In Order To Decrease My Insufferability Quotient

I am temporarily suspending the conceit that I am right about some things and other people are wrong or are so late to the party that they should at least wipe their feet before heading for the keg.

Here then is noted Conservative writer David Frum with some interesting ideas about immigration reform:

Obama Would Be a Fool to Pursue Immigration Next

by David Frum Oct 19, 2013 5:45 AM EDT 

Rumor has it the president will pivot to immigration reform next. That’s a bad idea, writes David Frum—it’s a path littered with the same obstacles that nearly brought down Obamacare.

Overreach: nobody’s immune to it. Republicans overreached in the debt ceiling fight. Now, by some reports, President Obama is tempted to do the same.

Those reports state that Obama intends to proceed from the debt battle to the immigration issue, taking up again his plan to regularize the status of millions of people illegally present in the United States. Let’s leave aside for the moment the policy merits of the president’s immigration proposals. (I think they’re dreadful, but your mileage may vary.) Consider instead the politics of advancing this measure in a polarized Congress and a recession-battered country. 

...

Why is the debate over the Affordable Care Act—Obamacare—so bitter? Yes, it’s a big and expensive new entitlement. But so was Medicare Part D back in 2004, and that program provoked nothing like the controversy of the ACA. ... The [ACA] deed is now done, and—as House Republicans just painfully rediscovered—done beyond undoing. The political task ahead is to minimize the deed’s negative consequences: economic, fiscal, political, and social. Instead, the Obama administration seems intent on maximizing such negative consequences. “You know that demographic change that’s making you so hostile to new social welfare programs? Let’s have a lot more of it! And faster!”

That’s folly—the kind of folly that rends nations and weakens governments. Back in 2008, Barack Obama promised “change.” He delivered. If he wants to protect and preserve his accomplishment, he’ll understand that even change has its limits, and that change becomes most secure when administered in tolerable doses. Obama's immigration reform atop health-care reform is one change too many. Leave the next chapter to the next president.

Interesting stuff, David!

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