US President Barack Obama on Wednesday rejected the notion that the unexpected election defeat of a top Republican leader had effectively dashed his hopes of passing a legacy-enhancing immigration bill.
Obama hurriedly regrouped following the sudden eclipse of US House of Representatives Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a primary election, in which his neophyte opponent blasted him as a favoring “amnesty” for illegal immigrants.
There has been little love lost between Cantor and Obama — but the Republican had been seen as open to some limited reform of a system that has left 12 million illegal immigrants in limbo.
Photo: EPA
Now, few political observers believe Republicans facing tough primary fights for their party nominations or tight midterm election races in November would welcome tricky votes on a reform drive reviled by conservatives. However, Obama, speaking to an audience of wealthy Democratic donors in Massachusetts, disagreed.
“It is interesting to listen to the pundits and the analysts,” Obama said. “Some of the conventional wisdom talks about the politics of immigration reform [being] impossible now.”
“I fundamentally reject that. I will tell the speaker of the House that he needs to reject it,” Obama said, adding that Cantor lost because he failed to show sufficient leadership on immigration.
The US Senate has already passed a bill described as intending to further secure US borders, reform visa procedures and offer an eventual path to citizenship to illegal immigrants.
However, the House has yet to act, with Republican leaders loath to expose their rank-and-file to the fury of conservative primary voters.
The stunning primary defeat of Cantor in his Virginia congressional district by college professor Dave Brat, a hero of the radical conservative Tea Party faction, ranked as one of the biggest electoral upsets in decades.
Brookings Institution senior fellow Audrey Singer said that hopes of passing immigration reform were previously “slim” and “this might be the nail in the coffin.”
Immigration does not tell the whole story of Cantor’s demise — he had apparently lost touch with his district — but the perception that it did him in may be enough.
Busted hopes of reform are not just bad news for Obama, who needs a triumph to flesh out his second term. In recent presidential elections, Republicans have slumped among Hispanic voters — for whom immigration reform is an article of faith.
Many political professionals believe Republicans will never recapture the White House without repairing ties to the fast-growing Hispanic community. In 2012, Obama beat Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney by 71 percent to 27 percent among Hispanics, who made the difference in some key swing states.
However, the recent political lesson is that any Republican who touches immigration reform is burned — Texas Governor Rick Perry stumbled on the issue and saw his presidential campaign crumble in 2012.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not