The Senate's proposed immigration compromise is dead. Mercifully so, thanks to Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who, along with several of his colleagues, stopped the bill from advancing on Tuesday.
It's just as well. From the start, the effort to craft a genuinely bipartisan compromise that would win enough votes in both chambers was a fool's errand. There's nothing the Democrats want on immigration, at least legislatively, that the Republicans could agree to without alienating a significant portion of the GOP base. Ask any pollster. If they're being honest, they'll tell you that the border crisis is a top issue for most Americans. Anything that even hints at amnesty or welfare for people who are in the United States illegally won't pass muster.
The border and immigration are different issues that should be addressed separately. Both are important, but it is the border that is being overrun. The rules governing legal immigration need to be changed and updated, and the process streamlined, but this problem does not have the same degree of urgency.
Things are the way they are on the border because Joe Biden wants them that way. There's nothing that's not already in the law to prevent him from closing it down tight. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) proved that recently when his office released a list of 64 things the administration did to make the situation worse—many could be undone without Congress having to act.
From the beginning, Biden, in a bid to solidify his support among progressives who would have preferred a different Democratic nominee in 2020, has maneuvered to create a safe zone that lets people into America without waiting in line. One suspects he may be waiting for the chance to give all newcomers citizenship with the stroke of a pen.
Too many Republicans don't understand this. They've deluded themselves into believing a deal can be cut if the GOP is willing to give on a core issue. That's a mistake, one that voters will remember in November. Now that the deal is dead, party leaders have to figure out how to keep the president and his allies from using its collapse to shift the blame for the border crisis onto the GOP. That will be hard to do, especially since that's what the White House hoped would happen all along.
Instead of condemning GOP leaders like McConnell and Johnson for killing the bill, the country should be heaping praise upon them. It won't happen, of course. The elites who determine what the national conversation should be about favor open borders. What we will get instead are clips of Biden and other prominent Democrats blaming MAGA Republicans for killing a bipartisan compromise that they say would have fixed everything.
It wouldn't have. The compromise Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma and Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy came up with would likely have made things worse. Biden already has all the tools he needs to close the border. The border crisis happens because he won't allow Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to use them.
Even if Mayorkas were impeached and removed from office, as congressional Republicans tried to do this week, things won't change. Biden's pick to replace him would inevitably follow the same policies.
The stark reality is the only way to change U.S. border policy is to change the person who makes it. That's Joe Biden.
As things advance, it's of utmost importance that the Republicans in the House and Senate stick together. There's no room for division. Suppose they show even an iota of daylight between them on what needs to happen on the border. The president and his allies would exploit that division to give credence to Biden's soon-to-be-echoed charge that Trump and his MAGA extremists blocked a workable compromise.
Republicans need to continue to lay the problems at the border at Biden's feet. They should abandon their efforts to remove Mayorkas. That won't work. They must go to the border every week if necessary and bring members of the hometown media along to boot. Let the folks back home see them in action, observing the problem up close like Biden and Kamala Harris—the administration's border czarina—have refused to do.
To win the issue, the GOP needs to take the fight to Biden and the Democrats. Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) has the right idea. On Tuesday, he called for an immediate vote on a measure declaring that an invasion is underway on America's southern border. The Democrats blocked it, but if it had passed, his office says, it would have immediately empowered the governors of the states most severely affected by the crisis to secure the border without federal interference.
That's the kind of smart play Republicans need. Offer measures to empower states to defend themselves and restrict the Biden administration's ability to worsen the problem. That's the only way to fight through the noise made by the government-media elite complex that helps keep the border open. It draws a clear line between those who want to keep America safe and those who don't care who comes into the country or why. That's the deeper crisis.
From now until the election, it's all about the optics. It's a battle of triangulation between Biden and the GOP, with the winner getting to place the blame on the loser for the border crisis.
Newsweek Contributing Editor Peter Roff is a veteran journalist who can be seen and read frequently on U.S. and international media platforms. He can be reached at roffcolumns@gmail.com and followed on social media @TheRoffDraft.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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