Rep. Steve King confronts Erika Andiola and Cesar Vargas.
If you already thought the GOP had 2016 problems, you ain't seen nothing yet. Here's an excerpt from a "Dear Colleague" letter Rep. Steve King (R-IA) is circulating on the Hill titled "Defund All of President Obama's Executive Amnesty:"
"Any proposed solution must not unnecessarily be narrowed to only defunding the President's recent illegal and unconstitutional actions announced on November 20, 2014. We must also defund the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy as announced in 2012 and the Morton Memos which began illegally setting up classes for "individual" prosecutorial discretion in 2011. To leave out DACA and the Morton Memos is to suggest those acts were compliant with the Constitution.
Never forget, DACA in 2012 was the dry run for the illegal and unconstitutional misdeeds President Obama is implementing today…"
Never forget, DACA
had broad mainstream support and was wildly popular among Latinos.
Nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults (63%) approved of the new immigration program, according to a 2012 Pew Research Center survey. An even greater share of Hispanics (89%) said the same, according to the Pew Research Center’s 2012 National Survey of Latinos.
Never forget, Obama's 2012 DACA announcement
entirely flipped his numbers with Latino voters in battleground states, with a plurality (41 percent) saying they were "less enthusiastic" about Obama before he announced DACA, and a plurality (49 percent) calling themselves "more enthusiastic" about Obama after he announced the program. That's a net enthusiasm shift of +35 points.
Steve King—the guy who famously said that for every undocumented DREAMer "who's a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert"—is quickly shaping up to be the nemesis of Speaker John Boehner. It wasn't enough for him to oppose Boehner's leadership, now he's fixing to torpedo any chance the GOP has of showing they can govern in a reasonable way. (By the way, defunding DACA isn't real high on the priority list of things Americans hope the 114th Congress will accomplish.)
The cards were already stacked against Republicans in 2016, but ol' Cantaloupe King is their ace in the hole.