might mean a few more yes votes on immigration. Ed Kilgore is skeptical:
I wouldn’t put much reliance on the idea that the demise of Manchin-Toomey is a blessing in disguise for progressives or for those still pining for a “bipartisan breeze” in Washington. For one thing, to continue the propitiation metaphor, the “base” is a jealous god, which views every act of ideological “betrayal” as sufficient to justify primary excommunication or primary challenges. For another, this fresh demonstration that “the base” has the power to compel party discipline on guns (only three Republicans joined former Club for Growth president Pat Toomey in the end) will make the desire to impose it on other subjects seem much more practicable.