Why the GOP is Really Mad on the Immigration Executive Action

Republicans can talk all they want about the Constitution, or overreach, or whatever. That's not why their mad about President Obama potentially issuing an executive order on immigration reform. They're mad about politics. They're mad that the President doing this will surely impact the 2016 Presidential race:

If there are 5 million people who are affected by this order, the number of people who either have family ties to these individuals or affective relationships with them is much larger. I don't know if it's 15 million or 20 million or 40 million. But it's a lot more than 5 million people who will feel acutely the fate of these people hanging in the balance. And advocates on both sides of the immigration divide, deporters and pro-immigrant activists will press the issue throughout the 2016 cycle. The 5 million affected can't vote and won't be for years. But family members, friends, community members, employers in many cases can.

Yes, these people have been waiting for years to be able to come out of the shadows. But it's one thing to wait and another to come out of the shadows and be forced to retreat back into the dark, with a perhaps heightened risk of deportation and family separation. 

It all adds up to an intense and likely toxic campaign fracas in which a lot of people will have a unique and intense motivation to vote. That will apply to people on both sides of course. But the anti-immigration voters vote consistently almost every cycle. And as intense as your animus is toward undocumented immigrants, it's hard for it to compare to the motivation of voters who directly know someone who will be affected. And that latter group is filled with many people who are classic 'drop-off' or occasional voters.

This isn't getting mentioned a lot right now. But behind the headlines I suspect it's one of the key reasons Republican elites are upset that this might happen - because of the electoral grenade it drops right into the heart of the 2016 campaign.

Millions of voters who see a Democratic President take action to help their families, friends, neighbors, co-workers, and employees, then watch a Republican Majority fight him tooth-and-nail to stop him. That's what this will create.