Two lines of legislation are sort-of moving. Neither has any chance of getting enacted as policy, but weird things are happening. The conservative faction is pushing for a vote on a bill that can't pass the House, and it looks like they're getting their doomed vote. Why? Posturing. The bill is a hardline bill supported by the Freedom Caucus.
We have a simple explanation for this one. David Mayhew, Congress: The Electoral Connection. A lot of what happens in Congress isn't really about policy-making. It's about electoral maneuvering. Some votes are what he called position-taking votes. You vote yes, not because the bill actually matters in any real sense, but because it signals something to voters. Freedom Caucus people just want to signal to their base that they really, really, really agree with Trump about taxonomic classification of immigrants.
Then, there's the "moderate" faction. As I wrote a week ago, there is a discharge petition circulating on a primarily Democratic-backed plan with some Republican support. As I wrote, though, discharge petitions very rarely work, and none have worked since 2002.
Republican leaders caved to the Freedom Caucus. Why? Well, in part, they usually cave to the Freedom Caucus unless doing so means a debt ceiling breach or extended shutdown, but also, allowing a vote on a bill that will fail costs them nothing.
However, the fact that they have made that calculation raises an interesting point about the discharge petition. In last week's post on the immigration issue, I raised the observation that the Democratic-backed bill has no chance of becoming law regardless of the discharge petition because even if it passed both the House and the Senate, Trump would veto it, and they have no chance of a veto override. My interpretation last week, then, was that this was all a show of party strength.
There is, however, the "why bother?' interpretation. The smarter thing for Ryan to do is to tell any legislator to sign or not sign, as they think their districts would like, let the bill get a vote, and if it passes (it probably would), so be it because Trump would veto it. From an electoral perspective, the party's seat share is maximized by everyone catering to their districts. If there were party-wide damage done by a Trump veto (the likely counter-argument here), that damage is done anyway every time Trump refers to immigrants as "animals," so just let anyone who improves their reelection prospects do so by signing the petition. That way, anyone capable of separating themselves from Trump does so. The policy outcome is the same either way.
That's the thing about a show of party strength. There is no reason to do it when it doesn't flip the outcome, and with Trump as President, pressuring people not to sign the discharge petition doesn't flip the outcome because he'd veto the moderate bill anyway.
What does this mean? I still default to the prediction that the discharge petition fails because so few succeed. Reflexive shows of party strength, though, aren't really that smart.
Then again, Paul Ryan was never a contender for being a "great" Speaker. He follows two great Speakers-- John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi. Ryan? We've had some lousy ones. Newt Gingrich comes to mind, and, um... Dennis Hastert was a child molester, but Ryan is just barely muddling through. Retiring? Smartest thing he's ever done.
Anyway, what happens with this discharge petition? At this point, I still lean towards thinking it fails, but it doesn't matter because of Donny-boy, which is really why it should pass. Just let Donny-boy veto it. That'd be my move in Ryan's position.