Brooks: Obama Amnesty Would Be ‘a Ted Cruz Stick in the Eye,’ Scuttle Bipartisanship

David Brooks: Obama Immigration Action Would Be "A Ted Cruz Stick In The Eye" At Any Chance of Bipartisanship (RealClearPolitics)

HARI SREENIVASAN, PBS: Something that will likely show up in the 2016 campaign is immigration. The president has said he plans to use an exclusive order to deal with immigration. We don’t know exactly what day that will show up. But do you think that there’s a chance for comprehensive immigration reform without an executive order, or does an executive order actually decrease those chances, David?

DAVID BROOKS: I think it decreases.

I support president’s the position on the policy, on the substance of it. A lot of what it does is going to keep families together. And so, on the substance of it, I think it’s fine. On the politics of it, on the effect on our country, I think it’s just a terrible, terrible idea, sort of a Ted Cruz stick in the eye of any chance we would have bipartisanship.

The Republicans were saying reasonable things after their victory: We want to start out small. Let’s try to pass some legislation on things where we agree on.

And they weren’t major pieces of legislation, but they were pieces. It would be nice to pass a law. We haven’t passed a significant piece of legislation in this country in like four years. It would be nice to do something just to get something done.