The GOP is facing a bitter internal battle now that President Barack Obama’s nominee for attorney general has openly endorsed the president’s unpopular and arguably illegal decision to award work permits to five million illegal immigrants.
Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions has already announced his opposition to Loretta Lynch, who is supposed to replace outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder.
But to prevail, Sessions first must drag three pro-amnesty GOP senators along with him when the 20-member Judiciary Committee votes to recommend or reject her nomination.
That’s a tall order.
There are 11 Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee. That means Democrats will win if they can pick up at least two GOP votes. One Republican isn’t enough, because a tie vote will likely leave Lynch stranded in the committee, though they could theoretically advance her nomination without a recommendation.
Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch has already announced his support for Lynch. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake are also possible Lynch votes.
Graham and Flake joined with Democrats in late 2012 to push a bill that would have doubled immigration and provided an amnesty to nearly all 12 million illegal immigrants living in the country in exchange for increasing the inflow of guest-workers for jobs sought by Americans. House Speaker John Boehner bowed to public opinion and killed the bill.
Sessions’ opposition to Lynch will likely be joined by Republican Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, David Vitter of Louisiana and Mike Lee of Utah. The trio of conservatives used their time during the confirmation hearing to highlight Lynch’s willingness to carry out Obama’s constitutionally questionable big-government agenda.
Four other GOP senators — John Cornyn of Texas, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, David Perdue of Georgia and committee chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa — may vote against Lynch, but only if they feel pressure from the GOP base.
It’s a win-win situation for Obama, who is using the amnesty fight to widen the GOP’s split between its middle-class electorate and establishment business wing.
If GOP senators reject Lynch, Obama and his allies will rally their base with cries of Republican racism, sexism and bigotry. And if the GOP senators endorse Lynch, Obama’s Democratic machine will claim Republican validation for his unpopular amnesty, further splitting and demoralizing the GOP base ahead of the 2016 election.
The GOP leadership could have prevented this predictable problem last December by using their budget power to bar spending on Obama’s amnesty. Instead, GOP leaders avoided the showdown by making a deal with Obama that funded his amnesty in exchange for his support of a deal that aided Wall Street.
Sessions has three advantages in this fight.
Lynch has been surprisingly frank in her support for Obama’s amnesty.
“Who has more right to a job in this country? A lawful immigrant who’s here, or citizen — or a person who entered the country unlawfully?” Sessions asked Lynch during Wednesday’s hearing.
“I believe that the right and the obligation to work is one that’s shared by everyone in this country regardless of how they came here,” she revealed.
“Ms. Lynch, do you believe the executive action announced by President Obama on November 20th is legal and constitutional? Yes or no?” Sessions asked.
“I do believe it is, senator,” Lynch replied.
Obama’s evolution towards an open-border labor policy is wildly unpopular among the voters who will pick the president in November 2016. Numerous polls — and at least one vote in Oregon — show strong opposition. The numbers get even worse when voters are asked to talk about amnesty and jobs.
“If U.S. businesses have trouble finding workers, what should happen?” pollster Kellyanne Conway asked 1,001 likely voters in August 2014. In response, 75 percent said companies “should raise wages and improve working conditions to attract Americans,” while 8 percent said “more immigrant workers should be allowed into the country to fill these jobs.”
The GOP base is overwhelmingly against Obama’s amnesty. Multiple polls in late 2014 showed the opposition reaching almost 90 percent. A January poll by the GOP showed 89 percent opposition.
Opponents of the Obama amnesty are increasingly active and organized. This popular sentiment helped the GOP win in November and forced reluctant party leaders to send two anti-amnesty bills to the Senate in January.
So Sessions hit the workers’ rights button hard during the hearings. “Who is protecting the American worker?” he asked Lynch.
Sessions’ third advantage may be deep in the heart of Texas, where a judge may announce as soon as next week that Obama’s amnesty is illegal. The judge’s track record suggests he’ll stop the amnesty, ensuring many months of legal fights, likely until the issue is resolved by the Supreme Court in 2016.
If the judge stops the amnesty, Democrats will be left holding hands with an attorney general nominee who lost her first case even before she got the job.
More importantly, Republicans who want to vote for Lynch might hesitate to vote for someone prospective primary opponents can describe as the lawyer for Obama’s unlawful program to replace Americans with illegal immigrants.
Sessions and his allies also face obstacles, however.
Senate leaders don’t want to fight Lynch. An aide to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told Buzzed leadership won’t stop Lynch from getting a floor vote if she gets a majority in the committee.
Democrats and the media have rallied around Lynch, and will happily argue that Sessions opposes on racial grounds. Lynch is African-American and blacks are the Democrats’ most loyal voting bloc.
Democrats are already trying to rush Republicans out the exit. “The case against Lynch deflated faster than if the New England Patriots had run the hearing,” claimed Washington Post columnist, Dana Milbank, in a Jan. 28 column titled “GOP case against Loretta Lynch falls apart.” The column ignored Lynch’s comments to Sessions, and the GOP’s poll numbers.
All nine Senate Democrats on the Judiciary Committee are very likely to stick with Lynch. They all come from blue states and are eager to expand the number of low-skilled, government-dependent voters.
Lynch is also supported by Latino groups, who largely oppose limits on immigration. In November, Obama told an audience in Nashville, Tenn., that his new amnesty would basically end repatriation of the 12 million illegal immigrants in the country. “What we’re saying essentially is, in that low-priority list. … You’re not going to be deported,” Obama told the audience.
But all that was also true in in the past two years, when almost the entire D.C. establishment rallied around Obama’s immigration bill. Despite massive business spending, skewed opinion polls, Democratic discipline, GOP waffling and media cheerleading, Republicans ultimately listened to their voters and deep-sixed Obama’s top second-term legislative priority. They were rewarded with a huge victory in the midterm elections.