{"id":6010,"date":"2011-05-12T00:21:01","date_gmt":"2011-05-11T15:21:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/haakondahl.com\/blog\/?p=669"},"modified":"2011-05-12T00:21:01","modified_gmt":"2011-05-11T15:21:01","slug":"immigration-obama-is-bluffing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/immigration-obama-is-bluffing\/","title":{"rendered":"Immigration — Obama is Bluffing"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t ever endorse “win by losing” as a viable strategy, but in this case I can’t rule it out as a gambit. \u00a0In fact, I think that’s what he’s doing.<\/p>\n

He doesn’t want to pass immigration reform right now. \u00a0He wants to pick a fight with the GOP \u00a0to curry favor with illegal immigrants and their power base (Democrats). \u00a0The tougher the fight is, the more he stands to identify with the reinforced victimhood of illegals. \u00a0Also, the more he can paint GOP as a bunch of racist recession reactionaries.<\/p>\n

If he wins on his amnesty and more plan, the center swings against him, and he reinforces ONLY his base. \u00a0If he loses, however, the base is still the base, but the center is sympathetic. \u00a0At the same time, if he loses, the GOP is easily portrayed as a bunch of mean old white men and their dupes of various races.<\/p>\n

More on this in a bit. \u00a0But that’s the nutshell.<\/p>\n

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I don’t ever endorse “win by losing” as a viable strategy, but in this case I can’t rule it out as a gambit. \u00a0In fact, I think that’s what he’s doing.<\/p>\n

He doesn’t want to pass immigration reform right now. \u00a0He wants to pick a fight with the GOP \u00a0to curry favor with illegal immigrants and their power base (Democrats). \u00a0The tougher the fight is, the more he stands to identify with the reinforced victimhood of illegals. \u00a0Also, the more he can paint GOP as a bunch of racist recession reactionaries.<\/p>\n

If he wins on his amnesty and more plan, the center swings against him, and he reinforces ONLY his base. \u00a0If he loses, however, the base is still the base, but the center is sympathetic. \u00a0At the … Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[234,240],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-politics","category-conservative"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6010\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}