Let's have a quick refresher on how we got to last week's House shenanigans over immigration. House Democrats started to circulate a "discharge petition" for their immigration bill. Discharge petitions can force a vote on blocked legislation, but the majority party leadership will essentially threaten to go back in time and murder your parents, undoing your entire existence, if you even consider signing a discharge petition. They'll let you vote against them, but don't undercut majority party leadership's control of legislative procedure. That's why no discharge petition has been successful in 16 years. The perfect failure record of discharge petitions can now legally drive! [Please, Failure, if I may call you by your first name: use your fuckin' turn signal!]
So, Paul Ryan was dealing with two bills-- a conservative bill from the Freedom Caucus that had no chance of passage, and a discharge petition circulating from the Democrats, which some "moderate" GOPers were thinking about signing. Ryan agreed to let the knuckleheads* have their doomed vote because they don't really care about policy outcomes anyway. They just care about doing the I'm-more-conservative-than-you posturing bullshit. Drama queens, all.
The "moderate" Republicans backed off from the discharge petition with some sort of empty promise. That gave us the Kabuki Theater of last week's House proceedings. Did you know that my first professorship was at Oberlin? Snowflake-central. A few years ago, one with a particularly fascinating crystalline structure complained about the sushi in the dining hall on the basis of "cultural appropriation." I'm not joking. I wish I were. This happened.
I'd say there's a stronger case for what's going on in the House right now.
Anyway, my point is that last week's proceedings were all an elaborate show. The conservatives just wanted a posturing vote. As David Mayhew would put it, a "position-taking" vote. See Congress: The Electoral Connection. The "moderates" were just placated. It was a "we hear you, and it's so cute that you think you matter" kind of thing. Remember, though, that even if the discharge petition had worked, nothing was going to get through the Senate. At this point, though, even that wasn't an issue because by keeping the proceedings within the party, the "moderates" were completely locked out. The Freedom Caucus is basically a bunch of Stephen Millers, so they're never going to agree to anything the "moderates" really want, and if a bill were capable of getting Democratic votes, the Freedom Caucus would boot Paul Ryan's ass to the curb if he let it get to the floor. Either way, that leaves the "moderates" isolated, and unable to form a legislative coalition with anyone. This thing is doomed for the simple reason that the GOP, or at least, enough of it, doesn't want anything to happen on immigration except more border patrols and more deportations.
What does Donny-rip-the-kids-away-Trump have to do with that? Not a thing. This is all about internal dynamics in Congress. Trump is just a racist, bloviating fuckwit. OK, he's also a proto-fascist. And a misogynist. A serial sexual predator. A mercantilist moron. And possibly a traitor under the control of a hostile foreign power, but definitely guilty of obstruction of justice, but I should really stop now because I'm getting off-track here. The point is that Trump is irrelevant to this particular matter.
The House Republican caucus has been completely dysfunctional since long before Trump came along. Take him out of the picture, and they'd be just as gridlocked. Trump is as much a symptom of Republican dysfunction as he is a cause of it.
What would I look for in a party making a serious effort at policy-making? The introduction of legislation that makes its way through committee, hearings, markup, floor debate, etc. The GOP has decided to never do that. Why not? Because they're not serious about policy. They don't know what they're doing.
*John Boehner's term for the Freedom Caucus idiots.