As we saw in this month’s election, obscure Republican backbenchers in the House snatched victory from the jaws of defeat by not letting John Boehner call for a vote on the Senate amnesty / guest worker bill pushed by GOP establishment elites like McCain, Graham, Rubio, Rove, Jeb Bush, etc. Contrary to all the conventional wisdom about how this base recalcitrance was political suicide for the Republican Party, it turned out to be 180 degrees the opposite. In reality, you don’t win elections by letting your political enemies have their way with you.

The death wish remains strong among Republican stars, however, so the odds were that if they ever got the White House back, they’d push through exactly what the Democrats want, just with even more Qatar-style guest workers/indentured servants.

But Harry Baldwin comments:

The president talked about how the house should have passed the “bipartisan Senate plan,” but the reason the Republicans didn’t do so is that their base HATE, HATE, HATES it. There is no version of immigration reform that addresses the issues that need addressing–end of birthright citizenship, end of chain migration, radical reform of refugee status, drastic reduction of legal immigration, strongly enforced employer sanctions, and deportation (self-deportation is fine) for those here illegally. Since none of those things would be included in any conceivable Republican bill, I believe Obama did the GOP a big favor by taking executive action. By taking the onus for this unpopular legislation on himself, he saved them from shooting themselves in the foot.

Obama has now made it much harder for future Republican insiders to stab their base in the back over immigration by equating immigration with Obamaism.