The so-called Gang of Eight refused to let this moment go to waste. Their proposal was a compromise. Republicans would get enhanced border security and tougher interior enforcement, including mandatory E-Verify (an internet-based system that checks applicants’ eligibility, to prevent businesses from hiring illegals). Democrats would get a long, winding path to citizenship for the estimated eleven million undocumented residents, provided those residents paid back taxes and had committed no crimes.
Many leading conservatives had, in the months since Mitt Romney’s defeat, come around to this approach. Rush Limbaugh was not one of them. He recoiled at the Gang’s plan. Obama had never been interested in finding common ground with Republicans, Limbaugh told his listeners; having wielded immigration as a political club, the president had beaten them into submission. “I don’t know that there’s any stopping this,” Limbaugh said. “It’s up to me and Fox News, and I don’t think Fox News is that invested in this.”5
It was no small act of political courage, then, when Rubio called into Limbaugh’s show the day after announcing the Gang’s framework, ready to duel with the right’s ruling agitator. Limbaugh didn’t waste time on niceties. “Why are we doing this?” he asked. Sixteen minutes later, having met with the full force of Rubio’s rhetorical prowess, the talk radio bully was blushing with adulation for the freshman senator. “What you are doing is admirable and noteworthy,” he told Rubio, wishing him luck with the immigration push. When the interview wrapped, Limbaugh sounded thunderstruck. “Is that guy good or what?”6
This was exactly why the Gang had recruited Rubio. John McCain and Lindsey Graham, its two senior Republicans, were known moderates on immigration. And the third Senate Republican, the newly promoted Jeff Flake, was also soft on the issue, even though he had tacked right during his Senate run in 2012, denouncing a comprehensive approach and advocating for border security to be achieved before the undocumented population was dealt with. What the Gang needed was someone with conservative star power to sell the proposal to the base. Rubio, the Tea Party flame of 2010, had it in spades—not to mention policy chops and a straight-from-Hollywood story of living the American dream.
In February, as Rubio spearheaded the immigration push, Time magazine featured him on its cover with a suitable headline: “The Republican Savior.” People close to Rubio worried that he was sprinting headlong into a legislative quagmire that could derail his promising rise. Then again, he’d just tamed the biggest tiger in conservative media. What could go wrong?
Limbaugh wasn’t alone in believing that Obama might tank a compromise bill. The Gang’s two senior Democrats, Chuck Schumer of New York and Dick Durbin of Illinois, pleaded with the president to leave the issue alone, fearful that anything with Obama’s fingerprints would prove toxic to conservatives. The president reluctantly complied; on the day Rubio spoke with Limbaugh, Obama gave an immigration speech in Las Vegas but choked back the details of his preferred plan, arguing only for “key principles,” as the New Yorker reported at the time.7
With Obama sidelined and the conservative media syndicate on its heels, the Gang of Eight charged ahead, wooing special interest groups and cutting deals with senators in both parties. Momentum is oxygen to the policymaking process. Romney’s loss, and the RNC’s vituperative autopsy report—released to fanfare in March and calling for sweeping changes to the party’s data, technology, and minority outreach programs, all while endorsing comprehensive immigration reform—had set the heaviest of balls in motion. The Gang members needed to capitalize before that ball stopped rolling.
The legislative text arrived in April, thrusting Rubio into a full-scale charm offensive: He visited the offices of National Review, dined privately with Fox News personalities, called into talk radio programs, and, on one Sunday, appeared on seven different TV shows to promote the bill. By May it had been debated, marked up, and passed out of the Judiciary Committee, over the objections of two chief opponents, Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Ted Cruz of Texas. And on June 27, the Gang of Eight bill passed the U.S. Senate on a 68–32 vote, with 14 Republicans in favor.
From an aerial view, the ball still looked to be moving forward. On the ground, however, its momentum was arrested. Backlash to the immigration push had built organically throughout the spring, with blogs and local talk radio pummeling the Gang of Eight proposal—even as many prominent national voices remained supportive. As the outcry grew noisier, some advocates on the right got jittery. Having phoned Ryan and Cantor months earlier to lobby for immigration reform, Hannity called back with a sudden warning: “Stay away from the Senate bill,” he told them. “It’s going to be a career killer.”
THE HOUSE AND THE SENATE ARE PROFOUNDLY DIFFERENT INSTITUTIONS, not just for their respective traditions and procedures, but because of the inbuilt job descriptions that guide employee behavior.
Senators represent entire states, which affords a broader outlook on policy disputes even in red Wyoming or blue Vermont; they also enjoy the autonomy of serving six-year terms. House members, on the other hand, face reelection every two years. They represent districts that are demographically and ideologically clustered, most of which are locked down by one of the two parties. (The year 2010 saw a massive swing of 64 seats; but that means the other 371 seats, 85 percent of the House, remained loyally partisan.) With 9 of 10 seats safely under one party’s control, House members fear primaries more than general elections. And predictably, with primaries drawing just a fraction of the eligible electorate, those voters who participate tend to be the most engaged and the least inclined toward moderation.
Such is the tortured relationship between the two chambers: Senators look down upon the reactionary, hot-blooded House members, while the House members resent the imperious senators. This structural friction will, in some instances, produce sharply diverging approaches from members of the same party. Immigration was one of those instances.
In the wake of Romney’s defeat, it was principally the GOP’s nationally known leadership—Reince Priebus and his committee members, McConnell and McCain, Boehner and Cantor and Ryan—that made the case for immigration reform. Their argument was the same one made by conservative media figures such as Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, and Charles Krauthammer: Democrats were weaponizing the issue to dominate a changing America over the long haul.
But this reasoning meant little to politicians who live their career ambitions two years at a time, and even less to those whose districts weren’t reflective of any such change.
“It’s ironic that Reince thought they were helping by issuing their autopsy, because there was this cultural thing going on: ‘Here they go again, these out-of-touch people in Washington telling us that we need to let more of the strangers in.’ It just poured gasoline on the fire,” says Cantor. “Immigration was a problem for the party, but it wasn’t a problem in a lot of these districts.”
The visual dichotomy of this dilemma is found inside the House chamber. One side of the aisle looks like the country: young and old, man and woman, black and white and brown. The other side looks like the country club: aging white guys. In the 113th Congress, spanning 2013 and 2014, Republicans held 234 seats in the House; 19 members were women, and 9 identified as an ethnic minority. The remaining 205, or 88 percent of the House GOP, were white men.8 This isn’t to say that white men are politically illegitimate or make lousy legislators. But the statistical disparity speaks to the makeup of the districts they represent, and in turn, to those districts’ willingness to embrace an America that looks nothing like their microcosm thereof.