The results of the November 2014 elections were predicated on a series of promises made by Republican candidates billed as conservatives; promises to work against the objectives of the Obama administration and particularly the executive action to not enforce the borders and effectively grand amnesty to illegal aliens. Now it appears that despite the will of the legislature to carry out those promises the leadership" in the persons of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell will back down and allow the promises to go unfulfilled. It would be a road to destruction of the American system and likely the Republican Party.
That McConnell and Boehner would want to destroy the Party appears to make no sense. The only motivation appears to be that they harbor such a dislike for Conservatives as to alienate them in order to remove them from the political equation. This would be a major mistake. Whether they take that route remains to be seen. Meanwhile the meaningless bill passed on December 4 2014 remains just that. The fact that it will never get through the lame duck senate renders it an exercise in futility aside from the impending veto. This leads us back to the budget process.
The ultimate weapon or nuclear option depending on which you prefer is to use budgetary controls to prevent the Executive Branch from exceeding its authority. At present the option that presents itself is to limit funds that would be used to effect the legalization of the illegal aliens. Barack Obama has said that if such a budget makes its way though Congress he will veto it. Thus Legislative leadership" is faced with the problem of dealing with the promise to enforce existing immigration law and at the same time not be party to a government shutdown situation.
What should be noted here is that if the Executive Branch refuses to accept a budget and a shutdown occurs then it is the Executive who is responsible for the shutdown. This is particularly the case if the budget is in line with applicable law and the legislative duty to follow the laws just as the executive is expected to enforce them. When an executive moves beyond his legal authority the legislature is supposed to be part of the system of checks and balances" designed to rein in the out of control executive. If the legislature refuses to exercise its duty then it is effectively sanctioning lawless behavior. This should not be accepted or tolerated.
The results of the November election point directly to the fact that the Republican base and a substantial number of other voters agree with enforcement of the borders and existing law. The results from Texas where in statewide elections Hispanic voters supported border control candidates at nearly a fifty percent rate it becomes obvious that open borders are not the panacea to gaining Hispanic voters that some analysts think. Further if the so-called leadership abdicates its duty in the face of presidential pressure then the Republican Party breaks a promise to its base that said base considered sacred. The result could well be voters deliberately sitting on their hands next election cycle (which they have done before) with disastrous results for the party and the nation.
Why Boehner and McConnell would want to do this is unclear. There are two persuasive schools of thought that should be considered. The first is that they have drunk the expert" provided Kool-Aid and agree that the only way for their party to survive is to become a second leftist party abandon the national interest along with the party base and go where the votes are supposed to be with every other consideration being chucked out with the bathwater.
The other consideration is that powerful interests within the Party have such a dislike for the conservative base that they refuse to accept its approach to government and in reaction go the opposite direction. This flies in the face of one fact impossible to ignore. Without the base the party is dead in any event. If accepting the increasing conservative message of the base leads to electoral victory it is better for the party in the long run. If a Conservative victory leads to policies that bring prosperity and a strengthened nation then even if government power is reduced overall the Party benefits by being returned to office to administer the reduced government. And as long as the case can be made that these policies should be continued the trend should be continued as well. Thus the nation benefits and the Party benefits as well. It seems that the Republican Party is disinterested in this fact.
Failure to accept the change that the electorate desires is generally fatal. The Whigs were replaced by the 19th Century Republicans because of this. Todays Republicans are unlikely to have a positive outcome nationally and otherwise if they follow this course. If there is no opposition to the political left and they are able to win outright majorities everywhere it will mean disaster for the Union. Attempts at or actual seizure of overwhelming power are likely to occur. The Texas secessionists may gain sufficient traction to get their way and other states could well follow. The nation will split into productive states and welfare based taker" states with inevitable negative financial consequences and the possibility of civil war in order to obtain revenue from the producers to supply the takers. It will be a bad deal all around.
Do Boehner and McConnell want to risk this? Probably not but they also probably do not consider it much of a risk. They may well believe that nothing bad will follow if they just attempt to maintain the status quo. But in times of crisis maintaining the status quo is generally the wrong thing to do.
