As senators work on a compromise deal to address border security and immigration, at least one Republican is suggesting politics is a key motivator for him.
“Let me tell you, I’m not willing to do too damn much right now to help a Democrat and to help Joe Biden’s approval rating,” Republican Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas told CNN this week. “I will not help the Democrats try to improve this man’s dismal approval ratings. I’m not going to do it. Why would I?”
Nehls indicated he’d accept only a proposal similar to HR 2, a hardline immigration bill that got zero Democratic votes when it passed the House last year.
“Party over country.” That’s their stance.
And yet people vote for them. They are just admitting they aren’t interested in helping people and the country and they still get voted for.
For the people that vote for them, that’s a highlight…
Maybe in their limited thinking catered by Fox News, but a lot of them are working class and they’re the ones getting hurt the most by Republicans. They don’t even know it.
If it owns the libs, then it’s good. If they suffer any consequences, it’s the libs fault for making Republicans do it. It’s simple circular logic, but you’ll find it’s quite unbreakable.
Our great challenge has been showing this to them, and it remains incredibly difficult. To highlight how much of a problem it is, you still have white collar knowledge workers who think that they’ll have to pay more money in taxes if they get a raise vs before. They don’t understand tax brackets.
Has been since Nixon.
Trump over donors, donors over religion, religion over party, party over family, family over so-called conservative principles (oxymoron)and country several steps lower than that.
You mean to tell me that Republicans are operating in bad faith, and that Democrats fell for it?
I would say called them out on it but potato tomato.
How?
simply by going forward and having yahoos like him admit they don’t actually want to solve the problem. Calling out or calling a bluff is just going ahead with the thing.
That’s not what he said and not what anyone sympathetic to his dumbass viewpoint is going to hear. He said the House solved “the problem” back when they passed HR2, that if Senate Democrats actually wanted to solve “the problem” they would just pass that, and that the bipartisan deal moderate Dems are seeking is only for the purposes of improving Biden’s poll numbers, which is why he has no interest in passing it.
You and I know HR1 is a psychotic pile of xenophobic trash that should never get passed, but the fact that Dems are making a big show out of working with the political party that produced it muddies the waters for anyone that doesn’t follow politics closely. The fact that they’ve gotten Democratic lawmakers to concede that “securing the border” is a problem (as opposed to staying focused on how our immigration system can’t process people in a timely manner and our social care systems are all too underfunded to deal with climate refugees) has been a massive win for them (makes it very easy for them to just say “securing the border” is “the (only) problem”), as is the fact that we’re talking about the border at all right now instead of Ukraine aid.
yeah which is him admiting they don’t want to work with anyone to solve it. its their way or the highway. so they are responsible for the highway status. its not a win. it makes them look even worse and makes anything biden does look better. Im still blown away but what he has been able to do sans congress for his term.
Democrats fell for what exactly, doing their job in a lame duck government so people can see what Republicans are really about yet still somehow being blamed by fake Democrats?
Unhung traitors kill republics.
Shouldn’t it be “unhanged”?
Oh dear. Yes, possibly
Tbf, I’ve also heard they have tiny penises.
Fitting that one of their leaders is a weak Johnson.
Yeah but so? I don’t even care if my leaders don’t have one at all, much less the size. They have tiny morals
I like this quote
I never thought I would, but I kinda miss the time when Republicans would lie about their motivations for being awful.
This whole “mask off but still no consequences” bullshit is even more frustrating than when everyone knew but most people refused to acknowledge it 😮💨
If it improves the President’s approval rating, doesn’t that suggest that it’s something Americans need or want?
“[…] I’m not going to do it. Why would I?”
Indeed. Why help the American people, Congressman?
i mean that’s pretty much the same story about immigration for the last 40 years and it’s why nothing has gotten done. they’d rather use immigrants as wedge issues then do something about the problem.
They also like to use them as cheap labor. The American system can’t function without them. But hush, hush, we don’t like to talk about that part.
