Makes perfect sense and stands very much to reason. If Trump captures the Republican nomination, his toxic "brand" will become the GOP's; with his historic polling negatives, he will become the George McGovern/Walter Mondale of 2016; Hillary Clinton will be elected POTUS in a landslide with ample coattails, sweeping Democrats back into unified control of Congress; and as the new Senate Majority Leader, Schumer, whose co-sponsoring name was on the last CIR attempt three years ago when it also passed in a Democrat Senate, will be in prime position to push it through the upper chamber again, this time with a Nancy Pelosi-led House to rubber-stamp it for President Rodham's signature.
That's clearly what Chucky almost giddily sees in his near-term crystal ball. Tell me, Trumplicans - substantively, based on to-date available polling evidence - how he's wrong:
Though he acknowledges the turbulent rhetoric on [alien]s in the presidential primary race, Schumer predicts a “rainbow at the end of the storm here” and adds: “I think that in 2017, both Democrats and Republicans will come together and pass immigration reform. Paul Ryan has made no secret about the fact that he has been open to immigration reform.”
–Schumer continued: “Our Republican-Democrat coalition in the Senate will be alive and well. And I think if the election results show that this anti-immigration hostility won’t work politically, people will say let’s get it done. I am optimistic. And if I become the Democrat leader … I’m going to make it a high priority.” The Senate Democrat, who led the Gang of Eight negotiations in 2013, said that bill is a “pretty good model” for whatever legislation may come in 2017 and its main tenets – the pathway to citizenship, reforms to the legal immigration system for high- and low-skilled workers – would stay, although he hoped border security could go in a “more progressive direction.”
Essentially, a legislative backfilling of Obamnesty, and almost certainly an expansion of it. All made possible by Trumpmania pissing away the most winnable presidential election in over a decade at least, and one that absolutely could not afford to be lost. And on Trump's ostensible signature issue as well. Way to go, Trumplicans. You're shoving down our throats the man who is even discrediting border hawkery, national sovereignty, and the rule of law that had, up to now, enjoyed consistent 2-1 public support, and who is the same man who supports....touchback amnesty himself.
If the House GOP majority were somehow to survive Trumpageddon, what incentive would its shrunken numbers have to keep fighting the good fight, after what Trumplicans did to the party? With that worm turned, and "CIR" held in much higher pubic regard - the 2016 election results allowing for no other interpretation - could Speaker Ryan even hold his caucus together to defeat Schumer's CIR bill if he was motivated to do so? Which his track record indicates he would not be.
I dunno. Maybe holding or rebuilding that majority in 2018 would be possible and be a counter-weight - it was for the equally distrusted John Boehner in the runup to the 2014 midterms - and perhaps Ryan might harbor 2020 presidential ambitions of his own, though I can't believe Trump wouldn't run again, and won't keep running every four years until he croaks to keep the GOP out of the presidency indefinitely. I simply don't think any of these conunundra will come up because I don't believe Trumpageddon won't cost the GOP the House as well.
Exit quote from Allahpundit:
[T]here’s every reason to think Schumer’s telling the truth here when he says he’d make the issue a top priority. He’ll need some Republican backing to get comprehensive reform past a filibuster, but there’s no better time to ask for that than right after the party’s nominee has been routed in an election in which he ran on mass deportation, with the midterms still nearly two years away. In fact, that’s how the Gang of Eight bill got rolling: It debuted just three months after Romney lost big to Obama, thanks in part to a landslide forty-four-point deficit among Latinos. Schumer realistically would need something like eight to ten Republicans to vote with him on Gang of Eight II, but the original bill got fourteen Republican votes in 2013 with many of those senators (McCain, Graham, and Flake, for starters) likely to be back next year. He can get it done. [emphases added]
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