By Reid J. Epstein and Jonathan Allen | POLITICO
The White House is getting ready to launch a major fall blitz for immigration reform — this time, one that appears to be more about partisanship than partnership with Republicans.
While Washington may be consumed in the latest continuing resolution crisis and debt ceiling drama, it’s also just days away from massive new push on an issue many had written off months ago.
But if the president’s low profile on immigration in the past had been a bow to the reality that Republicans wouldn’t want to join hands with him publicly, the nature of the renewed push suggests the West Wing brain trust isn’t betting much on the prospect that the issue will be resolved in this Congress.
The political imperatives driving the latest immigration effort are clear: Obama can’t just abandon an issue that he promised to deliver on during his last campaign without suffering a major backlash from activists who helped elect him, and congressional Democrats are anxious to make sure Latino voters are motivated to punish Republicans at the polls in the 2014 mid-term election if there’s no law on the books by then.
Still, the effort remains a delicate balancing act for the White House.
