Ross Douthat, a columnist for the NY Times, is not someone people usually refer to as part of the Republican "base."
Stephen Colbert describes him as the "conservative columnist at the NY Times, which also qualifies him to be the liberal columnist for the NY Post."
But
he's with the base when it comes to Republican immigration "principles" released on Friday:
THE debate over immigration reform, rekindled last week by House Republican leaders, bears a superficial resemblance to last fall’s debate over the government shutdown.
Again, you have establishment Republicans transparently eager to cut a deal with the White House and a populist wing that doesn’t want to let them do it. Again, you have Republican business groups and donors wringing their hands over the intransigence of the base, while talk-radio hosts and right-wing bloggers warn against an imminent inside-the-Beltway sellout. Again, you have a bill that could pass the House tomorrow — but only if John Boehner was willing to live with having mostly Democrats voting for it.
Except there’s one big difference: This time, the populists are right.
They’re right about the policy, which remains a mess in every new compromise that’s floated — offering “solutions” that are unlikely to be permanent, enforcement provisions that probably won’t take effect, and favoring special interests, right and left, over the interests of the citizenry at large.
Among the many problems, any form of legalization prior to enforcement is folly. And therein lies the problem. Obama will not sign a meaningful "enforcement first" bill, so either Republicans repeat the mistakes of the past, or the "principles" go nowhere while disrupting Republicans focus for 2014.
Greg Sargent of WaPo, reliable conduit of Democratic thinking, notes that Republicans don't trust Obama to enforce the law, so will impose preconditions that will be unacceptable to Obama: