Jeb Bush Steps Up on Immigration

Jeb Bush just made the race for the 2016 Republican nomination a lot more interesting.

“It’s easy to say, ‘Well, anything you propose is amnesty,’ but that’s not a plan,” Mr. Bush said during a discussion with local business leaders here. “That’s a sentiment, that’s not a plan. I think the best plan, the most realistic plan, the grown up plan, if you will, is once you control the border and you’re confident it’s not going to be another magnet, is to say, ‘Let’s let these folks achieve earned legal status where they work, where they come out of the shadows.’”

Later, during a brief exchange with reporters, Mr. Bush said he could also be supportive of a path to citizenship for people in the country illegally – as he did at one time – but said there currently isn’t sufficient political support for it.

“If you could get a consensus done, where you could have a bill done and it was 15 years [to achieve citizenship] as the Senate Gang of Eight did, I’d be supportive of that,” Mr. Bush said, referring to the comprehensive immigration legislation the Senate passed in 2013.

It's important to note that his statement to reporters goes beyond giving "legal status" to undocumented workers (what he has suggested recently) and indicates he would be supportive of a "pathway to citizenship" as was contained in the bipartisan Senate bill. That distinguishes him from every other candidate in the field. Notice the implication by Bush that his competitors don't have an "adult plan."

This is likely to lead to some interesting exchanges in the upcoming Republican debates. It could force other candidates to either articulate their "deport 'em all" position or hedge and be accused of promoting "amnesty."

At the same time, it is a position that would make Bush much more competitive in a general election. But he'll have to get the nomination first. Did he just ruin his chances with Republican primary voters? His position on the Senate immigration bill now aligns with President Obama's. I suspect he'll be hearing it phrased just like that in the coming weeks.

Separating the Signal from the Noise

I'm coming late and reluctantly to the game. But I am finally going to write a few words about the current hysteria over Hillary Clinton.

First of all, we don't know whether or not she will be the Democratic nominee in 2016. That looks extremely likely, but I don't indulge in fortune-telling. If she is the nominee, there are a couple of things we should keep in mind.

1. It is sexist to equate Hillary with Bill - whether that includes giving her credit for his successes or faulting her for his shortcomings. She deserves to be evaluated as her own person.
2. Any attempt to suggest that Clinton will be more or less vilified by Republicans and the media than President Obama is a losing proposition. The specifics of how they go after Clinton will be different than how they've attacked this President. But attack they will. It's their only game plan at the moment.

Because of those things, Democrats are going to have to get a whole lot better than they've been lately at separating the signal from the noise. What we've been exposed to over the last couple of weeks over Clinton's emails is nothing but noise. Most of us knew that within a few days of when the story broke. Even so, way too many liberals reached back into their 90's playbook and managed to do all sorts of pearl-clutching about how Bill and Hillary did/didn't handle things in the past. It all came down to the whole "optics" thing - which is the very definition of noise.

I refuse to get caught up in that nonsense because there are some signal issues that I'm interested in hearing about. For example, I need to know how strongly Clinton will fight off Wall Street attempts to gut the Dodd/Frank reforms. Her past hawkishness towards Iran and her recommendation as Secretary of State that we send troops into Syria raise all sorts of questions for me about how she would handle the ongoing unrest in the Middle East. I'm also very interested in things like her thoughts about the war on drugs, criminal justice reform and what kind of people she would nominate to the Supreme Court or important positions like Attorney General.

Do you see how stupid it is to worry about the fact that it took her a week to schedule a press conference over questions about emails when you compare it to issues like that? But those are the places Democrats should be pushing Clinton. Relying on either the media or a primary challenger to do that for us means abdicating our responsibility.

I'm hearing some Democrats say that they are dispirited by what has been happening these last couple of weeks over the whole email nonsense. But what is dispiriting to me is how poorly so many Democrats have responded to this non-scandal when we have an awful lot of important stuff to talk about.

The Rumblings of Insurgency

The letter written by Sen. Tom Cotton to the leaders of Iran and signed by 47 Republicans is not simply outrageous because it presents a dangerous challenge to the Constitutional framework under which the United States conducts foreign policy. It is important that we remember the context in which it came about. Here are a few recent events we need to keep in mind.

