President Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration, granting de facto amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants, has so outraged the tea party faction of the Republican Party that the ultra conservatives are focusing their attention and resources on this single issue, potentially causing a fissure within the party, according to
The New York Times.
"What started five years ago as a groundswell of conservatives committed to curtailing the reach of the federal government, cutting the deficit and countering the Wall Street wing of the Republican Party has become a movement largely against immigration overhaul," writes the Times’ Jeremy Peters.
"The politicians, intellectual leaders and activists who consider themselves part of the Tea Party have redirected their energy from advocating fiscal austerity and small government to stopping any changes that would legitimize people who are here illegally, through granting them either citizenship or legal status."
Tea partyers are rallying behind a group of sheriffs who will demonstrate at the Capitol next month while simultaneously preparing to try to knock off "high-profile Republicans they accuse of betraying them."
Peters points out that it was this type of organizing and vigor that helped the tea party defeat former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.
Their top target may be Arizona Sen. John McCain, according to Peters, a member of the "gang of 8" — a bipartisan group of eight senators who drafted a comprehensive immigration overhaul bill in 2013.
Tea party leaders are quietly meeting with their "dream candidate" to oppose him – Sarah Palin, McCain’s former running mate on the 2008 GOP presidential ticket.
Palin has a home in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner "remain sharply limited in their ability to persuade their most conservative members," according to
The Washington Post.
The Post last week reported that the two party leaders will be forced to walk a tightrope to tamp down the "intraparty warfare that has largely defined the GOP during the Obama years and that has hurt the party’s brand among the broader electorate."
McConnell and Boehner also must try to "contain" Republicans who have offended Hispanics with insensitive comments, such as when Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, a tea party favorite. Bachmann said that the "social cost" of Obama’s immigration policies would be extensive, with "millions of unskilled, illiterate, foreign nationals coming into the United States who can’t speak the English language."
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of the four Republicans who make up the gang of eight, called Bachmann’s remarks "unfortunate, unfair, unnecessary, unwise."
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