“We will not do the things our constituents ask unless we get all of the credit.”
Nah they won’t do it even if they do get the credit
If it’s such a big deal, how come when Trump was in the White House and they held both chambers of Congress (~2017–2019), why didn’t they solve the issue then?
They were busy with healthcare and infrastructure, obviously.
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You’ll feel bad when they unveil it and it’s the most perfect plan ever.
I showed my plan to smart people and they were blown away by the plan. So blown away. My daughter, the one with the nice rack, has knowledge of medicine and she thinks its the most amazing plan.
She does have experience with surgery so I’d trust her.
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“healthcare” i.e. repealing the Affordable Care Act and replacing it with ‘Thoughts and Prayers’.
It is high time we treat the republican traitor swine with the same contempt that they show the American people.
these people need to be removed from office. you’re there to help your constituents. period.
There is no constitutional requirement that representatives help their constituents
We need to replace oaths on books with legally binding contracts. I want to be able to sue the fuckers who lie their way into places of power.
Sure, why don’t you write to your representative to get that changed - oh, wait…
Pfft, its way more efficient as an end user to just bribe a lobbyist. DUH
Wrong, they’re there to represent their constituents, who seem quite content with all the fuckery the GOP has been pulling.
right. like ANYONE in congress “REPRESENTS” their constituents. come on, get real.
They’re going to blame a government shut down, due to their inability to govern, on the “border crisis”.
This is standard, decades-long GOP mantra, championed by Mitch McConnell. It’s also quite effective. Give a man a boogeyman to blame for all of his problems, and he’ll follow you anywhere.
It’s worse than that now. Democrats rolled their eyes, started setting up a deal to address their boogeyman, and now there’s Republicans saying they refuse because it might help the other side.
The GOP has nothing useful to say or do.
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Enact policies that create pain in your own supporters.
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Create an “enemy.”
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Blame the pain on the “enemies.”
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Present themselves as strongmen who can defeat the “enemies.”
And anyways that’s why I might not get to grow old. Fun stuff.
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If he’s an idiot who believes that there’s a boogeyman to blame for all his problems, anyway.
So, it’s not about what’s best for America you say? Gotcha.
Oops, said the quiet part out loud again.
What the hell lol it probally would hurt Biden but it will hurt the country and also the gop will just hurt themselves too God I hate the two party system
How would immigration reform not written by Republicans hurt Biden politically? It’s yet another win he can tout.
I do agree, though, that any form of immigration restrictions hurts the country.
Probably because immigration reform almost never means just throwing down the borders and reverting to the old rules where you only had to prove a few years of residency to be eligible for citizenship.
Partially because racism, and partially because even a decent number of our allies would take extreme umbridge with the US doing that because of how it’d brain drain basically everything where the US offers a more competitive standard of living for given income.
The European tech sector would more or less instantly vanish because of how much more well paid American coders are by comparison, and Mexico would find itself losing every scrap of development and progress it has achieved over the last century as every educated professional files straight across the border.
Would do wonders screwing over America’s adversaries though considering how literally all of them have such a worse standard of living that they have to set up structures to keep their people in as opposed to keeping the rest of the world out.
Basically the platonic ideal is to brain drain our adversaries, and strike a state by state balance with everyone else for what sort of freedom of movement arrangement most benefits both countries, the Philippines for example would be over the moon for a more open immigration system with the US since brain drain impacts them a lot less given how prevalent remittance is among Philippines expats.
Vietnam likewise would probably negotiate something more akin to a military exchange program since the war has become water under the bridge when compared to the ever present threat China presents to them, and Americans are some of the only foreigners the Japanese are able to tolerate enough to not actively scare off expats and immigrants. Brazil would LOVE an incentivization for American rocket scientists to brush up on their Portuguese, the idea of becoming a space port super power makes Brazilian state leaders drool over themselves at the possibilities, especially if French Guyana stops cooperating with the ESA.
This is all geopolitical consideration, which is valuable, but generally not impactful in a campaign.