Judge Roy Moore:

In a dramatic show of defiance toward the federal judiciary, Chief Justice Roy S. Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court on Sunday night ordered the state’s probate judges not to issue marriage licenses to gay couples on Monday, the day same-sex marriages were expected to begin here...

“I think I’ve done what I can do: advise the state court probate judges that they’re not bound by any ruling of the Federal District Court,” he said...

His argument has deep resonance in a place where a governor, George Wallace, stood in a doorway of the University of Alabama in 1963 in an unsuccessful bid to block its federally ordered integration.

Although much has changed from Wallace’s era, Chief Justice Moore had used a series of strongly worded letters and memorandums to insist that Judge Granade, an appointee of President George W. Bush who joined the federal bench in 2002, had instigated a grave breach of law.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on EPA regulations:

So what are governors and state officials who value the well-being of the middle class to do? Here's my advice:

Don't be complicit in the administration's attack on the middle class. Think twice before submitting a state plan — which could lock you in to federal enforcement and expose you to lawsuits...

So for now, hold back on the costly process of complying.

Senator Lindsay Graham:

And here's the first thing I would do if I were president of the United States. I wouldn't let Congress leave town until we fix this. I would literally use the military to keep them in if I had to. We're not leaving town until we restore these defense cuts. We are not leaving town until we restore the intel cuts.

(Note: apparently Sen. Graham's spokesperson suggested that when he said "literally," he didn't mean "literally.")

Those aren't the rantings of right wing radio hosts or tea party rabble rousers. They are the words of Republican leaders suggesting and/or recommending illegal actions. In other words, they are the rumblings of insurgency.

I don't say that to fear-monger or join some bandwagon of hysteria. I'm simply quoting facts that we need to acknowledge and name accordingly.

Photo of the Day: It's Mutual

From Pete Souza's latest:

Attempting to Blow Up Hostages is NOT Governing

Talk about a hot mess!! Just try unravelling the lunacy contained in this latest article by Sarah Mimms. As best as I can understand it, she is suggesting that perhaps Sen. Tom Cotton has come up with a new way for the "conservative firebrands" to blow up hostages in light of the fact that Republican leadership is thwarting their attempts to do so via the legislative process.

Just look at Cotton. His letter criticizing the administration's attempts to craft a deal with Iran—and his relentless pursuit of signatures from conservative and establishment Republicans—has driven the conversation in the Senate all week and has 2016 candidates clamoring to join his effort. Cotton, with a few mere months under his belt in the upper chamber, arguably holds more power on the issue of Iran right now than Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker and, perhaps, even McConnell himself.

Whether he can translate that into legislative victory remains to be seen, but Cotton is creating a model that conservatives hope to follow. But by getting out ahead of the issue, Cotton has forced leadership to include him in the conversation from the start, rather than having to try to outmaneuver the establishment in a floor fight after the fact.

Mimms alludes to previous legislative battles where conservatives tried to shut down the government over funding of Obamacare or deny DHS funding over executive actions on immigration only to eventually be thwarted by Republican leadership's mastery of the "rules" of the legislature.

But its really not that complicated. Leadership had to amend legislation in a way that attracted enough votes (including Democrats) to actually get passed. That's called "governing" - something about which those conservative firebrands seem to be completely oblivious.

But this is the paragraph where Mimms really got me scratching my head with a "whuuuu?"

What's often lost in those fights is that on the biggest issues facing Republicans, conservatives and their leadership are on the same page. The difference is in how and when to fight those battles. If it were possible to gut the Affordable Care Act or overturn Obama's "executive amnesty," as conservatives term it, leaders would have done so by now.

She's right...on most of these issues, all the Republicans are on the same page. But the difference isn't about "how or when to fight those battles." It's that as long as Barack Obama is in the White House and Republicans can't put together a veto-proof majority to roll back his policies, it can't be done - not unless you are willing to blow up the hostage. THAT'S the big difference between those she calls "conservatives" and the Republican leadership.

Ever since our founding, politicians have gone to Washington and found it difficult to accomplish their agenda. That's because our Constitution sets it up that way. Actual governing requires working with the opposition, negotiation and compromise. What Mimms and these conservatives are trying to come up with is a way to avoid all that.

