The Mythology of "TEA"

In recent days, we've seen plenty of movement on immigration reform. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates S 744, the comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) bill. We have even more evidence showing CIR will help the economy. And we're even seeing a breakthrough in the works on the border security provision on S 744.

Yet despite all this, the 21st Century Know Nothings are doubling down on their campaign to kill the bill. Why?

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Of course, they keep crying about the great "AMNESTY!!!" myth. Never mind that even conservative Republicans, such as Former Nevada Governor Bob List (R), have disputed their mythology. And never mind that public opinion is quite strongly on the side of CIR.

Of course, silly facts and figures and reality won't let fearful G-O-TEA politicians get in the way of placating their base.

Who else shares his skepticism that this bill is unreformable? Pretty much that whole “base” of Republican voters that Republican politicians are so scared of and vote “no” on everything because of.The Base. They were on Capitol Hill yesterday, for a sad nostalgia Tea Party revival.

They reacted angrily to any mention of the CBO. They booed a reporter asking for specific criticisms of CBO methodology, at a press conference. The CBO score, to them, was just a thick, fresh layer of bullshit atop the pile. Most likely, the CBO report will cause opponents to annoy their senators’ staffers with livid phone calls more, demanding they remain resolute in opposing the bill in the face of such pressure. They do not want a comprehensive immigration reform bill.

The last time we heard sizable crowds of people loudly boo at faint allusions to CBO methodology was at these same Tea Party rallies three years ago, during the Obamacare debate. Why wouldn’t they do so now? Say what you will of the Tea Party Patriots, but they’re consistent in this. They consider the CBO to be a fraudulent conspiracy of liberal innumerates who don’t understand that this bill will give each illegal immigration $10 trillion in welfare per year, regardless of what it says. And all of the Senate Republican backers of immigration reform today were saying to them — feeding to them, in fact — the same things about the CBO when Obamacare was the big legislative fish. It’s a perfectly fair question for conservatives to ask of them, what nerve do you have to wave a CBO top-line number in our faces today and expect us to engage with it?

It’s possible that the Senate will still get that 70-80 votes it wants next week, since senators’ top priority is passing whatever it is the leaders want passed before they can swoop over to Reagan National and catch a plane for a vacation weekend. Even so, none of that “momentum” would transfer to a House that’s more in touch with the every whims of “the base,” a body of trigger-happy-primariers that no CBO score or anything else will persuade into supporting Obamnesty or whatever they’re gotten around to calling it. The divisions remain wide, and entrenched.

And no matter what excuse(s) Dean Heller, Joe Heck, and Mark Amodei use to explain why they still haven't yet taken a position on S 744, we quite clearly see the true reason here. They fear their own base. It's now only a matter of whether they fear their own "TEA" fueled base more than the "demographic death spiral" their party will continue to swirl down if they kill the bill this summer...


Unless they themselves start buying into the mythology. After all, why bother with actual reality when they can live in the "TEA" tinged mythology of mile high border walls and an America centered around angry old straight white men?