Washington Times
By Dave Boyer
October 8, 2014
The
White House said Wednesday that President Obama delayed his decision on
immigration reform until after the midterm elections because he didn’t
want Republicans to
win on the issue and become emboldened by it.
“The
concern is that, had the president moved forward with his announcement
prior to Election Day, you would have seen Republican candidates do more
to make the immigration
issue central to their campaign,” said White House press secretary Josh
Earnest. “And in the event that they were successful in their campaign,
the concern would be that they would cite their opposition to
immigration reform as a reason for their success.”
He added, “That is not a storyline that the president wanted, or that anybody here wanted to contribute to.”
Mr.
Earnest’s explanation went a bit beyond previous justifications for the
delay, which were mainly that Mr. Obama didn’t want to inject the
subject into a partisan election.
The
president is expected to take executive action in the lame-duck session
of Congress on immigration, likely to include a broadening of
deportation waivers for some
of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants.
Mr.
Earnest said the White House believes the “vast majority of
congressional races” won’t be swayed by candidates who oppose
immigration reform.
But
he said the president’s decision to postpone an announcement was “less
an issue about trying to dictate or influence the outcome of the
elections and more about making
sure that the immigration issue is not a casualty of the post-election
political analysis.”
“That’s
the — that is a complicated case to make, but it is important to
protecting the political viability of an issue that the president thinks
is a top domestic priority,
and that’s immigration reform,” he said.
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