“They would love for us to take the bait. We’re not going to take the bait, GOP leaders warn 'impeachment' is a dirty word Senior Republicans worry that party could misplay hand on Obama’s immigration action

Republican leaders, anticipating outrage from their base over President Barack Obama’s upcoming immigration move, have a message for their party: Don’t use the ‘I’ word.

Senior House and Senate Republicans don’t want their rank and file to even raise the specter of impeaching Obama, fearing it would give Democrats a message to rally around as the president’s party is split over the hugely controversial move. Ahead of the upcoming announcement, top congressional Republicans are trying to find the right balance between expressing outrage and overreaching, hoping that the battle doesn’t lead to either a government shutdown in December or calls among conservatives to impeach the president.


Texas Sen. John Cornyn, the incoming Senate majority whip, said Wednesday that the GOP response needs to be “appropriate” and measured.

“Nobody’s talking about the ‘I’ word like the White House and others,” Cornyn said. “They would love for us to take the bait. We’re not going to take the bait.”

“Impeachment and shutting the entire government down takes the focus away from him to us,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. “There are some people in the conferences that will have their 15 minutes of fame over this. But the rest of us want a Republican Party that can compete across the board in 2016.”

Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, had a similar response when asked about impeachment: “The speaker has said we have no current or future plans to go down that path.”

The discussion comes as Obama travels on Friday to Las Vegas, where he is expected to discuss the immigration move. Under plans being constructed by the White House, up to 5 million undocumented immigrants could be shielded from deportation. The White House says such action is necessary because Congress has not acted on a larger immigration bill and that it is within his bounds of his authority to prioritize immigration enforcement.

But Republicans, who view the move as an unconstitutional power grab, are still struggling with their legislative response. The most clear avenue is the government financing bill, which needs to pass by Dec. 11 to avoid the second shutdown in as many years. There’s debate within the GOP over several possible avenues, including splitting up an omnibus package to fund most of the government through next September but limit the funding of immigration policies in order to tie the president’s hands.

“Congress will be funding the government, but it doesn’t have to be everything the president wants,” said Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a chief foe of comprehensive immigration legislation.

If a spending bill with restrictions on immigration passes the GOP House, it’s unlikely to win backing in the Senate, which is controlled by Democrats until January. So Republicans are considering passing a continuing resolution to keep the government afloat until mid-February and respond more forcefully then, when the GOP controls both houses of Congress.

Doing that, however, risks enraging conservatives who want a more muscular response right now.

“Instead of just talking about it, we need to do something to show the president that there are consequences to trying to do a run around the Constitution and Congress,” Cornyn added.

Republicans want to seize on the divisions within the Democratic Party over the move. Several moderate Democrats, including Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Heidi Heitkmap of North Dakota, as well Maine Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, criticized the president’s plans.

“I would encourage the president not to take that step until we’ve exhausted everything, to see if Boehner can give us a vote on something,” said Manchin, a former governor of West Virginia.

“The better course would be wait, see how the next Congress reacts,” Heitkamp said. “The president is the president, he’s going to make his decision, but I think the better course is to delay this a period of time and allow the Congress to do what they should do, which is deal with an issue of national importance.”

Added King: “I worry that his taking unilateral action could in fact inflame public opinion, change the subject from immigration to the president. I also have constitutional concerns about where prosecutorial discretion ends and unconstitutional executive authority begins.”

Still, it’s hardly clear that any of these disaffected moderates want Congress to either use the funding bill to tie Obama’s hands or take even more draconian actions against Obama. So Republicans argue they need to be careful in how they choose to respond to avoid pushing these Democrats onto the side of the president.

“Anybody who does that kind of talk right now will be considered pretty erratic and excessive,” said Utah’s Orrin Hatch, the longest-serving Senate Republican, when asked about impeachment. “Let’s face it: There’s no way that anybody with any kind of real experience would want to talk in those terms.”