If you are looking for a culprit that could destroy our democracy, you need look no further than those who continue to threaten to blow shit up if they don't get their way. Sen. Cotton tried to find a new way to do that with the Iranian negotiations. It's pretty clear by now that he has failed. Rather than cheer him on, those who value our democratic process should be breathing a sigh of relief.

Feith Demonstrates Republican Ignorance on Foreign Policy

One of the unintended consequences of the Tom Cotton letter fiasco is that the media focus has turned away from the actual negotiations with Iran to the various excuses Republican leaders are coming up with to explain why they signed it.

But there are a couple of exceptions. I have to give Joshua Muravchik some credit. At least he dispensed with all the right wing cover about how we need a "better deal" and got right down to it with War With Iran is Probably Our Best Option. But what he's really recommending are surgical strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities. He has to admit that won't stop Iran from continuing to build new ones, so we'll have to commit to a kind "whack-a-mole" ongoing war. And then he has to admit that we'll have to do that without IAEA inspectors, so the whole argument devolves into one big mess.

Then there's Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal that published an op-ed on the negotiations by none other than Doug Feith, who purports to have found the "fatal flaw in Obama's dealings with Iran."

To set the stage for a look at what Feith has to say, I'll simply remind you that General Tommy Franks called him "the dumbest f*cking guy on the planet." When it comes to the Bush/Cheney disasters in Iraq, Chris Suellentrop says Feith is not fully culpable, but "he's a leading indicator, like a falling Dow—something that correlates with but does not cause disaster."

With that in mind, Feith's point is that President Obama is taking a "cooperative" approach to the negotiations when he should be taking a "coercive" approach. Here's how he defines the two:

By taking a cooperative approach, Mr. Obama insists, the U.S. and others can persuade Iran’s ruling ayatollahs to play by rules that all parties voluntarily accept. In contrast, the coercive option, which Mr. Netanyahu favors, assumes that Iran will remain hostile, dishonest and dangerous...Coercion means America and its friends would use trade and financial restrictions, diplomatic isolation and other methods (short of military strikes) to pressure a resistant Iran into changing its behavior.

This is helpful because it shows how Republicans continue to insist on an either/or approach to the world when success in negotiations like this requires a both/and strategy. To get a picture of that, let's review some of the history that led us to this point.

As part of the UN Security Council, the United States had imposed sanctions on Iran for years over their nuclear program. But they were not effective. When Obama was elected President, he sought to up the ante against Iran with tougher sanctions. But initially, two of Iran's biggest trading partners - Russia and China - wouldn't agree. By 2010, the Obama administration was able to convince those two countries to participate. Those sanctions had the desired effect.

Since 2010, the sanctions' impact on Iran has been severe: its oil exports and revenues plummeted; the value of its currency eroded; trade disruptions shuttered businesses and exacerbated inflation. Quietly, a backlash emerged among Iran's political elites against the country's creeping isolation, and the June 2013 presidential election ushered in a moderate new president and the beginnings of a diplomatic breakthrough on the nuclear crisis — achievements that most observers attribute to the impact of sanctions.

That sounds an awful lot like the "coercion" Feith was talking about - which was finally effective because it was imposed "cooperatively." The reason Republicans can't see that is because ridding Iran of its nuclear weapons is not their only goal. Feith slips this one in without further comment:

In addition, Mr. Netanyahu says, sanctions should remain in place until Iran stops threatening its neighbors and supporting terrorism.

This one reminds me a lot of the Republican insistence that we can't talk about a "pathway to citizenship" for undocumented immigrants until we "secure the border." The result of that insistence is that the border is never secure enough - just as Iran never stops being enough of a threat to pursue an agreement. It is meant to leave regime change (most likely via military intervention) as the only option on the table.

I can only shake my head at the ignorance of people who don't remember that it was regime change in Iran that got us here in the first place.

Quick Take

Paul Waldman is one of my favorite writers. But I have to say that one way to avoid the media hysteria narrative about Hillary Clinton's emails is to avoid writing an "open letter" to her that indulges all of the pearl-clutching one can imagine about them. Otherwise your scolding comes off as more than a touch hypocritical.

And that's all I'm going to say on the topic. Because I believe that it is a writer's job to separate the signal from the noise.