Facing a major voter backlash, a group of Republicans is suddenly pushing for a vote on immigration reform. But Paul Ryan is there to stop them.
Republicans have had years to enact immigration reform, but they're just now bringing it up as they face the likelihood of electoral losses in the 2018 midterm elections.
Seventeen Republicans have signed on to a discharge petition, which would force the House to vote on an immigration bill.
But even in their desperate attempt, Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) is vowing to hold up legislation that could protect the lives of thousands of people and their families.
Since taking over the House in 2010, Republicans have avoided enacting reform legislation. Under Ryan, even with control of the White House and Senate in addition to the House, immigration legislation has been supported.
As if to highlight the complete disarray of the current GOP, Ryan is still maneuvering to oppose the legislation while in his final year of office, going so far as to even block the current proposal from his party.
Speaking to reporters, he called the discharge petition — which would circumvent him — a "spectacle on the floor that just results in a veto" and said it "doesn’t solve the problem."
Instead, he said Republicans should "come up with a solution that the president can support."
But it's Ryan and his fellow Republicans who are propping up Trump, who ended DACA protections and has pushed for his unworkable border wall while calling Mexicans rapists.
What the renegade batch of Republicans appear to realize is that voters are prepared to punish Republicans for their behavior. Among the top issues voters say is motivating them this year is immigration, which ranks just behind health care — another issue Republicans have completely fumbled.
Voters want a solution to the issue, Republicans have utterly mishandled it and now, at almost the last minute, a few of them are realizing that.
But Ryan, who will no longer have to face voters because he has decided to leave Congress, is resisting the loud outcry.
.What is likely to occur is more inaction from the GOP, because they are fundamentally disinterested in reform and seek to appease the racist voters in their base who applaud ongoing cruelty to immigrants.
People who act just like Trump.
